Peggy Noonan

First impressions from a presidential debate are always about how things look, how people come across. Tim Pawlenty doesn’t really assert, he natters. Rick Santorum is earnest, Michelle Bachmann serious. Mitt Romney knows how he looks in every camera shot from every angle: He is a master of the cutaway shot, when the camera isn’t […]

Of course he [ed – Anthony Weiner] should resign—or, better, and as a statement, the House should remove him. I speak as a conservative who wishes to conserve. If I were speaking as a Republican I’d say, “By all means keep him, let him taint all your efforts.” But sometimes all of Washington has to […]

The debate in Washington is serious as a heart attack: whether the United States should raise its debt ceiling so it can borrow more money to stay afloat. The statutory ceiling on our national debt—our legal borrowing limit—is $14.3 trillion. That limit was reached, according to the Treasury Department, on May 16. Treasury says it […]

We’re at a funny place. The American establishment has finally come around, in unison, to admitting that America is in crisis, that our debt actually threatens our ability to endure, that if we don’t make progress on this, we are going to near our endpoint as a nation. I am struck very recently by the […]

Let’s take a look at three Republicans, one of whom says he won’t run for president, one of whom says he may, and one who will. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, on a radio call-in show in Philadelphia, was asked again this week if he’s tired of being asked if he’ll run for president. No, […]

If it weren’t Osama bin Laden we just killed, he’d be giving interviews in the hills right now taunting the great Satan that once again lied. We’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s start with credit where it’s due. The U.S. Navy SEALs did it and deserve our profound thanks and deep admiration. It […]

One of the greatest moments in the history of faith was also one of the greatest moments in modern political history. It happened in June 1979. Just eight months before, after dusk on Oct. 16, 1978, a cardinal had stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica to say those towering, august words, “Habemus […]

I want to talk a little more this holiday week about what I suppose is a growing theme in this column, and that is an increased skepticism toward U.S. military intervention, including nation building. Our republic is not now in a historical adventure period—that is not what is needed. We are or should be in […]

Suppose everything we think we know about the president’s political position is wrong? That’s what I think became clear this week. You know the conventional wisdom. It is that unemployment ticking down, plus the economy inching back, plus the power of the presidency to affect events, equal a likely Obama victory in 2012. Smart people, […]

Thick histories may well be written about how President Obama—a Democrat from the leftward wing of his party, a use-of-force skeptic who campaigned against Iraq as a war of choice—came to involve the U.S. in a third Mideastern war. Much will be made of the regrets of a generation of party leaders that the U.S. […]