Friday, September 21, 2012

Foxy Grandpa Time for the Race

Send in the good ole boys: Bill Clinton regales Jon Stewart while the GOP longs for a Reagan octogenarian to rescue Romney after the Clint Eastwood debacle.

The Comeback Kid, now 66, basks in Daily Show kudos for his killer convention standup as prelude to plugging Walmart and other friends of his Global Initiative.

The antic mind tries to conjure a future white-haired former President Mitt in that chair decades from now, but the synapses won’t fire up.

Instead, we have Peggy Noonan complaining, “The Romney campaign has to get turned around. This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite. I really meant ‘rolling calamity.’"

Her solution: 82-year-old James A. Baker, who ran Reagan’s two runs as well as Bush I’s victory and was W’s lawyer in the 2000 Florida recount. Afterward he was with Osama bin Laden’s folks, whom he represented, in Washington on 9/11/01 and later served as co-chair of the Iraq Study Group. But then again, nobody wins them all.

Baker, Noonan enthuses, “didn't like hacks, he didn't get their point, and he knew one when he saw one.

“A campaign is a communal exercise. It isn't about individual entrepreneurs. It's people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: victory.

Mitt Romney needs to get his head screwed on right in this area. Maybe advice could come from someone in politics who awes him. If that isn't Jim Baker then Mitt Romney's
not awe-able, which is a different kind of problem.”

Clinton and Baker can’t match me in years, but it’s good to see younger folks getting that kind of respect.

1 comment:

Fred Beloit said...

Every paper has some idiotic opinionaters. The WSJ is no exception, no matter how good the rest of the opinion team are. Something to keep in mind: Noonan admits she voted for Obama in the last election (oh those leg tingles). Now if you were a Republican, would you pay attention to anything she says? Would Kos vote for Romney? Think about it.