Peggy Noonan

Noonan was born on September 7, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York,{{cite book |last=Bothmer |first=Bernard von |title=Blaming "The Sixties": The Political Use of an Era, 1980–2004 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6FBBXLrd-IYC&pg=PA126 |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-493-87308-4|page=126}}{{cite book |last=Noonan |first=Peggy |title=What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ff8oVIxKcSoC&pg=PA21 |year=2003 |publisher=Random House Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-8129-6989-4|page=21}} the daughter of a merchant seaman. She is of Irish descent.{{cite web|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/2000/08/02/laura-bush-fascinates-ex-speechwriter/|title=Laura Bush Fascinates Ex-speechwriter|website=Chicago Tribune |date=August 2, 2000 }} Noonan is a graduate of Rutherford High School in Rutherford, New Jersey, and Fairleigh Dickinson University.[http://www.rutherfordschools.org/rhs/acad/maincontent.html About Rutherford High School] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071020053335/http://www.rutherfordschools.org/rhs/acad/maincontent.html |date=October 20, 2007 }}, Rutherford High School. Accessed July 7, 2007. "Career diplomat and ambassador Thomas H. Pickering and presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan are among those honored as part of this tradition." Noonan worked as the daily CBS Radio commentary writer for anchorman Dan Rather at CBS News, whom she once called "the best boss I ever had". From 1975 through 1977, she worked the overnight shift as a newswriter at WEEI Radio in Boston, where she was later Editorial and Public Affairs Director. In 1978 and 1979, she was an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University.{{cite web|url=https://online.wsj.com/public/page/peggy-noonan.html |title=Peggy Noonan |publisher=Online.wsj.com |access-date=September 26, 2011}}

File:President Ronald Reagan and Peggy Noonan.jpg

In 1984, Noonan, as a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, authored his "The boys of Pointe du Hoc" speech on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. She also wrote Reagan's address to the nation after the Challenger disaster, drawing upon the poet John Magee's words about aviators who "slipped the surly bonds of earth ... and touched the face of God." The latter is ranked as the eighth best American political speech of the 20th century, according to a list compiled by professors at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Texas A&M University.

Noonan worked on a tribute Reagan gave to honor President John F. Kennedy at a fundraising event held at the McLean, Virginia, home of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, in the spring of 1984. Later, while working for then Vice President George H. W. Bush's 1988 presidential campaign, Noonan coined the phrase "a kinder, gentler nation", and also popularized "a thousand points of light", two memorable catchphrases used by Bush. Noonan also wrote Bush's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans, in which he pledged "Read my lips: no new taxes". Bush's subsequent reversal of this pledge is often cited as a major reason for his defeat in his 1992 re-election campaign. In 1995, Noonan received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris.{{cite web|title= Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement |website=www.achievement.org|publisher=American Academy of Achievement|url= https://achievement.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/#public-service}}

Noonan worked as a consultant on the American television drama The West Wing. In 2003, Noonan was a supporter of the US invasion of Iraq.{{Cite web |first=Eric| last=Boehlert| title=Peggy Noonan's shameless attempt to rewrite (her own) history| date=June 29, 2010| publisher=Media Matters for America| access-date=December 14, 2023| url=http://www.mediamatters.org/peggy-noonan/peggy-noonans-shameless-attempt-rewrite-her-own-history }} In mid-August 2004, she took a brief unpaid leave from The Wall Street Journal to campaign for George W. Bush's reelection. In 2007, Noonan was one of the founding members of the now-shuttered wowOwow.com, along with Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Mary Wells Lawrence, and Joni Evans.{{cite web |title=Wow O Wow: More Than Coffee Talk |url=https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4435736 |website=ABC News |language=en}}

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Noonan wrote about Sarah Palin's vice presidential candidacy in The Wall Street Journal. In one opinion piece, Noonan expressed her view that Palin did not demonstrate "the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office", concluding that Palin's candidacy marked a "vulgarization in American Politics" that is "no good ... for conservatism ... [or] the country".{{cite news|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122419210832542317|title= Palin's Failin'|date=October 17, 2008|publisher=Wall Street Journal|access-date=October 18, 2008 | first=Peggy | last=Noonan}} Tony Blankley sharply criticized Noonan for her criticism of Palin.{{cite web |url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/the_birth_of_the_metoo_conserv.html |title=The Birth of the Me-Too Conservative |last1=Blankley |first1=Tony |date=October 22, 2008 |work= RealClearPolitics | access-date=January 10, 2010}}

Noonan's weekly column for The Wall Street Journal, entitled "Declarations", has been running since 2000. She is also a regular commentator on NBC's Meet the Press. In 2017, Noonan won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "rising to the moment with beautifully rendered columns that connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation's most divisive political campaigns."[http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2017 "2017 Pulitzer Prize Winners & Finalists"], April 10, 2017.

File:Peggy Noonan 1986.jpg

In November 1985, at age 35, Noonan married 43 year old Richard W. Rahn, who was then chief economist at the US Chamber of Commerce. It was his third marriage, her first."What I Saw At the Revolution", Peggy Noonan, Ivy Books, 1990, page 282, pp 288-289. Their son Will was born in 1987.Hugh Sidey, [https://web.archive.org/web/20091027035945/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,967310,00.html "The Presidency: Of Poets and Word Processors"], Time, May 2, 1988. Noonan and her husband were divorced after five years of marriage. In 1989, a few months after separating from Rahn, she returned with her son to her native New York."What I Saw At The Revolution", Peggy Noonan, Ivy Books, page 352. In 2004, according to an interview with Crisis Magazine, she lived in a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights with her son, who attended the nearby Saint Ann's School.[https://web.archive.org/web/20160611161458/http://www.crisismagazine.com/2004/meeting-peggy-noonan Anne Morse, "Meeting Peggy Noonan," Crisis Magazine, September, 2004.]

Noonan lives in Manhattan.{{cite web |url=http://tobaccodocuments.org/nysa_ti_s3/TI46320030.html?zoom=750&ocr_position=above_foramatted&start_page=41 |title=Astuces pour en finir avec le tabac ! |website=tobaccodocuments.org |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090113210158/http://tobaccodocuments.org/nysa_ti_s3/TI46320030.html?zoom=750&ocr_position=above_foramatted&start_page=41 |archive-date=January 13, 2009 |df=mdy-all}} She is a practicing Catholic and attends St. Thomas More Church on Manhattan's Upper East Side.{{Cite web|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/03/nyc-churches-for-sale_n_6795742.html|title=NYC Churches Hit The Market For Millions|last=Today|first=Rick Hampson USA|date=2015-03-03|website=The Huffington Post|access-date=2016-09-02}}{{cite news|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/peggy-noonan-cardinal-please-spare-this-church-1419580845|title=Cardinal, Please Spare This Church|author=Noonan, Peggy|newspaper=Wall Street Journal|date=December 26, 2014}} Since the late 2010s, Noonan has distanced herself from the Republican Party under Donald Trump. Both in 2016 and 2020, she declined to vote for either Trump or his Democratic opponent. In the 2020 presidential election, she wrote in 18th-century political philosopher Edmund Burke.{{cite web |last1=Noonan |first1=Peggy |title=Raucous 2016 Gives Way to Subdued 2020 |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/raucous-2016-gives-way-to-subdued-2020-11604012340 |website=The Wall Street Journal |date=October 29, 2020}}

While Noonan's speechwriting has been praised, her books and Wall Street Journal columns have been the source of criticism and mockery. Critics have singled out her reliance on personal anecdotes to make broad assertions about current events and changes in American politics and society.{{cite journal |last1=Benoît A La Guillaume |first1=Luc |title=Reaching out to the American middle class: Peggy Noonan's conservatism |journal=E-rea |volume=6 |issue=1 |date=15 October 2008 |doi=10.4000/erea.146 |doi-access=free }} During Hurricane Katrina, Noonan called for looters in New Orleans to be shot.{{Cite book|last=Giroux, Henry A.|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/958105523|title=Stormy weather : Katrina and the politics of disposability|date=2016|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-315-63189-9|pages=51|oclc=958105523}} Henry Giroux called it a "barely coded rationale to shoot low-income Black people."

In a March 2013 column, she used her experience staying at a short-staffed airport hotel to demonstrate the Obama administration's lack of focus on job creation and infrastructure spending, even though infrastructure was a significant component of Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which Noonan had previously criticized in November 2010.{{cite web |last1=Noonan |first1=Peggy |title=The Anti-Confidence Man |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323628804578346680172271600 |website=The Wall Street Journal |date=March 7, 2013 |access-date=August 9, 2019}}{{cite web |last1=Amira |first1=Dan |title=Peggy Noonan Wishes Obama Had Done Some Kind of Stimulus-y Thing for Jobs |url=http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/03/peggy-noonan-hotel-stimulus-public-works.html |website=New York Magazine |date=March 8, 2013 |access-date=August 9, 2019}}

In August 2019, Noonan was mocked for writing a column on Donald Trump's support among Hispanic Americans which centered on a conversation she had with a Dominican friend who worked at the deli counter at her grocery store.{{cite web |last1=Noonan |first1=Peggy |title=America Is So in Play |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-is-so-in-play-1440715262 |website=The Wall Street Journal |date=August 27, 2015 |access-date=August 9, 2019}}{{cite web |last1=Reyes |first1=Paul A. |title=Noonan's new amigo |url=https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/252616-noonans-new-amigo |website=The Hill |date=September 4, 2015 |access-date=August 9, 2019}}{{cite web |last1=O'Connor |first1=Lydia |title=WSJ Columnist Says She Has Proof Latino Voters Actually Like Donald Trump |url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/peggy-noonan-donald-trump-latino-voters_n_55e0c14fe4b0aec9f35352f3 |website=HuffPost |date=August 28, 2015 |access-date=August 9, 2019}}{{cite web |last1=Pareene |first1=Alex |title=Hack List No. 8: Peggy Noonan |url=https://www.salon.com/2013/12/16/hack_list_no_8_peggy_noonan/ |website=Salon |date=December 17, 2013 |access-date=August 9, 2019}}{{cite web |last1=Benen |first1=Steve |author-link1=Steve Benen|title=The reliability of Peggy Noonan's friend |url=http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-reliability-peggy-noonans-friend |website=MSNBC |date=August 28, 2015 |access-date=August 9, 2019}}

Recurring themes in Noonan's books and columns include the decline of civility, social graces, religiosity, patriotism, bipartisanship and statesmanship in contemporary American politics and society, as well as enduring praise for past conservative political figures such as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. As a result, her writing is criticized for being overly nostalgic.Multiple sources:

• {{cite news |last1=Ryan |first1=Erin Gloria |title=Make Manhood Great Again? It Never Was. |url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/make-manhood-great-again-it-never-was |website=The Daily Beast |date=August 2017 |access-date=August 9, 2019}}
• {{cite web |last1=Haldeman |first1=Peter |title=Noonan in Pursuit of Herself: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-07-03-bk-11200-story.html |website=The Los Angeles Times |date=July 3, 1994 |access-date=August 9, 2019}}
• {{cite web |title=A Heart, a Cross and a Flag |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/peggy-noonan/a-heart-a-cross-and-a-flag/ |website=Kirkus Reviews |access-date=August 9, 2019}}
• {{cite book |title=The Time of our Lives by Peggy Noonan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=28ywbT1Lwd8C&q=noonan&pg=PA98 |website=Kirkus Reviews |access-date=August 9, 2019|isbn = 9781438946177|last1 = Sarno|first1 = John J.|date = June 17, 2008| publisher=AuthorHouse }}
• {{cite journal |last1=Manville |first1=Brook |title=Does Better Judgment Come With Age? |url=https://hbr.org/2010/08/does-better-judgment-come-with |journal=Harvard Business Review |date=August 24, 2010 |access-date=August 9, 2019}} In June 2019, after Noonan called on congressional Democrats to censure President Trump in the wake of the Mueller report, he attacked her on Twitter, calling her "simplistic" and claiming that she "is stuck in the past glory of Reagan".{{cite tweet |user=realDonaldTrump|number=1135247979617685504|date=June 2, 2019|title=Peggy Noonan, the simplistic writer for Trump Haters all, is stuck in the past glory of Reagan and has no idea what is happening with the Radical Left Democrats, or how vicious and desperate they are. Mueller had to correct his ridiculous statement, Peggy never understood it!}}{{cite web |last1=Halaschak |first1=Zachary |title=Trump blasts Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan as a 'simplistic writer for Trump Haters' |url=https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-blasts-wsj-columnist-peggy-noonan-as-a-simplistic-writer-for-trump-haters |website=The Washington Examiner |date=June 2, 2019 |access-date=August 9, 2019}} In June 2022, Trump issued a statement calling Noonan a "weak and frail RINO... who did much less for Ronald Reagan than she claims, and who actually said bad things about him and his ability to speak" after she wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Republican Party was "rejecting" Trump in the aftermath of the 2021 United States Capitol attack.{{cite news |last1=Kilander |first1=Gustaf |title=Trump lashes out over rumours Republicans are ditching him over Jan 6 |url=https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/trump-lashes-out-over-rumours-republicans-are-ditching-him-over-jan-6/ar-AAYV52l |access-date=28 June 2022 |work=The Independent |date=27 June 2022}}

{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?10932-1/what-revolution Booknotes interview with Noonan on What I Saw at the Revolution, February 18, 1990], C-SPAN| video2 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?101060-1/simply-speaking Presentation by Noonan on Simply Speaking, February 19, 1998], C-SPAN| video3 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?156358-1/the-case-hillary-clinton Presentation by Noonan on The Case Against Hillary Clinton, April 3, 2000], C-SPAN| video4 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?281616-5/patriotic-grace Washington Journal interview with Noonan on Patriotic Grace, October 6, 2008], C-SPAN| video5 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?400036-5/the-time-lives Presentation by Noonan on The Time of Our Lives, November 25, 2015], C-SPAN| video6 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?400036-15/open-phones-peggy-noonan Interview with Noonan on The Time of Our Lives, November 21, 2015], C-SPAN}}

• 1990: What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era ({{ISBN|0-8129-6989-8}})
• 1994: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness ({{ISBN|1-55850-509-1}})
• 1998: Simply Speaking: How to Communicate Your Ideas With Style, Substance, and Clarity ({{ISBN|0-7881-6775-8}}) (Published in paperback under the title On Speaking Well)
• 1999: Character Above All ({{ISBN|0-684-82709-3}}) (one chapter in an anthology)
• 2000: The Case Against Hillary Clinton ({{ISBN|0-06-039340-8}})
• 2001: When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan ({{ISBN|0-14-200168-6}})
• 2003: A Heart, A Cross And A Flag ({{ISBN|0-7432-5005-2}})
• 2005: John Paul The Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father ({{ISBN|0-670-03748-6}})
• 2008: Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now ({{ISBN|978-0-06-173582-0}})
• 2015: The Time of Our Lives: Collected Writings ({{ISBN|978-1-45-556313-5}})
• 2024: A Certain Idea of America: Selected Writings ({{ISBN|978-0593854778}})

{{reflist}}

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{{Commons category|Peggy Noonan}}

{{Portal|United States|Biography}}

• [http://peggynoonan.com/ Peggy Noonan] official website
• [https://achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/#interview Peggy Noonan Biography and Interview on American Academy of Achievement]
• [https://twitter.com/Peggynoonannyc Peggy Noonan] on Twitter
• [http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/archive/ Column archive] at The Wall Street Journal
• {{C-SPAN|12453}}
• [https://www.c-span.org/video/?168909-1/depth-peggy-noonan In Depth interview with Noonan, March 3, 2002]
• {{Charlie Rose view|2995}}
• {{IMDb name|1114834}}
• {{NYTtopic|people/n/peggy_noonan}}

{{PulitzerPrize Commentary 2001–2025}}

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Category:1950 births

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Category:20th-century American writers

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Category:Adelphi University alumni

Category:American columnists

Category:American people of Irish descent

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Category:Speechwriters for presidents of the United States

Category:Fairleigh Dickinson University alumni

Category:New York (state) Republicans

Category:Writers from Brooklyn

Category:Reagan administration personnel

Category:Rutherford High School (New Jersey) alumni

Category:Writers from Rutherford, New Jersey

Category:United States presidential advisors

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Category:Pulitzer Prize for Commentary winners

Category:People from Brooklyn Heights