September 7

Peggy Noonan was born September 7, 1950, in Brooklyn. and now lives on the upper east side of Manahattan. She rose to fame as Ronald Reagan's speechwriter. She is the one who wrote the speech he gave after the Challenger disaster.

In her first famous book, What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era (1990), Noonan describes her early months as a Reagan speechwriter, and interacting with Dick Darman. Later, Peggy would write the line about "read my lips no new taxes" for Bush I. Darman, his OMB director then, would be held responsible for Bush's reneging on that vow. But during the time of her first book, Darman is described as brilliant, difficult, and fastidious. Noonan describes a meeting when she glances at Darman after a participant repeats some point exposing their own stupidity. His expression she describes as an "involuntary shudder, like a cat who'd been hit by scalding water from the counter above."

I myself like the Noonan capable of expansive historical generalizaitons, such as:
"The life of people on earth is obviously better now than it has ever been—certainly much better than it was 500 years ago when people beat each other with cats.”

It is hard to imagine a better ambassador for conservatism than Noonan. She has a blog at the Wall Street Journal, and it will be interesting to follow this political season.