Peggy Noonan

December marks the 20th anniversary of Bill Clinton’s impeachment. There are many recent retrospectives on the scandal that led to it, including former Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s mildly indignant “Contempt” and Alex Gibney’s superb documentary series “The Clinton Affair.” As I look back 20 years on, I’m more indignant about some aspects, less about others. […]

Since tradition is on our mind I’ll tell you of one that has been happening in a Manhattan home the past 20 years or more. A core of a few dozen old friends and relatives, enlivened by surprise guests—once we had an Indian maharajah in a turban—gather with their children for Thanksgiving. It’s a varied, […]

First lady of the United States is a hard job. It’s not formally defined yet entails many demands; it has an impact on history but no formal powers; it’s the focus of all eyes, but people like to make it clear nobody elected you. Its locus is the East Wing, which the West Wing considers […]

I don’t see it as everyone does. To me the headline is that for the first time since the election of the most polarizing president in modern memory, the American people yielded a national verdict on his first two years of his governance. And it was not a sweeping rebuke. A record 114 million Americans […]

We’re going to the polls and looking for leaders. What do we want? What a voter told Bret Baier a week ago, live from the campaign trail: someone she can cheer for. She was such an American, half hopeful, half wistful. When people have real leaders, there’s a feeling of security: Somebody reliable is in […]

The attempted bombing of political figures is domestic terrorism meant to disrupt and intimidate. That it came to light less than two weeks before an election whose outcomes may constitute a national rebuke to—or soft boost of—President Trump’s controversial leadership means that passions are high and will stay so. Things are feeling primal, tribal. There’s […]

This may seem small, but I don’t think it is. I know it will seem old-fashioned. It has to do with a great nation’s sense of its own stature on the world stage. In the days after the apparent murder of the Saudi activist and writer Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump was repeatedly pressed about the […]

What did the Kavanaugh controversy tell us about our historical moment? It underscored what we already know, that America is politically and culturally divided and that activists and the two parties don’t just disagree with but dislike and distrust each other. We know also the Supreme Court has come to be seen not only as […]

I have been thinking about trust. All the polls show and have for some time what you already know: America’s trust in its leaders and institutions has been falling for four decades. Trust in the federal government has never been lower. In 1958 Pew Research found 73% trusted the government to do what is right […]

On Memorial Day we think of those who served. Here let’s look at an old story about a military man’s affections. It’s the story of Lo Armistead and Win Hancock—close friends, career officers who’d served side by side in the U.S. Army. Then history took one of its turns and they wound up on opposite […]