The Inaugural Speech IV

I've always been a big Peggy Noonan fan. Her (old now) book, "What I Saw at the Revolution" is the book I would give a serious minded liberal.

Larry Kudlow agrees, but he has taken her to task for her criticism of the second inaugural address.

Noonan, David Frum, and others make the argument that the Bush speechwriting team should have thrown itself in front of the oncoming train of the inaugural address. This was a familiar refrain during the 1980s, when many of Reagan’s advisors tried to stop him from calling the Soviets an evil empire, or telling the Russians to tear down that wall. Yet Natan Sharansky, in his new book The Case for Democracy, relates that it was exactly these visionary Reagan declarations that gave the Gulag-imprisoned refuseniks great hope -- indeed all the oppressed peoples of the former Soviet empire great hope -- that freedom-loving help was on the way.

“Let Reagan be Reagan,” was the cry of that great president’s loyal supporters. How is it that Peggy Noonan is now deciding, “Don’t let Bush be Bush”?

Second Bush Administration Posted by jk at January 31, 2005 5:32 PM