Peggy Noonan

The news came in numbers and the numbers were fairly grim, all the grimmer for being unsurprising. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll reported this week that more than half of Americans, 55%, think America is on the wrong track, with only 33% saying it is going in the right direction. A stunning 66% say […]

The political headline this week is that President Obama appears to be attempting to move toward the center, or what he believes is the center. We saw the big pivot in two major speeches, one on the economy and the other, in Oslo, on peace. If it is real—if the pivot signals a true, partial […]

A deep and perhaps the deepest benefit of the speech was that a Democratic president asserted compellingly, and with a high degree of certitude and conviction, that the United States is and has been immersed in a long struggle with intractable enemies. For eight years we heard this from Republicans. Halfway through those years people […]

This week, two points in an emerging pointillist picture of a White House leaking support—not the support of voters, though polls there show steady decline, but in two core constituencies, Washington’s Democratic-journalistic establishment, and what might still be called the foreign-policy establishment. From journalist Elizabeth Drew, a veteran and often sympathetic chronicler of Democratic figures, […]

Last Thanksgiving, it looked as if a hard year was coming, and it was and it did. The holiday was shadowed by a sense of economic foreboding—Wall Street failing, companies falling and layoffs coming. It isn’t over—no one thinks it’s over. But the mood of this Thanksgiving looks to be different. An unofficial poll of […]

The president has been taking time thinking about Afghanistan. I cannot see why this is bad. If he’s really thinking, he’s not dithering—thought can be harder than action, weighing plans as hard as choosing and executing one. A question of such consequence deserves pondering. A president ought to summon and hear counsel before committing or […]

First thought on Tuesday’s elections: There’s a lot of firing going on in America, and now that includes politicians. Seems only fair and will likely continue. I don’t think voters in New Jersey and Virginia were saying, “Oh the Democrats are awful, and we hate them,” nor were they saying, “Republicans are wonderful, and we […]

The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers. Waves of money are sloshing through the system, creating a false rising tide that lifts all boats for the moment. The tide […]

At a certain point, a president must own a presidency. For George W. Bush that point came eight months in, when 9/11 happened. From that point on, the presidency—all his decisions, all the credit and blame for them—was his. The American people didn’t hold him responsible for what led up to 9/11, but they held […]

Here are pertinent observations from two accomplished political veterans at a forum Tuesday night at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The question, from David Gergen, was what advice the panelists, former Reagan advisor Ken Duberstein and former JFK advisor Ted Sorensen, both of whom had been supportive of Mr. Obama in 2008—Mr. Sorensen […]