Peggy Noonan

You know what would be fun, and actually helpful? If in the latest struggle over funding for public television, people said what they know to be true. The argument, once again, is about whether PBS has a liberal bias. There are charges and countercharges, studies, specific instances cited of subtle partiality here and obvious side-taking […]

I don’t know that Democrats understand how Republicans experience the attacks Democratic leaders make on them. I’m not sure they know how they sound to us. In America there is a lot of political integration. Democrats and Republicans are friends. Life forces them to be if they need to be forced, which most don’t. They […]

Some wounds don’t fully heal because they’re too deep and cut too close to the bone. The story that Deep Throat was Mark Felt has torn open old wounds. Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak and Chuck Colson—all at the top of their game 30 years ago, all very much in the game today—were passionate in their […]

You’ve heard the mindless braying and fruitless arguments, but I’m here to tell you the facts, no matter what brickbats and catcalls may come my way. Lindsey Graham defied the biases of his constituency to do what was right, not what was easy. Robert Byrd put aside personal gain to save our Republic. David Pryor […]

This is the official end of high heels in Washington, isn’t it? The Republican Senate staffer, who spoke to me after she returned to her desk following the evacuation of the Capitol, laughed. “I think it might be, yeah,” she said. She spoke to me anonymously because she wanted to be free with her observations. […]

I was at a wedding, standing just off the dance floor, when a pleasant young man in his 20s approached, introduced himself and asked where I’d had my hair done. I shook his offered hand and began to answer, but before I could he said, “I’m gay, by the way.” I nodded as if this […]

The case of John Bolton is about politics (unhousebroken conservatives must be stopped), payback (you tick me off, I’ll pick you off) and personality. People who have worked with him allege he is heavy-handed, curmudgeonly and not necessarily lovably so. I don’t know him, but I suspect there’s some truth in it. Do the charges […]

There were many moving and dramatic moments in Rome two days ago, but this is the one I think I’ll remember: the sight of them running. Did you see them running to St. Peter’s Square as the bells began to toll? They came running in from the offices and streets of Rome, running in their […]

You are a cardinal of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, a modern man, and for the past seven days, in private conversations in Rome with cardinals you trust, you’ve been admitting what you would never say in public. You were shocked at the outpouring for John Paul II. You were shocked at the […]

Everyone has spoken this past week of John Paul II’s role in the defeat of Soviet communism and the liberation of Eastern Europe. We don’t know everything, or even a lot, about the quiet diplomatic moves—what happened in private, what kind of communications the pope had with the other great lions of the 1980s, Reagan […]