Noonan's fake history lesson for Obama

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan counseled our ever-ambitious President to focus on leaving a legacy that can be reduced to one sentence—a specious notion borrowed from former Republican Congresswoman Clare Boothe L

Every once in a while, a piece of commentary precisely, if elegantly, captures a common, even trite, view among the political elite. So it was last Friday, when former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan declared in her Wall Street Journal column that Obama is trying to do too much.

Her un-novel critique might have been dismissed as just another echo from the conservative corner if she hadn't gilded it with a self-serving anecdote from former Republican Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce. As Noonan condescendingly instructs "our young President" in the ways of statecraft, she suggests that he focus on The Sentence.

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Robert Shrum has been a senior adviser to the Gore 2000 presidential campaign, the campaign of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and the British Labour Party. In addition to being the chief strategist for the 2004 Kerry-Edwards campaign, Shrum has advised thirty winning U.S. Senate campaigns; eight winning campaigns for governor; mayors of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other major cities; and the Democratic Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Shrum's writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The New Republic, Slate, and other publications. The author of No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner (Simon and Schuster), he is currently a Senior Fellow at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service.