Peggy Noonan explores what the U.S. could be in 'A Certain Idea of America'

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: In her new collection of columns from The Wall Street Journal, Pulitzer Prize winner Peggy Noonan takes readers on a journey through the essence of our nation’s character.

With her trademark blend of storytelling, historical insight and journalistic rigor, Noonan explores what unites us as a people, even in divisive times.

She sat down with Geoff Bennett yesterday to discuss “A Certain Idea of America.”

Geoff Bennett: Peggy Noonan, welcome to the “News Hour.”

Peggy Noonan, Author, “A Certain Idea of America”: Thank you.

Geoff Bennett: You say this book is about loving America and enjoying thinking aloud about it. Tell me more about the intention behind the book.

Peggy Noonan: Oh, gosh.

An editor and I went through the past few years of columns that I have written for The Wall Street Journal, and what we found was that we liked the most, enjoyed the most, had the most fun with it, and also felt the feeling of satisfaction about those columns that deal with history, mostly American history, and mostly with America and its essence and what it is now and what we’re trying to make it.

To me, America has been simply a great subject of my life. Maybe it’s been the great subject of everybody’s life, but I was very conscious in going through my stuff that it’s about America.

Geoff Bennett: Reading these columns, it made me wonder, how do you view your role and your responsibility as a public thinker, a public writer, a columnist?

Peggy Noonan: Oh, that’s a great question.

I think maybe both David Brooks and I think and many columnists simply think, try to be honest about the world that you think you’re seeing around you, then try to say it clearly, and maybe honesty and clarity together will equal some kind of small helpfulness.

Geoff Bennett: There’s a chapter that stood out to me because it has two columns in it. You know where I’m going with this.

(Laughter)

Peggy Noonan: Yes, I do.

Geoff Bennett: And the title is, “It Appears He Didn’t Take My Advice.”

One column is about Donald Trump. The other column is about Joe Biden. And it strikes me that presidents are in many ways — they’re avatars for our collective ambitions, our hopes, our dreams, our frustrations, our grievances.

Peggy Noonan: Yes.

Geoff Bennett: When you think about Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who are very different, what do they reveal about us as a nation?

Peggy Noonan: Oh, that’s an important question.

With Joe Biden, I’m not sure. It seems to me he had a historical purpose, and that was end one time and he hoped begin another. Instead, he sort of ended and then the thing he ended came back.

Donald Trump came out of an American governmental reality that wasn’t working anymore. I mean, people were looking at Washington as that thing, that thing that gave us too long un-won wars, that thing that didn’t notice the 2008 economic crisis was coming, that thing that can’t handle a pandemic.

I think he came out of grave frustration. I think he was a dramatic character who people picked dramatically. They had a consciousness. They were throwing the long ball when they picked him.

Geoff Bennett: As a former speechwriter for President Reagan and a special assistant to him, you had a front-row seat to this significant foundational moment in American conservatism.

Do you see any through lines between that moment and the moment in which we’re living? Or are they completely disconnected, in your view, the Reagan era and the Trump version of conservatism?

Peggy Noonan: They’re not completely disconnected.

I will tell you one thing that I think is a through line. During the Reagan era, 1980-’88, I think the media understood the Republican Party to be the party of the rich and of mink stoles and of let’s get dressed up, get in the limo, go to the convention, then go to the fund-raiser. Understandably, that was kind of the portrait.

But I was there and I could feel the populist impulses beginning to gather. I was there when working-class folk started to feel more comfortable with the Republicans for the first time in a few generations. Reagan Democrats are now great-grandpa, but their 30-year-old great-grandsons are populist nationalists.

But I do kind of see a through line from one to the other. I saw — I was there for a party beginning to change. This is the change.

Geoff Bennett: Given the challenges facing both parties right now, what do you think are the key qualities that will define political leadership in the decade to come?

Peggy Noonan: Oh, gosh.

Well I think Donald Trump sort of set a template for probably going back to the old-fashioned person in the suit and the tie and speaking the things we used to really like, like you’re very collected, you speak in rounded sentences and paragraphs, and you’re well modulated and sophisticated and earnest and unshook and not dramatic and emotional.

Those things just don’t have as much value, let’s face it, for the future, for the Democrats or the Republicans. So I think it’ll be a more emotional and acting-out kind of time.

Geoff Bennett: What do we lose, though, when we lose that standard of decorum and decency in our culture, setting aside the politics?

Peggy Noonan: Yes. Yes, I understand.

You know what we lose? We lose modeling for the young. It is the job of adults in part to show the kids how it’s done, how you act, what dignity looks like, what being a real grown-up looks like. When we play those things down and think they’re not — that we don’t need them anymore, you don’t make much of an impression that way, you are telling the kids you have nobody to model yourself on.

You’re not giving them any social cues or emotional cues, and that means they’re deprived of a certain seriousness which they could observe and later incorporate into their own presentation. And that’s a loss.

Geoff Bennett: Yes.

I will tell you, I have read your writing for years. I have gone back and read your speeches, the speeches that you have written for President Reagan. You’re one of my favorite writers. What piece of writing are you proudest of?

Peggy Noonan: Oh, gosh.

When I was just starting at The Wall Street Journal as a weekly columnist, 9/11 happened, and I did for the next year 50 columns on 9/11. And in those columns, I was working out everything, every intellectual obsession, every emotion, every fear.

And it was the early days of me working online, and a community sprang up sprung up around my columns, where people who were going through exactly what I was were writing in after they read my column and sharing their experiences. And it was something I had never seen before, because the Internet was new and what I was doing was new.

And, Geoff, it was wonderful. It was a community. We all say these phony words about healing and stuff like that, but it really was a community that sprang up and was healing together. And, in a way, I will never get over that, of being part of that. It was beautiful.

Geoff Bennett: The book is “A Certain Idea of America” by Peggy Noonan.

A real honor to speak with you. Thank you so much for coming in.

Peggy Noonan: Thank you. You are so kind to do this, I really appreciate it.