Thursday night, I drove to see conservative
columnist Peggy Noonan, who has been
on a tour promoting her collection of speeches and articles over the last 30
years, The Time of Our Lives. At Books and Greetings, a bookstore in Northern New Jersey, however, her appearance had something like the feeling of a welcome-home party: through much of her youth, she had grown up in Rutherford; she graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University in the early 1970s; and at least several well-wishers from those days (including a brother) were in the audience.
I arrived about 15 minutes late for the start of her
talk before the book-signing. All the seats were taken up front, and, among people waiting for her to sign their books, I was #56. I stood halfway in the back of the store, craning my neck and listening hard as she spoke.
I do not agree with all of Noonan’s positions;
indeed, unlike many in the audience, I don’t think I agree with even half of
them. But I found her account of working in the Reagan Administration, What I Saw at the Revolution, a political memoir of uncommon wit and verve,
and her “Declarations” column is the first thing I turn to in each Saturday
edition of The Wall Street Journal.
Unlike much of the conservative wing of the
Republican Party, her criticism of Barack Obama is informed by sincere,
thoughtful disagreement over his philosophy of government rather than by
conspiratorial nonsense about what he is not, and her best work reflects her
firsthand knowledge of the ideals and
compromises made by those in government.
In the image accompanying this post, she is signing
my copy of The Time of Our Lives and another book, On Speaking Well: How to Give a Speech With Style, Substance, and Clarity.
(As someone whose work over
the years has occasionally required writing speeches, I was intrigued by the
latter—and, indeed, it looks as if my curiosity has paid off; after I got home,
I marveled at her astute, line-by-line reading of Earl Charles Spencer’s eulogy for
his sister, Princess Diana, and why Ms. Noonan felt, eight years into the
decade, that it might be “so far the only great speech of the 1990s.”)
Before signing books for the eager throng assembled,
Ms. Noonan answered a variety of questions from the audience, including:
*What was it
like to work for Ronald Reagan? (She felt “lucky” to have her speeches
delivered by a man who had used his voice professionally, in acting and in
politics, for 40 years, and that she had never felt that “a good man can also
be a great man” until she worked for him.)
*Who were her
literary influences? (Like mine, American novelists of the Twenties and
Forties—notably Hemingway—and, a rediscovery of hers in recent years, the poet
Robert Frost.)
*What did she
think of Donald Trump? (She, like so many others, did not think he would
enter the race, but did not dismiss his chances after his announcement because
he had “hit a nerve on illegal immigration” with GOP primary voters. Still, she noted, his candidacy was not without dangers: “People ask me, ‘Can he win the nomination?’
Yes, he can. Or they’ll ask, ‘Can he split the party?’ Yes, he can.”)
Many progressive readers (including a number of
those who read this blog) may wonder why I admire a writer with whom I
often disagree with so profoundly. It’s simple, really: Ms. Noonan writes like
an angel, and, in my view, that forgives a lot.
Not that, when you get down to it, she has anything to be forgiven for. In a time of angry polarization, Ms. Noonan writes with civility, a spirit that should be returned in kind. As Thomas Jefferson noted in his first Inaugural Address: “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.”
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