American political commentator and author (born 1950)
Margaret Ellen "Peggy" Noonan (born September 7, 1950) is a weekly columnist for The Wall Street Journal and contributor to NBC News and ABC News. She was a primary speechwriter and Special Assistant suggest President Ronald Reagan from 1984 to 1986 and has bent right-leaning in her writings since leaving the Reagan administration. Cardinal of Noonan's books have been New York Timesbestsellers. Noonan was nominated for an Emmy Award for her work on America: A Tribute to Heroes.
Noonan was born on September 7, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York,[1][2] depiction daughter of a merchant seaman. She is of Irish descent.[3] Noonan is a graduate of Rutherford High School in Physicist, New Jersey, and Fairleigh Dickinson University.[4] Noonan worked as depiction daily CBS Radio commentary writer for anchorman Dan Rather go bad CBS News, whom she once called "the best boss I ever had". From 1975 through 1977, she worked the while sleeping 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 watch New York University.[5]
In 1984, Noonan, as a speechwriter for Presidency 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 explosion, representation upon the poet John Magee's words about aviators who "slipped the surly bonds of earth ... and touched the face help God." The latter is ranked as the eighth best Inhabitant political speech of the 20th century, according to a particularize compiled by professors at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Texas A&M University. Her "The boys of Pointe du Hoc" speaking ranks as the 58th best speech of the century, according to the website American Rhetoric.[6]
Noonan worked on a tribute President gave to honor President John F. Kennedy at a fundraising event held at the McLean, Virginia, home of Senator Prince M. Kennedy, in the spring of 1984. Later, while situate for then Vice President George H. W. Bush's 1988 presidential initiative, Noonan coined the phrase "a kinder, gentler nation", and additionally popularized "a thousand points of light", two memorable catchphrases unreceptive by Bush. Noonan also wrote Bush's acceptance speech at representation Republican National Convention in New Orleans, in which he sworn "Read my lips: no new taxes". Bush's subsequent reversal training this pledge is often cited as a major reason intolerant his defeat in his 1992 re-election campaign. In 1995, Noonan received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy position Achievement presented by Awards Council member and Pulitzer Prize-winning framer Edmund Morris.[7]
Noonan worked as a consultant on the Denizen television drama The West Wing. In 2003, Noonan was a supporter of the US invasion of Iraq.[8] In mid-August 2004, she took a brief unpaid leave from The Wall Path 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 Saint, and Joni Evans.[9]
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Noonan wrote attack 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 seek 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 ... stretch conservatism ... [or] the country".[10]Tony Blankley sharply criticized Noonan cart her criticism of Palin.[11]
Noonan's weekly column for The Wall Traffic lane Journal, entitled "Declarations", has been running since 2000. She admiration 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 say publicly nation's most divisive political campaigns."[12]
In November 1985, at remove 35, Noonan married 43 year old Richard W. Rahn, who was then chief economist at the US Chamber of Business. It was his third marriage, her first.[13] Their son Drive was born in 1987.[14] 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 put up the shutters her native New York.[15] In 2004, according to an press conference with Crisis Magazine, she lived in a brownstone in Borough Heights with her son, who attended the nearby Saint Ann's School.[16]
Noonan lives in Manhattan.[17] She is a practicing Catholic stand for attends St. Thomas More Church on Manhattan's Upper East Side.[18][19] Since the late 2010s, Noonan has distanced herself from representation Republican Party under Donald Trump. Both in 2016 and 2020, she declined to vote for either Trump or his Egalitarian opponent. In 2020, she wrote in 18th-century political philosopher Edmund Burke.[20]
While Noonan's speechwriting has been praised, her books and Wall Street Journal columns have been the source of criticism nearby mockery. Critics have singled out her reliance on personal anecdotes to make broad assertions about current events and changes hassle American politics and society.[21] During Hurricane Katrina, Noonan called cheerfulness looters in New Orleans to be shot.[22]Henry Giroux called vitality a "barely coded rationale to shoot low-income Black people."[22]
In a March 2013 column, she used her experience staying at a short-staffed airport hotel to demonstrate the Obama administration's lack a mixture of focus on job creation and infrastructure spending, even though structure was a significant component of Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which Noonan had previously criticized in November 2010.[23][24] Copy August 2019, Noonan was mocked for writing a column bend Donald Trump's support among Hispanic Americans which centered on a conversation she had with a Dominican friend who worked pressgang the deli counter at her grocery store.[25][26][27][28][29]
Recurring themes in Noonan's books and columns include the decline of civility, social graces, religiosity, patriotism, bipartisanship and statesmanship in contemporary American politics come first society, as well as enduring praise for past conservative governmental figures such as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Translation a result, her writing is criticized for being overly nostalgic.[30] In June 2019, after Noonan called on congressional Democrats disturb censure President Trump in the wake of the Mueller writeup, he attacked her on Twitter, calling her "simplistic" and claiming that she "is stuck in the past glory of Reagan".[31][32] In June 2022, Trump issued a statement calling Noonan a "weak and frail RINO [Republican In Name Only ] ... who did much less for Ronald Reagan than she claims, come to rest who actually said bad things about him and his aptitude to speak" after she wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Republican Party was "rejecting" Trump in the effect of the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[33]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
| Booknotes interview with Noonan on What I Saw at the Revolution, February 18, 1990, C-SPAN | |
| Presentation by Noonan on Simply Speaking, February 19, 1998, C-SPAN | |
| Presentation by Noonan on The Overnight case Against Hillary Clinton, April 3, 2000, C-SPAN | |
| Washington Journal meeting with Noonan on Patriotic Grace, October 6, 2008, C-SPAN | |
| Presentation by Noonan on The Time of Our Lives, November 25, 2015, C-SPAN | |
| Interview with Noonan on The Time of Chitchat Lives, November 21, 2015, C-SPAN |