It's the search for truth that impels scientists, doctors, philosophers, and even writers.
Journalist and Presidential Speechwriter
Margaret Ellen Noonan was born in Brooklyn, New York to a working-class family of Irish descent. Peggy, as she was known from an early age, was one of seven children. Her father was a furniture salesman, and with so many children to raise, the family budget allowed for few luxuries. One pleasure young Peggy could afford was reading. Fiction and poetry fed her love of language and narrative, and she won praise from her teachers for her first efforts at writing verse.
Like many Irish American families, the Noonans took special pride in the election of John F. Kennedy as President of the United States. Young Peggy followed the news closely, and sometimes stayed up late into the night reading. The Noonan family moved more than once when Peggy was growing up, first to Massapequa, Long Island, then to Rutherford, New Jersey, where she graduated from Rutherford High School. She stayed in Rutherford to work her way through Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she majored in English literature.
By the time she entered college, many of her fellow students were protesting against America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Noonan believed that the war was an essential component of America’s struggle against communism, a commitment initiated by President Kennedy. As more and more of her contemporaries moved farther away from the values she had grown up with, she looked to more conservative thinkers and leaders for inspiration.
In 1975, she found work writing news on the overnight shift at WEEI Radio in Boston. She rose quickly to become the editorial and public affairs director. In 1978 and 1979 she taught as an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University. In 1981, she was hired by CBS Radio to write daily commentary for the network’s leading personality, Dan Rather. For the next three years she wrote Rather’s daily radio broadcast, and they worked well together, although their views on many issues differed. Peggy Noonan had become an enthusiastic supporter of the new president, Ronald Reagan, and wanted more than anything to work in his administration. Through an editor at the conservative journalNational Review, she was introduced to the head of the White House speechwriting department, and early in 1984 she went to work in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.
At first she was assigned to write speeches for minor occasions for both the President and First Lady, and went four months without ever meeting the President himself. The turning point came when she wrote remarks for the President to deliver at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. The remarks were so well received that after she met the President for the first time on his return from Europe, he singled her out for praise. In his second term, she was named a special assistant to the president, and he called on her to prepare some of his most important speeches. One of her most memorable assignments came when she composed the remarks the President delivered after the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986. He had been scheduled to deliver the annual State of the Union message to Congress that evening. Instead, he spoke to the nation from the Oval Office. The speech has been voted one of the ten best American political speeches of the 20th century. Noonan’s closing words quoted the World War II-era poem “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘”slipped the surly bonds of Earth” to “touch the face of God.”
As President Reagan’s second term came to an end, Noonan left the White House to write for the presidential campaign of Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush. She was the principal writer for candidate Bush’s speech at the 1988 Republican convention. Phrases from that speech, “a kinder, gentler nation,” and “a thousand points of light,” entered the language of American politics for many years. The speech was widely credited with helping to secure Bush’s election as the 41st president that November.
After Bush’s victory, Noonan wrote President Reagan’s farewell address to the nation. After Bush’s inauguration, she decided to leave speechwriting to embark on an independent writing career. While working in the White House, Noonan had met Richard Rahn, Chief Economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The two were married in 1985, and their son, Will, was born two years later, but in 1989 the marriage ended, and she and her son moved back to New York, where she had spent most of her life.
Noonan shared her experience of the Reagan administration in a bestselling memoir,What I Saw at the Revolution, published in 1990. She followed it in 1994 withLife, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, a collection of personal reflections on motherhood, the contemporary political scene and her own search for a deeper experience of her Christian faith. In her bookSimply Speaking, she shared her expertise in speechwriting and public speaking. She took a look back at the life and presidency of her former boss, President Ronald Reagan, in the biographyWhen Character Was King. Since 2000, Noonan has written a weekly column, “Declarations,” for theWall Street Journal. Her columns from the year following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were collected in the volumeA Heart, a Cross and a Flag.
Noonan took a leave from her duties at theWall Street Journal to participate in President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign. After the election, she returned to her writing, publishing a book on Pope John Paul II and his influence on her own spiritual journey. In 2015, she published a comprehensive collection of her columns and essays,The Time of Our Lives.
In 2017, Peggy Noonan received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign, particularly her insight into the populist appeal of Donald Trump and the significance of his rise to leadership of the Republican Party and election to the presidency.
In addition to her books and newspaper column, Noonan is a highly visible participant in the national conversation through her regular appearances on the Sunday morning programs,This Week andMeet the Press.
- Career
- Date of Birth
- September 7, 1950
As speechwriter to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Peggy Noonan supplied some of the most memorable phrases of a dramatic political era. A working-class girl from Brooklyn who worked her way through college waiting tables and clerking in an insurance office, she joined the Reagan White House after an early career in news radio.
Noonan crafted President Reagan’s inspiring remarks on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, and his moving address after the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger, frequently cited as one of the best American political speeches of the 20th century. At the 1988 Republican convention, George H.W. Bush accepted his party’s nomination, and perhaps secured his election as president, with a breakthrough speech, drafted by Noonan, calling for a “kinder gentler nation,” and saluting America’s community volunteer organizations as “a thousand points of light.”
Since leaving the White House, Peggy Noonan has become a bestselling author, an influential newspaper columnist, and a leading light of the Sunday morning talk shows. Her books, including What I Saw at the Revolution,When Character Was King andThe Time of Our Lives, have topped the nonfiction bestseller lists, and no political season is complete without her wise and witty input. In her books, her weekly column inThe Wall Street Journal, and her regular television appearances, Peggy Noonan sounds a clear consistent note, affirming her belief in the enduring virtues of faith and patriotism, and the paramount importance of character in political leadership.
Journalist and Presidential Speechwriter
What was the most exciting moment in your career so far?
Peggy Noonan: Getting hired to work in the White House of Ronald Reagan was probably the most exciting day of my life, when I knew I was going to be hired there. I mean, I was a young woman, and I had a sense of what I still think of, and oddly enough, as appropriate awe, towards the White House and what happens there and who works there. That I was extremely lucky to be one of a few thousand Americans in U.S. history who actually worked in the White House. I adored Ronald Reagan. And I was going to — two wonderful things were going to happen for me. One, I was going to work in the White House for a president. The other was the president was Reagan and I adored him. So I’ve had many exciting moments in my life. I mean, when my first book went on theNew York Times bestseller list was nice, but nothing compares to finding out I was going to work for the White House — work in the White House for Ronald Reagan.
You mentioned the word “awe” and “appropriate awe,” yet you of all people have been such an insider, actually putting words in presidents’ mouths. Were you able to keep that sense of awe and veneration for this office and what it means?
Peggy Noonan: Yeah, I have a very split view about the political figures in power in Washington. One is that I’m always impressed when I’m talking to the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, or the Vice President of the United States, the Speaker of the House, or the President of the United States. These are marvelous jobs and they are often — not always — but often held by men trying very hard to do them well. And I have a certain — I will never stop being impressed by the White House itself to this day. I mean, I’ve been in the Clinton White House three or four times. I can’t stop being impressed just by the play of light on the walls, and by the art, and by the very air of the place, quite literally, the smell of the flowers in there, and the way things sound with the high ceilings and everything. So I still have this awe, and yet at the same time I have a sharper sense than ever that they are just people in there. They are people who get headaches and who do stupid things and sometimes unethical things and sometimes venal things. So I don’t know if that’s a balanced view or a schizophrenic view. You know, it’s one or the other. It’s probably schizophrenic!
What does the American Dream mean to you?
Peggy Noonan: The American Dream to me means anyone can come from anywhere and rise to any position in the United States of America. And the other part — it’s not quite the American Dream, but it’s something I think of more and more of these days when I think about America. One of the Founding Fathers, and I don’t remember who, said, “America will be great as long as she is good.” And of course, implicitly, she will no longer be great when she is no longer good. And I wonder always, “Are we still good?” i.e. are we still great? I wonder because we’ve all seen our country change in the past 30 years. I don’t know if we’re still — quote — good — unquote.
What would make us better?
Peggy Noonan: More honesty, less cant. I think I’m pronouncing the word correctly: C-A-N-T, no apostrophe. A marvelous old English word meaning drivel, garbage, disingenuous bull, you know. More honesty, less cant. Beating back our government would help us a bit, I think. I think the government is too big, too powerful, takes too much from us, pushes us around too much. And as a people, I keep wondering if — you know, I was born in 1950 and still, in the middle of this century, people born when I was still just imbibed a sense — partly through school, partly through books, partly through modern entertainment, through movies, through TV — that it was a good thing to be American, and why it was a good thing, and what America was about, what the Constitution was about, what our history was about. I just keep wondering if we communicate that so well to our kids. And if we don’t communicate that so well to our kids, then they’re not growing up with the same love for America, or reasons to love America, that we grew up with. Well, what are the implications of that? If they don’t love and honor this thing, they won’t try to protect this thing. And what if they don’t try to protect this thing? Then we could lose this thing.
And here we are in the area where our institutions of self- government first took shape.
Peggy Noonan: Yeah, in Williamsburg. Tom Clancy pointed that out last night. It happened here, between Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown. So here we are in the very cradle. But I worry about America these days. I don’t mean it’s weak. It’s not. And I don’t mean it’s bad. It’s not. But I worry about her in a way that I didn’t used to, say 25 years ago. And that’s not just because I’m older and worry more.
When did you first know that you loved to write? What brought that about?
Peggy Noonan: When I was in the third grade, my teacher, Miss Brown, assigned us all, all of the kids in the class, about 30 kids, to write a poem about Thanksgiving. And I just threw myself into this poem on Thanksgiving. I think I worked on it, if I remember right, for a few days. Then we all handed our poems in and Miss Brown was so impressed by my poem on Thanksgiving that she read it to the entire class. Then she told them I had written it, and when she told them I had written it, I thought, “Well, I’m a writer. It’s clear I’m a writer. She thinks I’m a writer. I enjoyed writing the poem, I must be a writer.” So I’m quite serious — I mean, everybody sort of arbitrarily picks a point where they understood they were going to be an astronaut or a roller skater or a writer. I suppose that is my arbitrary point, but it is the one that I think of first.
Do you still have the poem?
Peggy Noonan: No, I wish I did. But, you know, I thought it was good too. I can remember thinking, “This is good stuff.” [Laughs] I was about eight or nine.
What was it about putting words together that you enjoyed so much?
Peggy Noonan: Oh, it’s like one of the scientists, one of the Nobel Prize winners on a panel today said — I think it was Edward Teller — said, “It is my job to search for the truth.” I always think that’s what writers think. They always think that if they get the really perfect word, that really perfectly conveys what the breakfast roll looked like, that they’ve captured a truth about reality at that moment. So I think it’s the same. It’s actually that old cliché, the search for truth, that impels scientists, doctors, philosophers, and even writers.
What person was particularly inspirational to you as a child?
Peggy Noonan: I had a tendency when I was a kid to be more impressed with people that I saw on television than people that I saw immediately around me, you know. The first political figure who made a big impression on me was John F. Kennedy. I had just turned ten when he was elected president, and of course, in my family we were all for the Kennedys because we were Irish Catholic too. I mean, it was almost that simple, you know. And of course, we were Democrats. If you’re Irish Catholic from Brooklyn, of course you were a Democrat. What else would you be? But we just loved the Kennedys. And then after John Kennedy was shot, when he was eulogized so often and became such a national hero, I think I sort of absorbed a sense of what you want to do and how you want to live and who you want to be from the many eulogies about him and essays about him and even books about him, like Vance Bourjaily’sThe Man Who Knew Kennedy. So I can remember John F. Kennedy made a great impression on me when I was a kid.
You must have been quite a reader.
Peggy Noonan: Yeah, I was.
What books stand out in your mind from your youth?
Peggy Noonan: I was trying to think of that today when I was on the panel. They were asking and I sort of went blank. As I said, I was a great reader of biographies. I am a person — I actually love reality. I love stories that — when a movie begins with the words, “This is a true story,” immediately I am more interested than a made-up story. So I was very drawn to history. I was very drawn to biography. I’m just drawn to what actually happened. And that was true of me even when I was a kid. Although when I was a romantic teenager, and in my early 20s, I went through a real novel-reading time: Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. And later Edith Wharton and Walker Percy, who actually — whose work was so great, he actually became a hero to me when I was in my 30s.
I readThe Moviegoer when I was a young woman, and it made such a strong impression on me that I had to put it down when I was done and go back to it two years later and read it again and see, “Is this wonderful?” Ultimately, I thought it was probably the great American novel of the latter part of the 20th century. And every now and then life turns gratifying. When I got to the Reagan White House, and we got, as special assistants to the president, to nominate people for the Medal of Freedom, I was so honored that I got to — I spent a week writing an essay telling Ronald Reagan why he should pick Walker Percy for the Medal of Freedom and honor him in the White House of our great nation. I think this was in 1984. But they gave it to Frank Sinatra instead. And then Walker Percy died about a year or two years later and I’m still upset that he never got the Medal of Freedom. But anyway, it was fun to have loved something so much and then to have told the President about it, and to tell him, “Do something for this man. He’s a great man.”
Looking ahead to a new millennium, what are you going to be up to? What do you want for yourself?
Peggy Noonan: I have two very disparate dreams right now. I’m not sure which road I’m going to go down and they are absolutely split. One is that all of my life I have wanted to write scripts. I wanted to write them for movies and for television, for like Hallmark Hall of Fame. Always wanted to do that. And so I think, “You know what? I happen to be finishing a book right now and it’ll be done in July.” But I think, “As soon as that’s done and then I sell it, then I can go down that road.” And then I think, “No, the political you is coming out.” I think I want to do some more television and do more public issue stuff, you know, and do documentaries and be on news shows and have some say in the — have some presence in the arena, you know. And these are two opposite desires. I don’t see me being able to get them together, because one is sort of a writer’s life, sitting at home, being your neurotic writer self and trying to pull good stuff out of yourself, and the other is being a sort of outer person, and more gregarious, extroverted. The other involved extroverting. And for me, that’s kind of — not only emotionally tiring, but physically tiring, extroverting all the time. The nice thing about staying home and writing is I don’t have to talk to anybody. Oh, that sounds horrible. But in a way, I just sort of talk to the PC. It’s a little bit less exhausting in a way than extroverting in a way. So anyway, so I see these as two different personae.
A little bit of a split personality.
Peggy Noonan: Hey, is that it? [Laughs] I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’ve become a very serious Christian in the past few years, so now this is very easy for me because I just get to pray about it. It’s like, “God, I just want to do what you want me to do. So would you please lead me in that direction.” So sooner or later I’ll be led in that direction.
Just one more question. What advice would you give a kid who wants to write?
Peggy Noonan: There is no advice to give a kid. I mean, I was thinking of making some jokes. Look, there’s no advice. I’ll tell you what’s true. If that kid is a writer, he or she is going to wind up being a writer. That’s how easy this is. They will not become a writer if they really aren’t a writer. If, in fact, they really have the impulses of a plumber, or if, in fact, they really have the impulses of a wonderful portrait painter and that is their talent, if that’s their talent, they’ll actually wind up painting portraits. They won’t wind up writing. So if you’re a writer, you write. And if you’re a novelist, you write novels. This is how easy it is. The only technical advice I would give is this, and I spoke of it today in the symposium. And I feel this very strongly. Between the ages of roughly 15 and 25 or 30, your brain, your physical brain is literally — it’s a first-rate organ, and it’s porous and it holds onto things. It’s like a big dry sponge and information and literature is warmth and it just sucks it in and it holds it. I am very lucky that between the ages of 15 and roughly 30, I was reading wonderful things. I was in love with poetry, so I read a lot of American poetry and a lot of English poetry. I was in love with plays and I read a lot of plays. I was in love with history and with biography. Good stuff went into my brain and I have it to this day. And I think sometimes, boy, you know, I can quote that Robert Frost poem at length until my son says, “Stop!”
Which one is that?
Peggy Noonan: Oh, there’s a bunch of them. “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
Can you remember that one now?
Peggy Noonan: I think so.
Whose woods these are, I think I know.
His house is in the village though.
He will not mind me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
The little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near.
Between the woods and frozen lake
This darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
That was beautiful. Thank you.
Peggy Noonan: We both just forgot we were in an interview. How lucky for us!
Thank you again.
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