Cold-Fish President Is Losing the Public: Noonan

Alarm bells should be ringing at the White House as the Obama administration drifts dangerously out of touch with the middle ground, Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal. By trying to tackle health care on top of the economy and two wars, Noonan writes, the president—along with his aides, too many of which are youthful, untested and overconfident—has been trying to do too much before ordinary voters have established trust in his leadership.

The administration has high hopes for next week's address on health care, Noonan writes, but most Americans—weary of the president's "same sound, approach, logic, tone, modulation" in every speech—probably won't be tuning in. The president was dignified, appropriate, and cold at Ted Kennedy's wake this week, Noonan notes. That style probably won't play well long-term with the center, she writes, or even his 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." (More President Obama stories.)