Peggy Noonan

From Peggy Noonan's column in the WSJ as taken from:
http://www.patriotpost.us/opinion/peggy-noonan/2009/09/05/coruscating-on-thin-ice.htm:

"The president's biggest potential long-term problem in terms of the public part of the presidency became obvious to me only during the past week.

I watched with great interest much of Teddy Kennedy's wake and funeral, and saw in a clearer way than I had in the past a big cultural difference between the elites of the two parties, or rather the Democratic and Republican establishments. Pretty much the entire Democratic establishment was at the Kennedy services, and the level of shown affection among those in the pews and the audience was striking—laughing, hugging, telling stories, admitting weaknesses, weeping. It was Irish, and old-time. If it had been a gathering of the Republican political and journalistic establishment it would have been less emotive, with little shown affection. Polite laughter, cordial handshakes, a lot of staring ahead. A guy with his head down and you think he's mourning but he's BlackBerrying. They don't especially like each other, they compete against each other, and they don't feel the need to fake liking each other. They have the old dignity of the old grown-ups. And I suppose their style reflects some of their philosophy: Politics isn't about emotions but thoughts.

The difference between the party establishments struck me, but is not my point. This is: The president walked into the funeral and moved toward the front pews nodding, shaking hands. He hugged Mrs. Kennedy, nodded some more, shook more hands. He was dignified and contained, he was utterly appropriate, and he was cold.

He is cold, like someone who is contained not because he's disciplined and successfully restrains his emotions, but because there's not that much to restrain. This is the dark side of cool. One wonders if this will play well with the American people. Long-term it is hard to get people to trust your policies if they think you're coolly operating on some intellectual or ideological abstractions.

I don't think as a presidential style it will wear well with the center. And it may not wear well with the president's own party. They may come to see him, in time, as not really one of them. And that's when things will really get interesting."

Wow. One part of my mind recalls Robert Hugh Benson apocalyptic novels. The villain is described that way: cold, emotionless, coolly intellectual.

Another memory is jogged by the phrase, "operating on ... ideological abstractions." That would also aptly describe the perpetrators of the French and Russian revolutions and the anarchist bomb-throwers of any given decade of the last century.

Our quixotic young president occasionally reveals other glimpses of the character beneath. I have not seen anything to engender my confidence in him yet.