Know Your Right-Wing Speakers: Peggy Noonan
By Tim Fernholz, Georgetown University
Tuesday July 11, 2006
Conservative rhetoric of the 1980s was something to hear, wrapping the harsh policies of conservative leaders in the warm glow of pleasant emotion with phrases such as: "a thousand points of light," and “slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God." The woman behind many of these fine words was Peggy Noonan, a longtime speechwriter for former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and a speechwriter for George W. Bush during his 2004 campaign. Noonan, today a regular columnist for The Wall Street Journal and an author, exemplifies the conservative tradition of emphasizing a president’s personal character over the content of his policies – often to a laughable extent – and the continuing obsession with all things Reagan. But more importantly, she demonstrates the ability of conservatives to convince voters to ignore their economic interests in choosing leaders who espouse their cultural values, or at least some of their cultural values.
When Noonan was born in Brooklyn in 1950, she joined the first generation to be swept up in the emerging conservative movement that began to swell after William F. Buckley’s National Review was founded in 1955. Describing the magazine in an anniversary remembrance, she wrote " You’re a kid and it’s the Sixties or Seventies and you’re starting to have some thoughts that are at odds with what you’ve been taught nice people think. You start to wonder if taxes aren’t too high; you start to rethink the idea that gun control may be the answer; you start to wonder if people aren’t being burdened by the demands, rather than assisted by the benefits, of the federal government. …[National Review] spoke to me. It sang to me."
Noonan began her career in radio journalism, working for stations in Boston and New York, worked briefly as a journalism professor at New York University before settling at CBS, where she was a producer and writer for Dan Rather’s radio show, who she bizarrely equates with Nixon as a good man forced off the right path by the liberal media establishment, and a writer of television specials. But her political career began in 1984, when she was hired as a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan. She would make a career of being a political writer, and spreading the Reagan gospel, for the next few decades.
It was in Reagan’s 1984 landslide – winning every state but one and the District of Columbia, and almost 60 percent of the total popular vote – that converted "Reagan Democrats" (typically white, Southern, blue collar, and Catholic voters) to vote for more conservative candidates. They were swayed by social issues. His conservative presidency, with its deregulation, supply-side economics, Iran-Contra hi-jinks and Star Wars boondoggles, was gilded by the rhetoric that led Reagan, well-known for his sunny optimism, to be dubbed "the Great Communicator."
Noonan was part of the Great Communicator’s communications staff. She wrote some of his most famous speeches, including the stirring tribute to the heroes of World War II delivered on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, describing the valor of the "boys of Pointe du Hoc" and the speech on the day of the Challenger disaster in 1986, when he said "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." It was Reagan’s stirring rhetoric – as much, if not more than, the "accomplishments " of his presidency – that created his legacy among today’s conservatives.
It is a legacy that Noonan buys into with pleasure, and success. The author of a memoir, "What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era," of her time in Reagan’s White House. Described by Publisher’s Weekly as "a reverential portrait of ex-president Reagan …that at times borders on embarrassing, school-girlish adulation," Noonan describes Reagan "probably the sweetest, most innocent man ever to serve in the Oval Office." She also wrote two biographies of the man. Clearly, her Reagan love can’t be beat. That is, unless you’re familiar with her adoration for another man: George W. Bush – more on this later.
Noonan served as the chief speechwriter for the George H. W. Bush’s 1988 campaign, penning the "thousand points of light" phrase that helped win him the Presidency and the "no new taxes" line that would eventually contribute to his second-term loss, before beginning to write under her own byline. Throughout the 1990s she wrote books and articles talking about her faith, single motherhood and criticizing then-President Bill Clinton (she predicted he would only last one term).
But it is in her Wall Street Journal column that Noonan reaches her full potential. Full of unsourced anecdotes, angels, imaginary quotes and ad hominem attacks, it’s your go-to place for defenses of Tom Delay or Ken Lay, and, of course, full-on worship of those tax-cutting, family-loving conservative politicians.
It was when she began writing about George W. Bush in 2000 that she really fell in love. She saw Bush as "transparently a good person, a genuine fellow who isn’t hidden or crafty or sneaky or mean, a person of appropriate modesty. …respectful, moderate, commonsensical, courteous …a modest man of faith …[possessing] a sharp and intelligent instinct, an inner shrewdness." While she didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about the future president’s policies, she does (as Jonathon Chait points out) contribute to a culture where politics is about people, not ideas – and where politicians aren’t people who disagree, they are either good guys (Bush, Reagan) or bad guys (Clinton). Unfortunately for the president, he has not lived up to Reagan’s legacy quite as much as Noonan hoped, so now he receives gentle criticism from time to time.
Noonan, a Roman Catholic, opposes reproductive freedom for women on those grounds, but that doesn’t stop her from advocating the death penalty. Noonan also has a tendency to engage in some fun pre-enlightenment sophistry: ignoring empiricism. Noonan confesses from time to time that she is always on the look out for facts that fit her ideas – not, as progressives might, changing our ideas to fit the facts. For example, in a column on gun control, she writes, “it is very nice, when traveling, to see your beliefs and assumptions statistically borne out.” (They weren’t, by the by).
Twice a week Noonan masks conservatism in a velvet glove, trying to make liberals seem outdated and out-valued. As a writer, her schlock skills are admirable. As a pundit, her ideas are deplorable. If Noonan saw that a president’s rhetoric and private actions are secondary to ideas and accomplishments, perhaps her talents wouldn’t be so woefully wasted.
Noonan on…
Watergate’s Deep Throat: “What [Mark] Felt helped produce was a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time. Nixon’s ruin led to a cascade of catastrophic events – the crude and humiliating abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, the rise of a monster named Pol Pot, and millions – millions – killed in his genocide. ...Is it terrible when an American president lies and surrounds himself by dirty tricksters? Yes, it is. How about the butchering of children in the South China Sea. Is that worse? Yes. Infinitely, unforgettably and forever.”
The Da Vinci Code: "I do not understand the thinking of a studio that would make, for the amusement of a nation 85% to 90% of whose people identify themselves as Christian, a major movie aimed at attacking the central tenets of that faith, and insulting as poor fools its gulled adherents."
Illustration: August J. Pollak
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Comments
Isn’t it a little harsh to describe an eloquent speech commemorating the death of the Challenger astronauts (and the accompanying schoolteacher) as mere cover for “harsh policies of conservative leaders”? I’m not meaning to ignore the nastiness behind Peggy Noonan’s lovely obsfuscation, but in the introductory paragraph to this piece, I think if you had tried a little harder, you could have found a good example of Noonan shielding a Reagan-era evil behind purple prose. And not, you know, claiming a very touching speech for a frightful tragedy is a good example of, as was previously mentioned, pretty cover for nasty conservative policies.
— Andrew Bowen - Jul 14, 01:13 PM - #I’m kind of confused about why Noonan’s take on “The Da Vinci Code” would be included in this article. “The Da Vinci Code” has nothing to do with politics, but rather respect for or insult toward a major religion.
” – not, as progressives might, changing our ideas to fit the facts.”
Please point me to a major columnist or politician who, after identifying themselves as a progressive, changed their mind about something, and admitted to it publicly.
I changed my mind about the death penalty after much careful thought and consideration about what being pro-life really means, but I am yet to meet or hear of a progressive who has changed their mind on abortion, given the increasing amounts of scientific data showing fetal heart beats, brain waves, and sensations of pain, not to mention the unique set of DNA that the baby in the womb possesses.
I’d like a list, please – that’s all I ask.
— Orthodoxy - Jul 14, 02:53 PM - #To the one that is worried about “increasing amounts of scientific data showing fetal heart beats”, where did you get this so called scientific fact. It is just not true. Wake up, you don’t need to believe everything put out by the religious extremists.
— Paige McAdoo - Jul 14, 07:37 PM - #I wish we used more moderate tones when discussing the Right, and not just attacking them.
Noonan has a right to her opinion, even if we disagree.
I howver don’t connect Reagan/Gingrich Conservatism with the Conservatives of today. It was a different time with different ideas. :)
— Michael Radtke - Jul 15, 07:40 AM - #“as progressives might, changing our ideas to fit the facts”
That is hilarious.
— guy in the veal calf office - Sep 7, 05:17 PM - #