On the August 29 broadcast of NBC's Today, while discussing Sen. Barack Obama's August 28 speech at the Democratic National Convention, host Matt Lauer said to Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, "[B]efore the speech, you wrote in The Wall Street Journal that you were unimpressed with the staging, the Greek column look, the hugeness of the arena," and then asked her what she thought of the speech afterward. However, in describing Noonan's August 28 column to her, Lauer referred to her criticism of the columns and the size of the arena, but did not mention that she had written that the speech “has every possibility of looking like a Nuremberg rally.”

From Noonan's August 28 column:

The general thinking among thinking journalists, as opposed to journalists who merely follow the journalistic line of the day, is that the change of venue Thursday night to Invesco Field, and the huge, open air Obama acceptance speech is ... one of the biggest and possibly craziest gambles of this or any other presidential campaign of the modern era. Everyone can define what can go wrong, and no one can quite define what “great move” would look like. It has every possibility of looking like a Nuremberg rally; it has too many variables to guarantee a good tv picture; the set, the Athenian columns, looks hokey; big crowds can get in the way of subtle oratory. My own added thought is that speeches are delicate; they're words in the air, and when you've got a ceiling the words can sort of go up to that ceiling and come back down again. But words said into an open air stadium ... can just get lost in echoes, and misheard phrases.

From the August 29 broadcast of NBC's Today:

LAUER: So, how did Barack Obama do? Peggy Noonan served as a top speechwriter for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. She's also a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and best-selling author of What I Saw at the Revolution. Hi, Peggy, good to see you.

NOONAN: Good morning, Matt. Nice to be here from Denver.

LAUER: Yeah, so, before the speech, you wrote in The Wall Street Journal that you were unimpressed with the staging, the Greek column look, the hugeness of the arena. You were there with some 80,000 other people last night. Did you change your mind?

NOONAN: I did, a little bit. You could look at that staging, at the Athenian columns and the specific look of it, and you could think, “Man, that's odd-looking,” and you couldn't figure out how it connected to Obama. But by the end of that speech, I think I broke the code. At the end of the speech, Barack Obama spoke about Martin Luther King, 45 years before, speaking in front of the Lincoln Memorial, with the beautiful columns behind him. And suddenly, I realized that whole set was meant to be an evocation of Martin Luther King and his great speech that day. So, I think the set was meant to connect thematically with part of the speech, and I think the set by the end had a certain glow to it. So, I think at the end of the day, it worked and was deliberate.

LAUER: Let's talk a little bit more about content. Here's what you write in your column this morning, Peggy -- not that you don't know that already. But here are some samples. “The speech itself lacked lift but had heft. It wasn't precisely long on hope, but I think it showed audacity. This was not smiling O, he was not the charmer or the celebrity, and he didn't try much humor. Mr. Obama often looked stern and somewhat indignant.” So, if you were one of those people who's come to love those lofty, hope-filled speeches, were you disappointed by this?

NOONAN: No, I don't think so. I think there was a certain science behind what Mr. Obama was doing. I think he was thinking, “Look, I'm going to have 30, 35, maybe even 40 million people watching tonight. A lot of them have never seen me before. They've seen me from out of the side their eye when they walk by a television, but they haven't really focused on me. I'm going make them focus on me tonight, but in a different way. I'm not going to be charming, lovely, vaguely humorous, interesting and expansive on the issues. I'm going to be a very serious, seriously adult person talking about” --

LAUER: Well, when you talk about “seriously adult,” though, let me ask you this. When he went right at John McCain, using his name, saying, “Listen, John McCain this and John McCain that,” did he manage to walk that very fine line, Peggy, between being the antagonist and what would be called an attack dog?

NOONAN: Oh, yes, I think he did. He gave John McCain a few hard wallops. Now, in the past few weeks, John McCain's been giving him a few hard wallops. Obama has been holding his fire. All of a sudden in that speech last night, he was not holding his fire. He was tough. He smacked him around on judgment, et cetera. I think there were two things he was trying to do. One was steady the field there and even things up. Another is, I think Obama was trying to bait John McCain. I think Obama was trying to get John McCain mad for next week when John McCain has a convention and might want to come out swinging. I think he sort of wanted to start a donnybrook, and I think he probably did. So I thought, strategically, his criticism of McCain was pretty smart stuff.

LAUER: Let me end with history. You've brought up Martin Luther King and the “I Have a Dream” speech 45 years ago yesterday. Obviously, the other piece of history -- the first time an African-American has accepted a nomination of a major political party for president. So, major history at play in that arena last night. Did the speech in your terms live up to its historic significance?

NOONAN: They asked themselves to live up to a lot when they put it in that big place. Did it live up to it? I think it was distinguished and memorable. I think it's going to take us a little time to figure out exactly what we think about it. In that way, it might be a little bit almost like the European trip in July. It may take time for it to sink in and for us to decide what we think. On balance, I think it was a plus. We'll find out very soon how big a plus it was.

LAUER: Peggy Noonan. Nice to get your perspective, Peggy, and thanks for getting up early for us. I appreciate it.

NOONAN: Thank you. Delighted.