Peggy Noonan, Here On Earth

Published on January 21, 2005

Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter to both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, takes a swipe a Junior’s style. The music was “lame”: “modern megachurch hymms” that sounded like the boring middle of a children’s film. But worse was the address itself, which Noonan calls “startling” and unnuanced, and which left her “with a bad feeling, […]

Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter to both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, takes a swipe a Junior’s style. The music was “lame”: “modern megachurch hymms” that sounded like the boring middle of a children’s film. But worse was the address itself, which Noonan calls “startling” and unnuanced, and which left her “with a bad feeling, and reluctant disike.” The world isn’t heaven, writes Noonan, but Bush’s speech was “heavenish,” “God-drenched,” “somewhere between dreamy and disturbing,” and relentless (not in the good sense). What’s to be made of a Peggy Noonan suspicious of “a White House on a mission”? She, the mother of pronoun-less straight-talk speeches? Seems even the professional cheerleader occasionally yearns for some nuance.

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