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Peggy Noonan

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Noonan meeting with President Ronald Reagan in the White House Oval Office, 1988

Peggy Noonan (born Margaret Ellen Noonan on September 7, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American author of seven books on politics, religion, and culture, a weekly columnist for The Wall Street Journal, and was a primary speech writer and Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan. She is considered a political conservative.

She is a graduate of Rutherford High School in Rutherford, New Jersey, and Fairleigh Dickinson University.[1]

Five of Noonan's books have been New York Times bestsellers. Noonan is a Trustee of the Manhattan Institute. She has been awarded honorary doctorates from Miami University, St. John Fisher College, her alma mater Fairleigh Dickinson University, Adelphi College, and Saint Francis College. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her work on America: A Tribute to Heroes.

Noonan frequently cites the political figures she admires, including Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, and Edmund Burke.

Personal

Noonan married Richard W. Rahn, who was then chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in 1985. They lived in Great Falls, Virginia. Their son was born in 1987.[2]

Noonan and her husband were divorced after five years of marriage. In 1989 she returned with her son to her native New York. 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 (New York City). [3]

Noonan currently lives in New York City.[4]

Famous speeches

In 1984, Noonan, as a speechwriter for President Reagan, authored his "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 explosion, drawing upon the poet John Magee's famous words about aviators who "slipped the surly bonds of earth... and touched the face of God." She worked too on a tribute Reagan gave to honor 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, 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 the speech in which Bush pledged: "Read my lips: no new taxes" during his 1988 presidential nomination acceptance speech in New Orleans (Bush's subsequent reversal of this pledge is often cited as a reason for his defeat in his 1992 re-election campaign).

Career

Before the Reagan years, 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.

She has worked as a contributor on the American television drama, The West Wing.

In mid-August 2004, Noonan took a brief, unpaid leave from the Wall Street Journal to campaign for George W. Bush's re-election. After the election, she penned an opinion article celebrating Bush's victory, in terms that would later prove ironic; mocking one of the Democrats' only electoral gains---Barack Obama taking the Illinois Senate seat vacated by Peter Fitzgerald---she wrote: "I do not know what the Democratic Party spent, in toto, on the 2004 election, but what they seem to have gotten for it is Barack Obama. Let us savor."[5] Four years later, Obama won the presidency atop a broad Democratic electoral victory.

Noonan became increasingly critical of the Bush administration after Bush's inaugural address in January 2005.[6][7]

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" and Noonan concluded that Palin's candidacy marked a "vulgarization in American Politics" that is "no good... for conservatism... [or] the country."[8]

Noonan is now an author, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, and a commentator on news shows. She is a member of the Manhattan Institute's board of trustees, and one of the founding members, along with Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Mary Wells Lawrence and Joni Evans of wowOwow.com, a new website for women to talk culture, politics and gossip.

Controversy

Noonan has drawn criticism for her comments on torture on ABC’s This Week. When discussing the release of memos from the Bush Administration justifying what some have called torture, Noonan said, "Sometimes in life you just want to keep walking", and, "Some of life has to be mysterious."[9][10]

Books

  • 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)
  • 1999: On Speaking Well (ISBN 0-06-098740-5) (A Paperback edition of "Simply Speaking")
  • 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 0-061-73582-0)

References

  1. ^ About Rutherford High School, 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."
  2. ^ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,967310,00.html Hugh Sidey, "The Presidencey: Of Poets and Word Processors, Time (magazine), May 2, 1988.
  3. ^ http://www.crisismagazine.com/september2004/morse.htm Anne Morse, "Meeting Peggy Noonan," Crisis Magazine, September, 2004.
  4. ^ http://tobaccodocuments.org/nysa_ti_s3/TI46320030.html?zoom=750&ocr_position=above_foramatted&start_page=41 Margaret Rahn in Busch/Quayle (sic) Alumni Directory.
  5. ^ http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110005844 Peggy Noonan, "So Much to Savor" The Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2004.
  6. ^ http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110006184 Peggy Noonan, "Way Too Much God," The Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2005.
  7. ^ http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110010326 Peggy Noonan, "American Grit: We can't fire the president right now, so we're waiting it out," The Wall Street Journal, July 13, 2007.
  8. ^ "Palin's Failin'". Wall Street Journal. October 17, 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-18.
  9. ^ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/torture-just-walk-on-by/
  10. ^ http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2009/04/20/pundits-whitewash-torture/
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