solution and i think he appreciated that. he had a leadership camp every year that he would host for new leaders in the state, that he thought had potential to serve and he did invite me to that one year. and i went. it was in the black hills for a weekend and he brought in speakers and we spent time together talking about policy and what it's like to run for office. it was interesting to me because i never once considered becoming a democrat. i think maybe he probably hoped i would. but, boy, for years after that, even when i ran for congress, i had a lot of republicans who questioned if i was truly a republican just because i had attended that leadership camp that tom daschle had hosted. it was surprised by how they felt like that tainted my krep credentials to even be a republican, that i would go and spend time with democrats. announcer: and the full program is available to watch online at booktv.org.

>> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on sundays, book tv bringsou the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more. including buckeye broadband. buckeye broadband. along with the television companies, supports c-span2 as a public service. >> and now on book tv, more television for serious readers. ♪

peter: >> peggy noonan's newest book is called "a certain idea of america." how did you choose what to put in? peggy: i went through just more than 400 columns that i'd written over the past few years. and i and an editor started to go through them and the ones we picked were the ones that were most fun and most alive and we thought, we assumed there would be a lot of political columns and there are certainly political columns but actually

we found ourselves most interested in history and issues of history and culture. we were most interested in fun and liveliness and when i said something like, i loved writing that, she'd say, it's in. when she'd say, i really loved that one, i'd look and i'd think, that's in. so i had the most fun and she loved it so we put it together. peter: would it be easy to write a weekly column about donald trump? peggy: about only donald trump? no. because you would repeat yourself a lot. you know? trump is an interesting and unique political figure. he presents himse in certain ways, you can describe them, you can guess at things, but trump is trump. and once you've sort of written about him, then you delve into

repetition. now, repetition is not the worst thing. when you think a point is important, repeat it and repeat it again. don't be embarrassed to. if you think it must be underlined. not all the same people are reading you every week so sometimes you repeat something, you're talking to new folks. but don't repeat yourself endlessly. do not become borish. you know? you must lay off on your obsessions sometimes. peter: i picked out a couple of quotes about donald trump from your columns. donald trump is binding himself down with thick choreds refer to cal inadequacy. he's a nut and you know he's a nut. i don't like the s.o.b. i think him a bad man who will cause and bungle crises almost from day one. are you a so-called never-trumper? peggy: i've never thought of myself that way. i started out very sympathetic

with donald trump in terms of policy. and also sympathetic of what he represented in history. which was back in 2015 and 2016, kind of upsetting and overturning a political establishment that in my view had grown encrusted, who had given us disaster after disaster. who both parties together were cynical. both parties together didn't want a deal for -- to deal for 20 years with the growing chaos at the border. so when trump came by i thought, good, he is a rebuke to a system badly in need of it. but fairly the column you mentioned that begins actually, the first sentence of the column is, he's a nut and you know he's a nut. however, that column was written with a sort of poignant feeling

on my part. because i agreed with him so much on issues but i felt he did not have the essential nature of an american president and of a steady leader who could deliver what must be delivered. so that was my judgment and by the end of his first term, i'd kind of lost my temper with him on january 6. but he's an interesting figure, a powerful figure, and he pass put his imprint on the age. peter: you talk about the five stages of trump. denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. peggy: a.i. that was early on. i think that might have been from 2015. i was surrounded everywhere i was bumping into republicans who were at some points -- i realized it was the five stages

of death. that i was seeing which starts with this couldn't be and then goes to, well, maybe if we do such and such, this won't happen. and then goes to, maybe there's something good here. so, yeah, did i see the five stages of grief being worked out, largely by people who never thought they would be upended. and who were, and who were shocked by it and who were trying to simply explain it to themselves. peter: did you have election anxiety or exhaustion in this last round? peggy: oh, that's so interesting. i think in the 2015-2016 cycle, it was so uncallable and there was -- i think we all entered a caned of stage of hyper -- a kind of stage of hyper vigilance

every morning and actually check the news, not with a feeling of, oh, what happened overnight, maybe there was an earthquake in japan. but with, oh, no, what now? you know, a certain alarm. i don't think i felt all that as much in the 2020 or 2024 cycles. i had members of my family who are very pro-trump and who would talk to me about him and i started to feel through them that he just might pull this off. and also the smartest person i know writing about politics took me aside once in the spring or the summer and i was thinking, you know, trump's going to win this. and he said, no. he may win it by a landslide, and it was so shocking to me that an extremely intelligent person was going down the path that i was going down, but even farther than i was going down. so i didn't have a feeling of

shock and i guess i felt i kind of understood it. peter: can you tell us who that person? peggy: i don't want to because i think he'd be so embarrassed. peter: where did you grow up and how did you grow up? peggy: i was born in brooklyn, new york. if you've ever seen the movie "brooklyn," the brooklyn i was born into, from which i got my actual first memories as a person on earth, are in that movie. that's how buildings looked. that's how the sidewalks looked, how people on the street looked. so born in brooklyn. we moved out to long island when i was 5. as many brooklyn and bronx and queens folks did. we were sort of -- we picked up the bronx in brooklyn and queens and brought them out to those little houses in long island. my parents bought a house for $14,990. in 1955. so we lived there.

in one of those little houses. i think the levet company, of course he invited lovetown but i think the levet company built the house we were in. i grew up -- we lived there for 10 years, then we moved on to northern new jersey, to rutherford, new jersey, and i finished high school there. my family was large. nine people. economically stressed. turbulent. full of stress actually. i hate to say dysfunction, because it's been the most boring word in america for 20 years. but really, a sort of thing that didn't work, i guess, is what we all felt we came from at the end. but i have so many happy memories of childhood in part because, like many such folk, working class or lower middle class, we had the tv on all of

the time. and it was on, i mean from, 7:00 in the morning through somebody would think to turn it off at midnight or maybe not. it was always on. we were always watching it. if you were always wasking movies in the 1950's and 1960's, what you were really watching was stations that had no money for programming, no money for a conversation like this. what did they do to fill time? they showed the movies of the 1930's and 1940's and 1950's, made in america. i just watched those movies all the time and i loved them and i kind of think that they had something to do with the development of my mind and of my attitudes. as in those movies were written by the fabulous old socialists who wounup getting in trouble in the mccarthy era. so they were chaste in the

1950's and 1960's and beat up quite badly but they did wonderful movies about -- that were kind of class conscious but not in a horrible, mechanical way or an ideological way. but in a subtle way that showed you class in america. they were early on to talk about race and racial injustice. they were really wonderful and they had really something to do with how i saw america which is as a place that was fabulous and fantastic and interesting and so much is going on in it. but also it's always trying to make itself better. it's always trying to make itself good and it's always trying to have fun. so those things were really wonderful and between movies and books as a child, i just -- i made it through. i did not go to college after high school, no college would have me. i was a terrible student.

i almost didn't get out of high school. we were marked on yet to have a certain amount of credits like 18 credit as year to get out of -- to get out of junior or senior year. and i did not have enough credits unless i passed a specific course that i was failing in. a chemistry course that i barely managed to pass. passing a final with like 68, the grade was like 68. anyway, i was a terrible student. i missed school a lot. i watched tv -- i would take off from school and watch tv all day and then at night i'd read novels and so i didn't really feel like going to school. anyway. bad high school student. worked for two years as a clerk in the insurance business and also as a waitress, which is a job i look back on with great affection because waitress is a great job. if you can do it. if you're young enough to do it.

it's a hard job. but it was a great job. anyway, i made my way through the next few years, went to fairleigh dickinson university at night. i had a feeling, i actually thought i had a destiny. i thought i was a writer. even though i did not appear to be a writer. and i was not getting educated but i had a feeling i was a writer and i had a feeling of destiny so i started fairleigh dickinson university at night, did very well, went after work. took the spanish courses i had never taken in high school. and stuff like that. and i think some math courses and science courses and then went to fairleigh dickinson in new jersey and rutherford, new jersey, then, and did fine. oh, my gosh. that's a long answer to a short question. but there you are. peter: before relieve your family, there's another noonan who is pretty well known. jimmy noonan. is he related to you? peggy: jimmy noonan the actor?

yes. oh, my gosh. yes. i have a brother named jimmy who is an actor and who is a hilarious person and who lives in jersey and how do you know jimmy? peter: i don't know jimmy. i know of jimmy. peggy: how? peter: well, he's quite well known. he's pretty well known. in some circles. just wanted to make that connection. what was your first political job? peggy: writing in the speech writing department for ronald reagan. i had never had -- peter: how do you go from fairley dickinson waitressing to the speech writing department of the white house? peggy: graduated college in 1974. knew i was a writer. but didn't know where i would ever fit in as a writer. i loved reading newspaper columns so i went to new york newspapers and said, hi, can i

be a writer? i'll start anywhere but i'd really like to be a columnist. and they laughed and they said, honey, new york is where you end up if you've done well. new york is not really where you start out. and i thought, oh around this time i had just graduated college. a friend of mine wrote me a note from boston. she had just lost her roommate, that's data point one. data point two, after college, the way i was making my living was as a temporary secretary. there were such -- i don't know if there are still temporary secretary agency, but executives in the old days would have a secretary and the secretary might go on vacation for a month or might leave and have a baby and they needed a temporary secretary to hold down the job and answer the phone. i had a bunch of temporary secretary jobs. one was at the cbs broadcast center in new york so i took the bus in every day from jersey.

and at the cbs broadcast center in new york, i was working for a fellow who worked in the union relations area. he was a great guy. and there were women in the office and they'd sit around chatting sometimes and they'd look at me and say, what do you want to do? i'd say, i want to be a writer. and one of those women said, cbs is starting an all news radio station in boston and they realize they had don't have enough writers because they need the writers to fill 24 hours of copy. and she said, i know the guy who runs that radio station, you should call him, see tuck get an interview -- see if you can get an interview. i called them, got an interview. wrote to my friend who was living in boston and i said, i'm going to come up and take your roommate's place. i literally packed a trunk of the odd things in your life as you look back, i didn't pack a bag for a week or a few weeks.

i got an old trunk and put everything i had in the trunk and took the train to boston, got my interview, which was not an interview, it was a tryout, they sat me down at a desk, they gave me wire copy from apupi and reuters and they said, write a news show. i didn't know how to write a news show. and i thought, what am i going to do now? how do i find the lead this, that? suddenly i realized the sound of the news radio was being pumped through the news room. you could hear what was on the arnow -- air now. so i listened and i said, they're pretty interested in president ford did such and such today. i'll get out the ford piece out of the a.p. copy and i wrote a ford story. then i wrote something else and i wrote something else. i called it news cast. news director came in, said, what are you doing? i said, i'm taking a writing audition. he said, what do you have? he looked at it and he said, ok,

you're hired. the reason he did that is a writer had just quit to go off to a radio station in rhode island. anyway. so i got my first job and it was fabulous. it taught me to write for air. it taught me to be a journalist. it taught me to -- it made me able to call up the cops in summerville and say, you know i'm the local wire -- on the local wire there's talk of a really bad car accident, was anybody killed? and they'd give me the facts. and i'd write it up into a local news story. and then i got to the point where i could call the local senators and the governor and say, what's happening here? and write it into a story. so that was fabulous. it built my confidence, made it possible for me to call people and say, please talk to me. i'm representing a radio station. and how to get information, how to be careful about it.

and just how to -- i had always -- when i was in college, i became the editor of the student newspaper. the fairleigh dickinson spectator. and i wrote the editorials. and i was a reader by nature and i read all of the local newspapers but i was a print person. i was words observed by the eye. i had never been a words observed by the ear person. and i had to learn that real quick. and learn that a sentence that you give an anchor on the noon to 1:00 p.m. hour, that first sentence of his report, that first sentence cannot go five lines and have clauses and commas and semicoalons, do you know what i mean? it's quicker and straighter. blunter is not the word. it can be very subtle.

but you're delivering information in a way that is more conversational than literary in a printed matter sort of way. so learning that took me a while. i was aware i had a lot to learn. and i tried to learn and i did. peter: how did you get to washington? and ronald reagan? peggy: i -- this is the mid 1970's. in that time i was becoming politically, shockingly conservative. i was reading national review, i'd been reading national review for a while. we were in the middle -- the boston i came to was in the middle of the busing crisis. the america i was involved in was in the middle of the vietnam crisis. and i found myself naturally taking the conservative side on these issues. i watched all the conservatives running around in america, they were fine. but i wasn't -- i was not a registered republican.

i was just a person with thoughts. after a few years in boston, i went down to be a news writer at the cbs broadcast center where i had been a temporary secretary and there, the most wonderful thing happened to me. this is now -- we're getting later in the 1970's. the guys -- i was on the radio side, i started on radio and they kept me on radio and that was fun. but the guys who were on radio side at cbs news in the 1970's were the guys who had invented writing for broadcast with ed murrow. they were the murrow boys. charles was still there, richard, douglas edwards. they were my colleagues in that news room. and i listened to how they put things and i listened to what they thought a story was. we had the great charles osgood

also. a much younger man but a kind of genius. anyway. i learned so much from them. finally i graduated to walter cronkite walz the anchor of the was the anchor of the cbs news. he had a radio show, every day he did a radio commentary. it was written by a wonderful writer. when he was on vacation, i became one of the people who filled in for him. once when i was filling in for dal, he was minor who was writing for cronkite, cronkite himself took vacation. dan became the anchor at cbs and i became his daily radio writer of his commentaries which was a fabulous job and it was like doing a column every day. it was like a 4.5-minute show and four minutes of it was copy. and it was a column.

it was, hi, i'm dan rather, this is what's happening. this is what i i think. these are the questions we ought to be asking. so it was very demanding but excellent and i was a conservative and he was a liberal. i think he'd fairly say that at this point although he didn't used to say it then. and between the conservative and the liberal, we had a show that i just think was so good and fair and i think it had kind of -- as a rule, a kind of generous feel to it. not full of judgment. it started out awkwardly but in time i think it became good anyway. whenever visiting conservatives came through cbs news, like bill luck by doing a talk show, or some writer doing the conservative side of a debate show, they would actually be brought by to meet me as in, hi, you should meet peggy noonan, she's our conservative.

which was very funny. i got to tell you, peter, i remember -- i know nostalgia is gauzy and i know our memories get gauzed up, but i do remember media news rooms and the media in the 1970's as being a little mauricey going about political disagreement doctor more easy going about a political disagreement about there's a left and a right and a middle and an up and down or whatever. but you can all be friends. they would be brought by to meet me. theres a writer named joe and he was a visiting conservative and he said to me one day, what is it you want to do? do you want to stay here and write? and i said, no. i want to write speeches for ronald reagan. i just think he's terrific. i support him. and he was surprised because he didn't fully understand my political views on things.

he mentioned it back, he was also a writer for a national review. he mentioned it back in the office, he mentioned it to a guy who had gone for a speech writing job with range, he had not gotten the job, but that guy recommended me to the white house and said, keep your eye on this one. one day the white house called me, oh, i know. a wonderful man named ben elliott who was the head of speech writing for ronald reagan, he called me and he said, i heard about you and i heard you're good but i'm really calling because, he said, you may not know this, but 20 years ago i worked on the fourth floor at the cbs broadcast center and i was the conservative, he said. so i just wanted to say buck up and good luck to you and realize you can get through that moment and then very sweetly he said, and if you ever come by washington, do come by and say

hello. and i totally lied and i said, actually i'm coming by washington tomorrow. i really just made that up. i was not going to washington the next day. i said, i got a business trip, i'm coming by washington tomorrow. could i come see you? and he laughed in my face, knowing what i had just lied and he said, well, i guess yes. you can come see me. so i went to see him and i said, this is what i think of reagan, this is what i think of politics, this is what i think of history and i want to work for him. and we had long conversations, i had to be interviewed by a lot of people and i had to show everything i'd ever written at cbs. why? because it's a crazy world and i might have written for dan rather, ronald reagan is an idiot and we really dislike him. he's a son of a gun, we can't stand him, and that would be embarrassing if they hired the person involved with that. but i just showed them

everything i'd written and they just sai ce on in. i keep going so long in my answers. i am embarrassed. peter: the challenger explosion, 1986. peggy: yeah. peter: slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of god. is that you? peggy: that was from a poem by john gillespie mcgee jr. who was an air force flyer in world war ii. in 1938, i think in training e very eager to get into the war and he got in early, i think joining canadian forces, and he was eager to get into the war and he died in an airplane crash, but before that he wrote a beautiful poem about the joy of flying called high flight. how did i know it? two things happened that day.

the challenger blew up. i thought of that poem, when i saw the repeated waving good bye of the astronauts. there was a tape remember that we kept playing that day. we didn't have that much tape, the dreadful disaster had just happened and then it kept shows crista and all the other astronauts waving good-bye before they got on the capsule earlier that morning. that wave good-bye made me think of high flight which i learned in the public schools, in a poetry class in seventh grade on long island. i thought of it and i knew something, i absolutely knew ronald reagan knew that poem. i didn't really know it but i just felt he did. and i knew that if that perfect phrase, that beautiful phrase were included, ronald reagan would use it if he knew that poem, which it turned out he

did. it had been a very important poem to his friend, tyrone power, and had been a very famous poem during world war ii. and in the years after. and it happened to be written on a plaque outside reagan's daughter patty's school and he used to sometimes read it and reflect on it in the morning. anyway, that was quite a day. it was a dreadful day. it started out as a busy day for everybody in the office because the state of the union address was scheduled for that night. peter, were you there? were you a young reporter then? peter: it was up on capitol hill, yeah. peggy: yeah. so you know about just the suddenness of stuff, we all knew the state of the union address was coming. so in speech writing, my boss and the people who had written the address were taken last-minute changes and making last-minute additions. i was sitting in my office in

the morning catching up on phone calls and paperwork. i had a tv in my office and out of the corner of my eye i could seeing is happened. i was on the phone and i could see there was like a flash of smoke or something. and i looked and i thought, wow, what is that? like everybody else, nobody knew what had happened when it blew up. they thought, is this some kind of special space shuttle that emits smoke suddenly? nobody understood -- i put up the sound on the tv and i heard static. man, the sound of static in modern media is the sound of shock. that means nobody knows what's happening. that's why nobody's talking. and the open line for mission control from nasa, all static. so i thought, whoa. as the hours unfolded, it became of course clear, a major

disaster has happened. a historic one, the first time we've ever had a moment like this in flight with an astronaut. we'd lost astronauts before in training, but not anything like this. it was awful. the faces of the people in the stands who were the relatives of the people on the ship were just so awful. it was so -- just shook you up to see it. at a certain point, i realized, ok, everything was chaos. but i realized, ok, the president is either going to have to talk about this tonight in his state of the union address, so they'll need an important add-on, and i'm not one of the people busy with the address right now so i can do it. so i went to my boss' office, the guy who hired me, and i said, ben, the president's going to have to say something. either in the state of the union, a few pages, or a

separate address and we don't know and nobody in the west wing can tell us anything because they're handing the disaster. the president's on the phone with nasa and then he's talking with the secretary of defense. should we go up to deaf con 2 because -- defcon2 because this is a national security story. there was always the sense that the russians might be aggressive in a moment of weakness, so they had a lot to handle. so i just went to my boss and i said, i'm going to start writing about this and the meaning of this and what happened. i'm going to get the latest information as i did at cbs, so we got somebody to tear the latest information off the wires. it turns out the president had been meeting with network news anchors around the time that the challenger blew up. because he was talking to them -- to give them a preshow on the state of the union, on what would be said.

and what his sense of the most important parts of that address were. the president was called out of that meeting, told about the challenger, watched some of it on tv. the president came back to the anchors and talked allowed to them about what had happened and what his feelings were and they asked him questions. there was a young woman from the national security council on the side of the room taking notes. she took notes on everything he said. went over, smart girl, went over to speech writing, to ben elliott, and said, do you think you guys may be writing something because this is what the president said. ben said, go into peggy, she gave it to me. and that became the center of the address. it all got done. it was all under pressure and pain, that address. and you could see it. you saw the pain on reagan's face.

the president -- i think he was a little disappointed somehow. there were no words that were going to be equal to that moment. there were no words that could help. period. you could only do your best. so he wasn't feeling so great about it when it was over. i could tell. the way he looked on tv. and i went home that night, not feeling so good. but by the next morning, by the next morning i didn't come into the office early. i wasn't one of those people in at 7:00 a.m. i love those people. i'm so impressed by them. but i like to breeze in about 9:15. and i breezed in about 9:15 and there were messages from people like the speaker of the house, tip o'neill. and thetaryf state, george schultz. people i had never met or talked to. and i called them back and they just said, we heard you worked with him on that. good work. you did what needed to be done. i thought, oh, what a great

thing. how nice of tip o'neill, i mean, to track down speaker of the house, a kid in an office. and then the president called, he was very frank. he said, boy, that was some kind of day. and he talked about the speech. and he said, you know, at first at the end i felt it just -- we hadn't -- reagan didn't say this, but what he was communicating to me was that he thought what lincoln thought when a speech didn't work. he would say, it didn't scour. that was a term from plowing. and a farm. if you've got a good plow, it scours the earth and does what needs to be done. so good planting can be made. reagan was saying, eslings, i felt it -- essentially, i felt it didn't scour. and then he said, but then i got a call. frank sinatra called me and frank said, rony, you got to

feel good, the american president said the right things. and it was very good. and that made him feel better. he admired -- i think he loved frank sinatra and nancy loved frank. but more than that, they respected his professionalism and his ability to reap the moment and his intelligence and he didn't call after every speech. so if frank called, and he gave you a good review, baby, you just got a good review. so reagan felt better about it and told me and then i just thought, oh, good. oh, good. well, that's over. the next thing, do you know what i mean? there's another rose garden speech. so that's -- peter: well, are you responsible for h.w. bush's kinder, gentler, was that -- were those your words? peggy: i worked on that speech. that was george h.w. bush's

acceptance speech. in new orleans in 1988. peter: is it true that nancy reagan, when she heard that, said, a kinder, gentler what? peggy: i don't know. the way i heard it, it was big gossip at the time, the way i heard it was that she had said, kinder and gentler than what? i have no idea if she said that. i never asked her if she said it. but it had the sound of her piercing intelligence. so i think maybe. but i never asked. peter: how do you view your role as a public writer? peggy: i think it's challenging. i think it's maybe a little more challenging than it was, say, back in the 1930's, 1940's, 1950's. i'm a big reader of biographies and there's a biography of a

wonderful american columnist, dorothy tompson. very -- thompson. very important, steady mind, intelligent, incisive woman who was a key figure really in 1930's and 1940's journalism. she caught on to hitler pretty early and she had a serious foreign affairs mind so she was a big american columnist. new york-based. and there's a wonderful biography of her called american cassandra whose author i can't think of at the moment. but when i read it, i can't help but compare the life of a modern columnist who is a woman to her life as a columnist. one of the things that's interesting about being a public viewer of things and establisher of your thoughts in america now is that if you put your name on it, which columnists by

definition do, obviously, you are under a lot of internet pressure. you are so freely insulted and so often insulted and so grossly insulted, you are sometimes threatened. there are some people who get very excited if a woman has a view that is not like their view, that is in fact the opposite of their view. it's been interesting for some time. i mean, i really put a lot on the internet and there's nothing to do about it. the internet is also helpful and fabulous. but it's been very interesting in the trump era, to be a public holder and sharer of information who is also a woman. peter: your columns generate two, three, four, 5,000 comment business viewers every week. do you read those comments or do you -- peggy: sometimes i do. i really try to.

people tell me i shouldn't but i feel guest: it host: is like a conversation with you in a sense and here's a couple of comments. peggy noonan is one of the few columnists whose writing i follow closely. she is either leral conservative or a conservative liberal. i am never quite sure. i like her optimism and her full throated defense of the democratic process. what i don't appreciate is her seeming inability to take a clear stand on much of anything. did that one hurt? i won't read these others if that one hurt. guest: that is so thoughtful, actually. i thought you were going to read some of the other ones. host: this is like a conversation these readers are having with you. you are called peg, pegaloo, there is no miss noonan in here

or anything but it is like a conversation. guest: i'm not sure i had ever thought of it like that. sometimes, readers are very familiar. sometimes, there is a guy who writes in and says, this is it. i will never read you again. and then he comes in two weeks later and he will never read me again again. sometimes, people say they have had enough of me and somebody else will answer them back and say, and yet here you are. which amuses me a lot. i hate the feeling of disappointing people and folk who could see my early sympathy for his stands and for the need of somebody to break through this establishment, icam not to like him and they were so disappointed. they are disappointed to this day and sometimes, very angry to this day. it is an odd thing.

an odd thing is that when you are a public thinker, speaker, writer, you get a base of readers, but if you are really trying to play it straight and give your honest views, your views will not always please your base and if you continue to hold them, you are going to lose your base. and you will wind up with another. it is the artist thing and i can tell sometimes, my readers have changed. they all left me -- i was pretty tough at a certain point on george w. bush and iraq. i was sort of set off by his inaugural address in 2004 when he more or less -- down on iraq by saying we are going to sort of outlaw evil in the world and i blew my top. man, my readers got so mad at me , they beat my head in and i

know some of them stopped reading me but then other people read me and it was ok and then i broke with the party on immigration and lost everybody again so it's very interesting to realize there's two ways to play it. one is to know that you have a base of readers but be honest and be yourself and call it straight and that life happened and help more readers come in when you lose some. the other is the worst thing you can do, whether you have a big radio show or tv show or a big column, is to act like the tribune of conservative consistency and hold onto your base but privately disagree with them and you just checked constantly to see where are they going? and then you declare where you stand which conveniently enough is exactly where they are going. people do that a lot. i really do not like that. host: who is your favorite

columnist? or a favorite columnist? guest: i reviewed them all. i read a lot of essayists. in our paper, bill mcgurn, dan henan sure, i read ezra klein. i read ross, whose work i think is -- in the new york times, whose work i think is serious and true in the sense that he believes what he is writing. i believe i am getting his actual opinions. you cannot feel that way with everybody. ezra klein does great work. lauren does great work. in her fourth decade of working at the times. tom friedman, when the meatiest

is on fire -- mid east is on fire, see what he is saying. those are just the people i am thinking of at the moment. host: a certain idea of america. this was a column first printed in the wall street journal on august 17, 2017. against the tear it down movement. and once the tri down starts, there is no knowing where it will end. edmund eric famously said we have a duty to the past, the present, and the future. in the minds of the tear down errors, only the present is important and only their higher morality. >> i think when you tear down statues, y are thwarting and killing in the cradle future conversations that could be very helpful. what america should be doing now, it is a cliche to say it,

but it is true. don't be tearing down. be building more. be building in different ways but there is plenty to celebrate in this country. many great women and men. statues are a funny thing. when you are a little kid, you go with your mom or your pop or your aunt and you are in the park and there is a statue and you say, what is that? she says, well, that is robert e. lee. who is that? >> well, he's a general. that is is enough for you when -- that's enough for you when you are five or six. robert e. lee, he was a great man, right? an honest parent would say it's complicated, and then when you are 14, you have a serious talk about everything connected to that statue and connected to our history and the civil war and its causes and its meaning and how he viewed it and right and wrong, and you wind up

-- these are conversations that you can just have in life. you don't have them if the statues are taken down. host: november 22nd, give thanks for taylor swift. taylor swift is the person of the year, you write. she is the best thing that has happened to america in all of 2023. guest: wasn't she a phenom? i thought t heiress to her -- i starepin track of taylor -- it's a little ironic. her music is not my music. what she does is actually just not my thing. i don't really find her -- actually, i'm very interested, apart from what i wrote, she is so compelling. she is not the greatest dancer or the greatest singer or greater songwriter but what she has through will and love for

the whole thing and desire to bring herself forward, become something big and magical. i love the kids who love her. after this column came out, i got a wonderful taylor swift bracelet from a little 11-year-old girl who said, you appreciate taylor? my parents showed me your column. you get it. so i wrote you this. so i put together -- i sewed this. i made you this. it is a taylor swift bracelet that had her name and underneath, my name. it was so touching and wonderful. look, taylor swift is a phenom. you have just got to hand it to her. what so struck me -- a number of things did but one is that she changed the economics of every town and city she went to.

there was like an anti-depression, anti-inflation taylor swift boom wherever she went. somebody i quoted said it was like if she went to cincinnati, it was like cincinnati had two super bowl's. that was the economic effect. so huge economic impact through the arrows tour but other decisions like how she took on scooter braun in the production of her music and who gets the money. she kind of revolutionized the financial aspects of the music business. she made like $1 billion or $2 billion on this tour. what she gave everybody who worked with her a lot of money like a big tip along the way. like the teamsters, the truck drivers, they got 100 grand. this is a phenom. this is just yea. good. do this. host: in a certain idea of

america, you talk about sitting down at perdue university with the former president, the former government of indiana, and he reminded you of a comment that you had made 30 plus years ago that liberals in the media don't hate conservatives. and i think he was wondering if that was still true. guest: i see. i'm sure i said that. it is the way i experienced the past. look, i don't really -- i am a conservative. i have been a conservative for a very long time. i have been in media for a very long time. i do not think those on the left or non-conservatives or liberals hate conservatives so much as very unconsciously, they patronize them.

they just do. they patronize them. if you are going to patronize somebody, it should be from a great height, a great intellectual height or moral height. i would rather not be patronized by people who do not have that height. if you are a conservative, you are familiar with the concept of being patronized by your inferiors. every conservative everywhere has this feeling. and it contributed to donald trump. how about that? host: july 3, 2019, again, another column. that is in a certain idea of america as can -- aonnuing miracle. we are a people that his experice- that has experienced somethg ic together. we given this brilliant, beautiful thing, this new arrangement, a political invention based on the assumption that we were all equal, that where you start

doesn't dictate where you wind up. i love america because it is where the miracle is. i read that because in this column in the book, you talk about three books that i wanted to ask you about. we have only got a few minutes left. eb white on democracy. amy and leon kass and diana. so proudly we hail. david mccullough, the pioneer. guest: they are all wonderful. the orange cats one is a compendium of the great things that have been written and said about america. david mccullough is a fabulous book about the founding of ohio, which in the 18th century was the ohio. that is what it was called and it was founded by new englanders who wanted to take this beautiful, unspoiled by humans place and make it into a kind of

athenian democratic, beautiful place. and eb white -- eb white's thoughts on democracy, jon meacham said in a recent book, fdr you still like to read eb white on the subject of democracy. and how it was the suspicion that more than half of the people get it right more than half of the time. and fdr liked to read that allowed apparently to friends and then say them's my feelings exactly. i sort of think that the idea -- i was very lucky in that i came into life and entered life in an america that had respect for itself in some regard for itself. some respect. not bad pride. some good pride. we had won wars. we had baseball. we had hollywood movies.

we had wall street. we had freedom. we had some things going on here. there was kind of a pride. we got the ford factory that makes cars and everyone can buy them. i was so lucky to have come from a turbulent background into an america that had a good sense of itself and i feel for kids now because they are not entering, going forth at age eight and 10, going into an america that has a good sense of itself but has a greater sense of not realism and reckoning that shame, you know? and nothing good is built on shame. so i worry about that and i find myself, as i get older, writing more about the things that we can appreciate and hold onto and shine up and bring forward into the future. it also, just appreciate this

place, love it, make it at her. but it is lovable. it is worthy of your respect, and it is worthy of your protectiveness. host: if somebody reads declarations in the saturday wall street journal every week, could they come away with the idea that peggy noonan views the american dream and the u.s. as best understood as a continuing project? guest: sure, sure. why not? let's hope it is. we would like it to continue for a long time into the future. it is called the american experiment. i never quite think of it that way but sure, it is an experiment, but keep it going. it is a good thing. host: your first book came out in 1986. what i saw at the revolution. guest: 1990.

host: a certain idea of america. a collection of columns. what is the lifespan of a column? guest: well, i hope forever. the lifespan of a column, i don't know. if somebody reading it -- it enters their head or their heart, or themselves a little bit, it column goes a long time. or maybe it is just a column about what happened on friday and by saturday, it is over. you never quite know. host: how many words do you get per week? guest: 1002 hundred 30. i happen to know. because i try very hard. host: seriously, 1230? guest: yes, and it's hard for me. i cut a column out of that so i am very conscious of it. but it is only that column but it's because i am in the saturday paper which is a sort

of more relaxed, easier, slightly more room sort of experience. host: what do you think of that placement in the saturday journal? guest: i love it. it is in the wall street journal so you have wall street journal readers but you have them on saturday morning when everybody is relaxed and having a cup of coffee and it's nice and they write to me. i have been around so long, people have my email address. i have my original aol address and they write to me there. they give me their opinion and agree or disagree. host: can you be anonymous on the streets of new york? guest: yes, often, although it is the best of both worlds. movie fame is the kind of mega fame you cannot escape. television fame is a kind of mega fame. if you are a writer and -- in a newspaper in a magazine, you will show up sometimes on talk shows. people will often recognize you but it is not mega.

it's not like seeing a movie star so nobody bothers you. and the people who do come up and say hello are normally just longtime readers and you have fabulous conversations with them. and once i was walking with my son in central park on a pretty sunday in the spring or summer and somebody came by and talked to me about my work and said, you know, i'm so glad you do what you do. we had a lovely conversation. the man moved on and my son looked at me and said, mom, do you mind when that happens? i said, i worked very hard so that would happen. i really like it. it's a really good thing. host: peggy noonan. a certain idea of america, selected writing, wall street journal columnist, has been our guest on q&a. guest: thank you, peter, very

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