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November 21, 2008 3:14:26 PM CST

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Clinton, McCain Could Pick Up Some Pointers From Obama

Posted Mar 22, 08 1:45 PM CDT in Politics 

(Newser) – Add conservative columnist—and speechwriter of note—Peggy Noonan to the list of pundits impressed by Barack Obama’s address on race. “It was a speech to think to, not clap to,” Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal . And it holds a lesson for Clinton and McCain: Say "something interesting"—speak in paragraphs instead of soundbites—and you, too, might get more than an 8-second snippet of your speech on the news.

"The speech assumed the audience was intelligent," Noonan writes. "This was a compliment, and I suspect was received as a gift." But the ex-Reagan speechwriter chides Obama for pandering to Democrats using bleak depictions of America: “Most people didn’t experience the past 25 years that way. Because it wasn’t that way. Do the Obamas know it?”

Source Wall Street Journal

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Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack waves after an address about race.   (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Barack Obama makes his speech on race in Philadelphia.   (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Michelle Obama listens to her husband speak about race.   (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
This undated photo released by Obama for America shows Obama's father and mother.   (AP Photo/Obama for America)
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Peggy Noonan on NBC's "Meet the Press"   (llamomanu (YouTube))

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Barack Obama • Hillary Clinton • Democrats • Michelle Obama • race relations • Jeremiah Wright • Peggy Noonan • blacks • whites


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