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(Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon.)
WSJ Op-Ed, July 28, 2017
Trump Is Woody Allen Without the Humor
Half his tweets show utter weakness. They are plaintive, shrill little
cries, usually just after dawn.
By Peggy Noonan
The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous,
brash or naive. It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider.
It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself
almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American
masculinity.
He’s not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and
determined; he’s whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself,
sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen. It was once said,
sarcastically, of George H.W. Bush that he reminded everyone of her
first husband. Trump must remind people of their first wife. Actually
his wife, Melania, is tougher than he is with her stoicism and grace,
her self-discipline and desire to show the world respect by presenting
herself with dignity.
Half the president’s tweets show utter weakness. They are plaintive,
shrill little cries, usually just after dawn. “It’s very sad that
Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do
very little to protect their president.” The brutes. Actually they’ve
been laboring to be loyal to him since Inauguration Day. “The
Republicans never discuss how good their health care bill is.” True, but
neither does Mr. Trump, who seems unsure of its content. In just the
past two weeks, of the press, he complained: “Every story/opinion, even
if should be positive, is bad!” Journalists produce “highly slanted &
even fraudulent reporting.” They are “DISTORTING DEMOCRACY.” They
“fabricate the facts.”
It’s all whimpering accusation and finger-pointing: Nobody’s nice to me.
Why don’t they appreciate me?
His public brutalizing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn’t strong,
cool and deadly; it’s limp, lame and blubbery. “Sessions has taken a
VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes,” he tweeted this week.
Talk about projection.
He told the Journal’s Michael C. Bender he is disappointed in Mr.
Sessions and doesn’t feel any particular loyalty toward him. “He was a
senator, he looks at 40,000 people and he probably says, ‘What do I have
to lose?’ And he endorsed me. So it’s not like a great loyal thing about
the endorsement.” Actually, Mr. Sessions supported him early and put his
personal credibility on the line. In Politico, John J. Pitney Jr. of
Claremont McKenna College writes: “Loyalty is about strength. It is
about sticking with a person, a cause, an idea or a country even when it
is costly, difficult or unpopular.” A strong man does that. A weak one
would unleash his resentments and derive sadistic pleasure from their
unleashing.
The way American men used to like seeing themselves, the template they
most admired, was the strong silent type celebrated in classic mid-20th
century films—Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Henry Fonda. In time the style
shifted, and we wound up with the nervous and chattery. More than a
decade ago the producer and writer David Chase had his Tony Soprano
mourn the disappearance of the old style: “What they didn’t know is once
they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings they wouldn’t be able to
shut him up!” The new style was more like that of Woody Allen. His
characters couldn’t stop talking about their emotions, their resentments
and needs. They were self-justifying as they acted out their cowardice
and anger.
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