Peggy Noonan

This is the most volatile and tumultuous presidential primary race of our lifetimes. Look at these numbers. In June 2011, in South Carolina, Mitt Romney led Newt Gingrich by 15 points, 27% to 12%, in a Public Policy Polling survey. Two months later, PPP had Rick Perry leading Mr. Romney by 20 points, 36% to […]

We have entered a new phase, the Republican primary as John Grisham novel. Secret offshore bank accounts, broken love, the testimony of anguished ex-wives: “He wanted an open marriage.” A battered old veteran emerges from the background and, in his electoral death throes, provides secret information—“I’m for Newt”—that he hopes will upend a dirty, rotten […]

Columbia, S.C. Newt’s a battering ram who’ll wind up in splinters, but he can do plenty of damage along the way. The candidate people immediately speak of here when talk turns to the GOP primary is a man named Romneybut. “I like Romney but I could change my mind.” “I like Romney but I like […]

Mitt Romney’s victory in Iowa is underappreciated. It was a well-run campaign and no one thought the day of the Ames straw poll, in August, that it would happen. The victory of Rick Santorum is a pundit-humbler: No one saw that coming even six weeks ago, except perhaps Mr. Santorum. The Iowa results almost perfectly […]

So the first third of the Republican presidential race is ending. The first third is the introduction: “This is who I am, this is what I want to do, this is why you want to choose me.” The campaign is announced, organized, and goes forward in key early states. The second phase is the long […]

The great words of the year? “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” They are the last words of Steve Jobs, reported by his sister, the novelist Mona Simpson, who was at his bedside. In her eulogy, a version of which was published in the New York Times, she spoke of how he looked at his […]

I had a friend once who amused herself thinking up bumper stickers for states. The one she made up for California was brilliant. “California: It’s All True.” It is so vast and sprawling a place, so rich and various, that whatever you’ve heard about its wildness, weirdness and wonders, it’s true. That’s the problem with […]

This is the week it became clear that nobody knows anything. Pretty much all the conventional wisdom about the 2012 presidential race has turned out to be wrong. Newt rules, Cain’s over, Romney’s rocked. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. We’ll start with the president: Gallup. Obama down. Forty-three percent approval. Lower than Jimmy Carter […]

The talk this week was of who was most damaged politically by the failure of the super committee. The first, admittedly earnest answer is: the country. We have a projected deficit over the next 10 years of $44 trillion. A group of Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill were charged with coming up with $1.2 […]

There is an arresting moment in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs in which Jobs speaks at length about his philosophy of business. He’s at the end of his life and is summing things up. His mission, he says, was plain: to “build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products.” Then […]