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Peggy noonan, pulitzer prize for commentary, it's the search for truth that impels scientists, doctors, philosophers, and even writers..

Margaret Ellen Noonan was born in Brooklyn, New York to a working-class family of Irish descent. Peggy, as she was known from an early age, was one of seven children. Her father was a furniture salesman, and with so many children to raise, the family budget allowed for few luxuries. One pleasure young Peggy could afford was reading. Fiction and poetry fed her love of language and narrative, and she won praise from her teachers for her first efforts at writing verse.

Like many Irish American families, the Noonans took special pride in the election of John F. Kennedy as President of the United States. Young Peggy followed the news closely, and sometimes stayed up late into the night reading. The Noonan family moved more than once when Peggy was growing up, first to Massapequa, Long Island, then to Rutherford, New Jersey, where she graduated from Rutherford High School. She stayed in Rutherford to work her way through Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she majored in English literature.

By the time she entered college, many of her fellow students were protesting against America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Noonan believed that the war was an essential component of America’s struggle against communism, a commitment initiated by President Kennedy. As more and more of her contemporaries moved farther away from the values she had grown up with, she looked to more conservative thinkers and leaders for inspiration.

In 1975, she found work writing news on the overnight shift at WEEI Radio in Boston. She rose quickly to become the editorial and public affairs director. In 1978 and 1979 she taught as an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University. In 1981, she was hired by CBS Radio to write daily commentary for the network’s leading personality, Dan Rather. For the next three years she wrote Rather’s daily radio broadcast, and they worked well together, although their views on many issues differed. Peggy Noonan had become an enthusiastic supporter of the new president, Ronald Reagan, and wanted more than anything to work in his administration. Through an editor at the conservative journal National Review , she was introduced to the head of the White House speechwriting department, and early in 1984 she went to work in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.

At first she was assigned to write speeches for minor occasions for both the President and First Lady, and went four months without ever meeting the President himself. The turning point came when she wrote remarks for the President to deliver at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. The remarks were so well received that after she met the President for the first time on his return from Europe, he singled her out for praise. In his second term, she was named a special assistant to the president, and he called on her to prepare some of his most important speeches. One of her most memorable assignments came when she composed the remarks the President delivered after the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986. He had been scheduled to deliver the annual State of the Union message to Congress that evening. Instead, he spoke to the nation from the Oval Office. The speech has been voted one of the ten best American political speeches of the 20th century. Noonan’s closing words quoted the World War II-era poem “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘”slipped the surly bonds of Earth” to “touch the face of God.”

As President Reagan’s second term came to an end, Noonan left the White House to write for the presidential campaign of Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush. She was the principal writer for candidate Bush’s speech at the 1988 Republican convention. Phrases from that speech, “a kinder, gentler nation,” and “a thousand points of light,” entered the language of American politics for many years. The speech was widely credited with helping to secure Bush’s election as the 41st president that November.

After Bush’s victory, Noonan wrote President Reagan’s farewell address to the nation. After Bush’s inauguration, she decided to leave speechwriting to embark on an independent writing career. While working in the White House, Noonan had met Richard Rahn, Chief Economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The two were married in 1985, and their son, Will, was born two years later, but in 1989 the marriage ended, and she and her son moved back to New York, where she had spent most of her life.

Noonan shared her experience of the Reagan administration in a bestselling memoir, What I Saw at the Revolution , published in 1990. She followed it in 1994 with Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness , a collection of personal reflections on motherhood, the contemporary political scene and her own search for a deeper experience of her Christian faith. In her book Simply Speaking , she shared her expertise in speechwriting and public speaking. She took a look back at the life and presidency of her former boss, President Ronald Reagan, in the biography When Character Was King . Since 2000, Noonan has written a weekly column, “Declarations,” for the Wall Street Journal . Her columns from the year following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were collected in the volume A Heart, a Cross and a Flag .

Noonan took a leave from her duties at the Wall Street Journal to participate in President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign. After the election, she returned to her writing, publishing a book on Pope John Paul II and his influence on her own spiritual journey. In 2015, she published a comprehensive collection of her columns and essays, The Time of Our Lives .

In 2017, Peggy Noonan received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her coverage  of the 2016 presidential campaign, particularly her insight into the populist appeal of Donald Trump and the significance of his rise to leadership of the Republican Party and election to the presidency.

In addition to her books and newspaper column, Noonan is a highly visible participant in the national conversation through her regular appearances on the Sunday morning programs, This Week and Meet the Press .

As speechwriter to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Peggy Noonan supplied some of the most memorable phrases of a dramatic political era. A working-class girl from Brooklyn who worked her way through college waiting tables and clerking in an insurance office, she joined the Reagan White House after an early career in news radio.

Noonan crafted President Reagan’s inspiring remarks on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, and his moving address after the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger, frequently cited as one of the best American political speeches of the 20th century. At the 1988 Republican convention, George H.W. Bush accepted his party’s nomination, and perhaps secured his election as president, with a breakthrough speech, drafted by Noonan, calling for a “kinder gentler nation,” and saluting America’s community volunteer organizations as “a thousand points of light.”

Since leaving the White House, Peggy Noonan has become a bestselling author, an influential newspaper columnist, and a leading light of the Sunday morning talk shows. Her books, including  What I Saw at the Revolution , When Character Was King and The Time of Our Lives , have topped the nonfiction bestseller lists, and no political season is complete without her wise and witty input. In her books, her weekly column in The Wall Street Journal , and her regular television appearances, Peggy Noonan sounds a clear consistent note, affirming her belief in the enduring virtues of faith and patriotism, and the paramount importance of character in political leadership.

What was the most exciting moment in your career so far?

Peggy Noonan: Getting hired to work in the White House of Ronald Reagan was probably the most exciting day of my life, when I knew I was going to be hired there. I mean, I was a young woman, and I had a sense of what I still think of, and oddly enough, as appropriate awe, towards the White House and what happens there and who works there. That I was extremely lucky to be one of a few thousand Americans in U.S. history who actually worked in the White House. I adored Ronald Reagan. And I was going to — two wonderful things were going to happen for me. One, I was going to work in the White House for a president. The other was the president was Reagan and I adored him. So I’ve had many exciting moments in my life. I mean, when my first book went on the New York Times bestseller list was nice, but nothing compares to finding out I was going to work for the White House — work in the White House for Ronald Reagan.

You mentioned the word “awe” and “appropriate awe,” yet you of all people have been such an insider, actually putting words in presidents’ mouths. Were you able to keep that sense of awe and veneration for this office and what it means?

Peggy Noonan: Yeah, I have a very split view about the political figures in power in Washington. One is that I’m always impressed when I’m talking to the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, or the Vice President of the United States, the Speaker of the House, or the President of the United States. These are marvelous jobs and they are often — not always — but often held by men trying very hard to do them well. And I have a certain — I will never stop being impressed by the White House itself to this day. I mean, I’ve been in the Clinton White House three or four times. I can’t stop being impressed just by the play of light on the walls, and by the art, and by the very air of the place, quite literally, the smell of the flowers in there, and the way things sound with the high ceilings and everything. So I still have this awe, and yet at the same time I have a sharper sense than ever that they are just people in there. They are people who get headaches and who do stupid things and sometimes unethical things and sometimes venal things. So I don’t know if that’s a balanced view or a schizophrenic view. You know, it’s one or the other. It’s probably schizophrenic!

What does the American Dream mean to you?

Peggy Noonan: The American Dream to me means anyone can come from anywhere and rise to any position in the United States of America. And the other part — it’s not quite the American Dream, but it’s something I think of more and more of these days when I think about America. One of the Founding Fathers, and I don’t remember who, said, “America will be great as long as she is good.” And of course, implicitly, she will no longer be great when she is no longer good. And I wonder always, “Are we still good?” i.e. are we still great? I wonder because we’ve all seen our country change in the past 30 years. I don’t know if we’re still — quote — good — unquote.

What would make us better?

Peggy Noonan: More honesty, less cant. I think I’m pronouncing the word correctly: C-A-N-T, no apostrophe. A marvelous old English word meaning drivel, garbage, disingenuous bull, you know. More honesty, less cant. Beating back our government would help us a bit, I think. I think the government is too big, too powerful, takes too much from us, pushes us around too much. And as a people, I keep wondering if — you know, I was born in 1950 and still, in the middle of this century, people born when I was still just imbibed a sense — partly through school, partly through books, partly through modern entertainment, through movies, through TV — that it was a good thing to be American, and why it was a good thing, and what America was about, what the Constitution was about, what our history was about. I just keep wondering if we communicate that so well to our kids. And if we don’t communicate that so well to our kids, then they’re not growing up with the same love for America, or reasons to love America, that we grew up with. Well, what are the implications of that? If they don’t love and honor this thing, they won’t try to protect this thing. And what if they don’t try to protect this thing? Then we could lose this thing.

And here we are in the area where our institutions of self- government first took shape.

Peggy Noonan: Yeah, in Williamsburg. Tom Clancy pointed that out last night. It happened here, between Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown. So here we are in the very cradle. But I worry about America these days. I don’t mean it’s weak. It’s not. And I don’t mean it’s bad. It’s not. But I worry about her in a way that I didn’t used to, say 25 years ago. And that’s not just because I’m older and worry more.

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Peggy Noonan : The Woman Who Gave Presidents the Word

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WASHINGTON —  Since the summer night in New Orleans when he accepted the Republican nomination for President, two terms have followed George Bush: “a thousand points of light” and “a kinder, gentler nation.” They have provided fodder for cartoonists and columnists, served as inspiration to faithful followers, been used ironically by fierce foes. But they have not been forgotten. They are the product of Peggy Noonan’s pen.

The 39-year old former speech writer started putting words in the mouths of famous men as a writer for CBS Radio, where, she writes in her best-selling book, “What I Saw at the Revolution,” she was trotted out as the house oddity--the conservative.

Though Noonan grew up as one of seven children in an Irish Catholic family where Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy numbered among the household gods, she became convinced that it was the Republican Party that spoke for working-class families with strong religious beliefs--families like hers. Then came Ronald Reagan and Noonan found inspiration. She conspired to get to the White House and, in 1984, succeeded, making the odd transition from writing for Dan Rather to writing for Reagan.

In her book, Noonan describes with some humor the prats and pitfalls she took in her first months as the “woman speech writer.” But eventually she settled in to write some of the most memorable and goose-bump provoking addresses that Reagan ever gave, including his tribute at Normandy to “the boys of Pointe du Hoc” and his response to the Challenger disaster. When Bush formally moved into the presidential campaign, he threw his hat into the ring with Noonan’s words. Bush then turned to her for the other moments when the nation would be listening: the acceptance speech in New Orleans and the Inaugural Address on the steps of the Capitol.

That day, the chairs in the reserved section held signs for the specially invited dignitaries. One said “Peggy Noonan,” another “Mr. Noonan.” In fact, “Mr. Noonan” is Richard Rahn, an economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He and Peggy are now separated and she lives in New York with their son, Will.

Question: You talk a lot about the male culture in this town in the book, the men in Congress who are fighting with each other in the committee and then leaning over to each other and saying, “Check out the one in row three, look at those legs.”

Answer: Washington is a power place. The magnet is power. The little bits of metal that the magnet collects are people who really want power, believe in power. They have been historically, as you may have noticed, men. So if it’s a power town, it’s a bunch of guys. If it’s a power town, it’s a guy town. Well, if it’s a guy town then there will be a certain amount of bonding done around the issue of, say, sexual sameness. “We’re boys. Did you see a girl coming down the hall, let’s make a joke about the girl--does she have good gams?” So there is that, the chauvinism in Washington comes out very understandably.

I think it’s a little bit like chauvinism in the Catholic Church, in that “Hey, this has been, excuse me, a male bastion for a long time, and we are simply not used to having a lot of women here. And it’s going to take us a while to readjust. And some of us will readjust a little clumsily, some of us will feel a little bit inadequate and to cover our sense of inadequacy, we will sometimes make women feel bad. . . .”

Q: When you came, did you take the woman speech-writer slot?

A: I did. I didn’t know it was called that until I’d been hired. Until I was there my first week, and then I was introduced by a fellow speech writer as, “Hello, this is Peggy Noonan. She got the woman speech-writer’s job.” And I was appalled. I thought he was going for a joke. I thought it was like he was showing solidarity with me. “We’re both young, we’re both hip, we laugh at sexism.” But he was not going for a joke. And that’s how they looked at it, because for a few Administrations there had been historically one woman speech writer. I don’t know why. There just was.

Q: And was she supposed to do all the sort of touchy-feely things in the speeches? Was she supposed to deal with children and Mother’s Day, or was she supposed to just be there as the token woman on the staff?

A: I don’t know. When you’re hired as a speech writer, you’re there to work; they don’t have room for a token. I don’t know what it was like in the past, but when I worked at the White House my immediate superior was Ben (Bentley) Elliott, who brought me in, not because I was a woman, but because he was swamped by all of the speeches he had to do, and he wanted me to take a major part in them, and take a major share of them.

Q: You had the experience as the woman speech writer of being asked to write speeches for the First Lady . . . and you chose not to do that.

A: Yes, I chose not to do that.

Q: Why was that so important?

A: It took me a few weeks to sort of scope out, “Wow, it is kind of different to be a woman here. And, it is not necessarily in your interest to be a woman here.” And I gathered that speech-writing itself was a highly competitive shop and that there was a lot of competition going on in the White House, a lot of competitiveness between groups and offices and such.

And I felt that if I, as the only woman speech writer, wrote some speeches for the First Lady, I would become pegged as the First Lady’s woman speech writer, and I would never be given any more serious assignments. Like when Reagan went away on a big trip and had a big speech, I thought, “Oh, boy, they’ll never give me those speeches now. They’ll give me the First Lady’s speech to the women’s club.”

I just didn’t want that, so I said no. It was just not what I came to the White House for. And I was willing to not work at the White House if I had to do that. This is not to suggest I mean to denigrate a First Lady’s speeches or the groups she speaks to. But I was aware that that was not really where the action was. OK.

Q: Did you suffer any repercussions?

A: Well, the Reagan White House was an interesting place. There was a considerable amount of intrigue. There was a considerable amount of back-stabbing. There were a lot of tong wars.

One of the things that I thought was interesting about the Reagan White House was that sometimes you could die and no one would tell you. You’d notice after six months nobody had given you a serious assignment and nothing good had happened to you. And you’d realize, “I am one of the walking dead. And no one told me, I guess I’d better leave.”

I got the impression, it was very subtle, but I did get the impression that I had made a major faux pas, and done nothing to help my career by getting the First Lady’s chief of staff and the First Lady herself irritated with me. And as I say in the book, I did not handle it in the best way possible. I was not politically astute, both because of anger and because of a sort of bumptious lack of knowledge.

Q: One of the things that surprises me is you also say that in going to CBS you had the experience which I had had more than 10 years before, of men saying, “You’re not authoritative enough to be on the air.” I thought by the time you were there and some of us were on the air that was over.

A: No, and that was about 1977-78 that he said that to me. He was a major news director for a major CBS O&O; (owned & operated station). He had heard about me through a former boss of mine who said of me, “This is a young woman who can write.” Writing, as you know, on radio is a lot of the anchor’s art. So they auditioned me because I was a writer and after that audition, I must say, the news director was very blunt with me. He said, quote, “Your voice, it has no balls.” That was like 13 years ago. I still don’t know what the proper snappy reply is to that . . . .

Q: I’m enough older than you that for our generation we all heard that. But I really did think that it had changed.

A: Well I ran into it too. Want to know something? It has changed. I know it’s changed. It was better in ’77 than it was for you in ’72 or ’66 or whatever. But you know what, as long as--I was just going to say as long as men run networks there will always be this problem.

But do you want to know something funny? If more women were in high executive slots and picking on-air talent . . . oddly enough, I think a woman executive would tend toward males with authoritative personas. You know, I still do. I--that may be an awfully sexist thing for me to say, but somehow I would think that even if women moved into the top executive slots, it would not necessarily advance women in media. . . .

Q: Are you a feminist?

A: I don’t know. I get asked that a lot. Look, we all have our biases. I am not sure I am a feminist. I think I am a female chauvinist, however. Now, that’s different than a feminist, but a female chauvinist cannot help it. She has this bias that, by and large, women are better than men. I’m sorry. Please note I said I’m sorry. I mean it’s not a nice thing to say but you know it is my bias. So there you are.

Q: I think it’s one most women would agree with, however. But why, when you say that, are you hesitant about the word feminist? What does it imply to you that you don’t embrace it?

A: A political agenda that I do not embrace. To call oneself a feminist now is to become inevitably associated with say the National Organization--is it “for” Women or “of” Women, I always forget?

Q: It’s “for.”

A: For Women. The National Organization for Women. And their political agenda which, excuse me, is way to left of where I am. Or to become say, to suggest implicitly that you support the ERA (equal-rights amendment), which I don’t.

Actually I am afraid I am one of those women who thinks that she has seen women gain so much through the feminist wave that began in the mid-’60s and that we are still enjoying. But I have seen us lose a lot too. And I think some of the women who lost things are not women that the leaders of the feminist movement are thinking about.

You cannot go into a county courthouse in America and walk in unannounced on, say, a divorce trial, a child-custody trial, and not get the sense that the marvelous feminist spirit of the ‘60s and ‘70s has in fact hurt some women--mostly women who can’t afford to protect themselves with expensive lawyers. But you find that a woman who’s leaving a guy, she doesn’t have much money, he has some more. They decide they’re going to fight about the kids. It was once assumed in America that mom gets the kids. It is not anymore. Is that progress? No, but I am the only one of my friends who believes that.

I was very moved by the women fighting in Panama. I like having women in the U.S. armed forces. I like it that they’re brave and resourceful and talented and I want them to get a lot of medals. I do not ever want women drafted in America--ever. Now, I don’t know, would Gloria Steinem say, “Uh-oh, 10 points off your feminist score. Wrong position.” I think she would. I think it is the quote “wrong position.” But it is definitely my position. . . .

As for her job--writing in the President’s voice--Noonan felt the differences in writing for Ronald Reagan and George Bush:

A: He (Reagan) had a beautiful voice, a really beautiful and distinctive, lovely old Midwestern voice. And he had a warmth to his nature that made him find anecdotes that expressed his views. Perfectly congenial for him, and I think that the voice and the warmth had something to do with the actor’s art.

Q: Well, that’s a lot like writing for radio.

A: It was a little. You know I used to write for Charles Osgood. With his lovely warmth and he had a similar almost a proto-avuncular voice and style. . . . We’re getting back to the old authority questions in a way, they spoke with a certain--to call it a moral authority would be too much. But there was a certain obvious integrity in them that radiated through those airways.

Q: Bush does not have a beautiful voice. How was it different to write for that voice?

A: Oh, you know there’s an old phrase, they’re as different as chalk and cheese. They are. Bush does not love the oratorical part of his presidency. He loves the pushing of the levers in the Oval Office. And then being on the phone. He does not massage a speech the way Reagan did. Reagan would get his hands around it, you know. You could almost see his print marks on it when you saw the text after he’d given it.

Bush’s personal conversational style and his public speaking style has more to do with short bursts of words and thought, of fragments, sometimes fragments of sentences, fragments of thoughts. Almost more the suggestion of thoughts than the statement of thoughts. He was harder to write for in many ways and easier in a few. . . .

Ronald Reagan is publicly a sentimental man. But privately there was a certain coolness to him. Publicly, Bush is not comfortable with sentiment.

An example: I once worked with him on funeral remarks when (Justice) Potter Stewart died and Potter Stewart was a very close friend of Bush. Bush was giving the eulogy, or one of the eulogies, at the service for Potter Stewart. We had worked on the remarks, I gave them to him that morning. He looked over them in the car on the way to the church and he started to cry and so did his wife. And he said, “I can’t say this.”

That never would have happened with Reagan. Bush couldn’t say it because he knew he’d cry in public, and he didn’t want to do that. It just never would have happened with Reagan, as you know. So he got up there, and he just winged it. He took certain pieces of it, and then just told anecdotes, did it as quickly as he could and left. Because in a way his heart is more on his sleeve than Reagan, although it does not appear to be so. It’s a funny thing. . . .

Q: Is there anybody you listen to now, in public life and say, “Gee, I’d like to write his or her speeches?”

A: No. Not because there aren’t some really good people out there, but only because I do not feel the desire to write speeches anymore. Arthur Schlesinger said, “Nobody should write speeches over 40.” And he was right, it’s a kid’s game. It’s really for when you’re in your early and mid-’30s. I think that’s when the best speech writers are throwing their best fastballs. And then, if you’re a writer, you should go on and become another kind of writer and do other kinds of things and really write in your own voice. So there, so I never think about it. You know I never see anybody and think, “Oh I’d love to write her stuff or his stuff.”

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Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan on career and politics

By Rebecca Lee

November 2, 2015 / 12:38 PM EST / CBS News

Best-selling author Peggy Noonan is releasing her ninth book, "The Time of Our Lives," a collection of her writings that chronicle her career from being a CBS News producer and writer, to writing speeches for President Ronald Reagan.

On "CBS This Morning" Monday, Noonan shared the back story of one of the most famous speeches she crafted, which President Ronald Reagan delivered in a televised address to the nation after the space shuttle Challenger exploded during takeoff in 1986.

"He had been a little disappointed and I think because everyone was so upset that day," she said. "Everybody was so rattled--there was nothing you could do to make it better, and he felt that as he was given the speech. But afterwards, he changed his mind a little bit. "

Noonan said that the speech, the pinnacle of which was the line that the astronauts had "slipped the surly bonds of earth and touched the face of God," was inspired by a poem that she had memorized in junior high school - John Magee's High Flight .

"I didn't even know if he knew the poem, I just had a hunch he did," she said laughing. "Turns out he called me the next day and his first words were, 'How did you know I knew that poem?'"

Noonan said she learned to write "for the ear" during her days at CBS News, working with " Murrow's Boys" in the radio and television newsroom. Since then, she has gone on to become one of the most well-known voices in American politics. While the Wall Street Journalist columnist said she did not like to offend people, she has harshly criticized politicians in her writings.

In a recent op-ed about GOP candidate Jeb Bush, she slammed his campaign, writing: "He has not succeeded this year, and there is no particular reason to believe he will."

"I take it very much as part of my job to just tell you honestly what I think I'm seeing and you're going to ruffle some feathers," she explained. "I always hope, I promise you, at the end of the day that I'm wrong."

Noonan also weighed in on the state of the 2016 presidential elections: "The good thing about what's happening on the Republican side is it's alive, it's vibrant, it's a fight, it's a scrum," she said. "You got the most unusual people in America involved in this thing - outsiders, insiders, old, young."

The celebrated Reagan speechwriter voiced her opinion that the ideal candidate for her former job would be someone in their twenties or thirties.

"You should be young enough that you know the stuff of politics hasn't dampened your love and your enthusiasm. All speechwriters should be just a little dreamy," she said. "Cynicism only cuts into your work - it doesn't help it."

• Peggy Noonan
• Ronald Reagan

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Dolan, Anthony "Tony" R.: Files, 1981-1989

Office of speechwriting.

This collection is available in whole for research use. Some folders may still have withdrawn material due to Freedom of Information Act restrictions. Most frequently withdrawn material is national security classified material, personal privacy, protection of the President, etc.

This collection is arranged into seven series.  

SERIES I: SPEECH DRAFTS 1981-1989

This series consists of speech draft material where Anthony Dolan served as the primary speechwriter. The series contains Dolan's assigned Presidential speeches including: major foreign and domestic policy addresses, radio talks, proclamations, statements on current events, citations for awards, political speeches, tapings, remarks for small groups, letters to specific individuals, toasts, and State of the Union Addresses. This series also includes speeches drafted for White House Chiefs of Staff James Baker and Donald Regan, Counselor to the President Edwin Meese, Central Intelligence Director William Casey, and Senator Paul Laxalt. The files consist of copies of the speech as given, all drafts, memorandums with comments and suggested edits, notes, and any background speech research information that was compiled. The arrangement is chronological by the date of the speech.

SERIES II: SPEECH DRAFTS BY OTHER WRITERS

This series consists of speech draft copies written by other speechwriters given to Dolan for editing and institutional purposes. On many of the drafts Dolan’s initials appear after the name of the primary speechwriters. The drafts were composed by Ben Elliott, Mari Maseng, Landon Parvin, and Dana Rohrabacher. This material includes speeches composed for the President, James Baker, Michael Deaver, Ed Meese, Senator Paul Laxalt, and Mrs. Reagan. The arrangement is chronological by the date of the speech. The primary speechwriter is listed on the folder in parentheses, i.e. (Parvin).

SERIES III: SCHEDULES

This series consists of copies of the Presidential Speech Planning Schedules and the President’s Schedules.  The Presidential Speech Planning Schedules cover 1981 to 1984 and list each speech, the date delivered, the assigned speechwriter or writers, the assigned researcher, and the due dates for completion of drafts.  The President’s Schedules include the monthly block schedules for all of 1981, and the daily schedules from 1981 to the first week of 1985. This material is arranged chronologically.

SERIES IV: CORRESPONDENCE

This series consists of personal correspondence received by Dolan and includes thank-you notes, copies of newspaper and magazine articles, letters, resumes, and invitations to a variety of events.  This material is arranged chronologically, with a separate folder for any undated items.

SERIES V: SUBJECT FILE

This series consists of Presidential correspondence edited or written by Dolan, administrative files, clipping files, and a significant number of files regarding crime issues, which was Dolan’s area of expertise when he was a reporter. There are a number of "M" Files for 1983. However, it is unclear if the “M” indicates that these are meeting files or miscellaneous files. The files in this series include correspondence, materials related to Presidential overseas trips, schedules, speech drafts, copies of speeches given by a number of individuals, background materials, newspaper clippings, telephone messages, and press releases. The files are arranged alphabetically by topic or by the last name of individuals forwarding items to Dolan.

SERIES VI: PRESS RELEASES & BREIFINGS

This series consists of copies of press releases issued by the White House Press Office. It also includes press briefings on early Administration topics from Press Secretary James Brady; briefings pertaining to the assassination attempt, general briefings given by other Administration officials on a variety of topics, press releases on variety of topics, Presidential Statements, Presidential Proclamations, and Presidential Remarks. Dolan appears to have retained these copies for his own personal reference use. The material is arranged alphabetically by folder title and then chronologically.

SERIES VII: WHITE HOUSE NEWS SUMMARIES, 1981-1982

This series consists of copies of the White House News Summary. The summaries were compiled and issued by the White House News Summary Office each working day and include two sections. Section A includes brief portions of that day's news stories appearing in major newspapers or on wire service reports regarding national and international events. Section B includes transcripts of portions of network television and radio news broadcasts from the previous day, and any newspaper editorials of interest from the previous day in full. Dolan appears to have retained this material for his own personal reference use. The material is arranged chronologically.

SERIES VIII: TELEPHONE MESSAGES

This series consists of telephone message slips written on small note size pads or Standard Form 63.  The information on the messages is not consistent. Many of the messages only provide first names and do not include dates.  Therefore, this series is not arranged in any particular order.

Anthony “Tony” Dolan joined the White House Speechwriting Staff in March 1981, and stayed until the end of the Reagan’s second term in 1989. Dolan had served as the Director of Special Research and Issues, in the Office of Research and Policy at the Headquarters of the Reagan-Bush Committee, and as a speechwriter. Prior to joining the campaign, Dolan had a distinguished career as an investigative reporter and won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

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President Reagan's farewell address — the speechwriting hits of Peggy Noonan

It's 33 years since president reagan left the oval office, and he departed with a televised farewell address that is celebrated as a speechwriting masterclass..

Last year I had James Button on the podcast, a great speechwriter himself, and he said that the best book he ever read about the art of speechmaking was Peggy Noonan’s ‘ On Speaking Well’ .

Noonan wrote some of President Reagan’s finest and most famous speeches. The best known is probably his televised address following the Challenger space shuttle disaster:

President Reagan had the right voice and tone for this one, and the rule of speechwriting is that the politician always gets the credit, but it’s hard not to marvel at Noonan’s ability to find an ‘on this day’ connection to salute the glory of human exploration:

There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and an historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God”.”

Another Peggy Noonan composition that has gone down as one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century is Reagan’s speech at Normandy for the 40th anniversary of D-Day. If speechwriting is storytelling, here is Saving Private Ryan at the lectern:

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance. The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms. Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

The reason I thought of honouring Noonan, and Reagan, is that the 11th of January 1989 was the date of Reagan’s farewell address. It has the Reagan hallmarks, folksy style, America first nationalism, religiosity, a staunch defence of neoliberalism, and I struggle with most of that content. But the form of the speech, the way a device like a White House window is used to connect Reagan’s tenure to the great history of the nation, it’s all so skilfully done, and there’s a reason, again, that Noonan’s composition is an all time classic:

People ask how I feel about leaving, and the fact is parting is "such sweet sorrow." The sweet part is California, and the ranch, and freedom. The sorrow? The goodbyes, of course, and leaving this beautiful place. You know, down the hall and up the stairs from this office is the part of the White House where the President and his family live. There are a few favorite windows I have up there that I like to stand and look out of early in the morning. The view is over the grounds here to the Washington Monument, and then the Mall, and the Jefferson Memorial. But on mornings when the humidity is low, you can see past the Jefferson to the river, the Potomac, and the Virginia shore. Someone said that's the view Lincoln had when he saw the smoke rising from the battle of Bull Run. Well, I see more prosaic things: the grass on the banks, the morning traffic as people make their way to work, now and then a sailboat on the river. Reflections at a Window I've been thinking a bit at that window. I've been reflecting on what the past eight years have meant, and mean. And the image that comes to mind like a refrain is a nautical one - a small story about a big ship, and a refugee, and a sailor. It was back in the early Eighties, at the height of the boat people, and the sailor was hard at work on the carrier Midway, which was patrolling the South China Sea. The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat - and crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship, and safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck, and stood up and called out to him. He yelled, "Hello, American sailor - Hello, Freedom Man." A small moment with a big meaning, a moment the sailor, who wrote it in a letter, couldn't get out of his mind. And, when I saw it, neither could I.

It’s interesting to read that ‘Hello, Freedom Man’ paragraph. There is no corner of the modern Republican party where that sort of celebration of immigration or boat people could be tolerated.

The Farewell Address was celebrated in an excellent podcast called ‘It Was Said’ hosted by John Meacham.

Meacham also did an episode on the Normandy D-Day anniversary speech:

I’ve tried to get Peggy Noonan on the podcast. She still writes columns and books and has had a long career as a conservative commentator. I had no luck making a request through her website. If you know her, I’d love half an hour to talk to one of the legends of American speechwriting.

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American Experience

Book Excerpt: The Speeches We Keep in Our Heads

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Peggy Noonan is a former television writer and presidential speechwriter who has gained renown as an author, conservative political commentator, and contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal. The speeches she wrote for President Ronald Reagan were widely admired for their effectiveness and contributed to his reputation as "The Great Communicator." This excerpt is taken with permission from her 1998 book, Simply Speaking.

Your own style can be hard to find, your true sound difficult to locate. It takes time. And it's delicate. You're pursuing self-awareness while fighting off self-consciousness. You have to really look at what you've written, really hear what you say and realize, "Oh, that's how I sound." But you have to keep self-consciousness at bay, because self-consciousness makes you change your style. It often makes you imitate how other people sound. But you don't want to sound like other people. You want to sound like you, only a better, clearer you.

When you are writing a speech you can complicate the process and make things more difficult for yourself by thinking about the famous speeches you keep in your head.

There are many great speeches that we all know, or know parts of. Some are in our memories from school, such as Lincoln's second inaugural. Some are in our heads from the media, from the playing and replaying each year of Dr. King's speeches on Martin Luther King Day. Because I admired Bobby Kennedy and I had the retentive brain of a seventeen-year-old when he died, I think sometimes of Ted Kennedy's beautiful eulogy — "Those of us who loved him, and who take him to his rest today..."

There are famous speeches from presidents and others, and we know them so well we know the words that precede and follow the famous phrases:

"Ask not what your country can do for you..."

"I have a dream..."

"Old soldiers never die..."

These are all wonderful, and have made their mark on history.

But they each and all came from moments of high state, of great political consequence, and were spoken by famous leaders. And while it is good to be inspired by these speeches, to know them and love them, it is not good to be daunted by them, to think, "This isn't as good as Kennedy's inaugural, I might as well throw in the towel." And it is not good to attempt to imitate them, for you will wind up sounding like the mayor of Springfield on The Simpsons: "Let the word go fawth in this time and place that the tawch has been passed to a new generation of, uh, snow plowers." The mayor of Springfield, in case you're not a Simpsons fan, is a buffoon.

Most of us are not great leaders speaking at great moments. Most of us are businessmen rolling out our next year's financial goals, or teachers at a state convention making the case for a new curriculum, or nurses at a union meeting explaining the impact of managed care on the hospitals in which we work. And we must have the sound appropriate to us.

Great political speeches tend to have a formality, a certain stentorian sound that is expressed in stately old formulations such as "My fellow citizens... " and "our children, and our children's children" and the exhortatory "Let us..."

"Let us go forth to lead the land we love," which is what JFK said at the end of his inaugural; "Let us bind the nation's wounds," which every president since Lincoln has said.

"Let us..." is a fine old formulation, but like the others it is best left to fine old presidents. Used by nonpresidents and nonleaders it sounds silly.

So hold the lettuce.

Your style should never be taller than you are.

Still, there are things we can learn from the speeches we keep in our heads.

There is often an unadorned quality to sections of great speeches, a directness and simplicity of expression. One reason is that great speeches are composed with concentration, with seriousness: The speaker is so committed to making his point, that being understood and capturing the truth he means to capture, that falseness and furbelows fall away. The result is a striking simplicity and clarity.

While you keep the words of presidents and kings stored in your memory bank, there are some other famous words I want you to put in, if they're not there already, because we can learn something from them.

Stop here and go out and rent The Godfather, Part II. In the middle of that movie, you will find a speech that is one of the most famous of our time, and that a lot of people keep parts of in their heads. (If I were making a compendium of great speeches of the latter half of the twentieth century I would include it.)

It is the speech spoken by the actor Lee Strasberg, who played the part of Hyman Roth, a character inspired by the old gangster Meyer Lansky.

Strasberg was for many years the leader of the Actors Studio, which famously promulgated certain theories of acting that came to be derided by some classicists and Shakespeareans. Whatever your views on the Method, I think Strasberg's work in this film singlehandedly redeemed the Studio from years of... well, Ben Gazzara's kitchen sink macho and Kim Stanley's tremulo lippoloin movies like The Actress .

I'm digressing. BUT it's not so bad to get people seeing pictures of Ben Gazzara in an undershirt and Kim Stanley in a car.

Here is Lee Strasberg's great speech, given as Hyman Roth stood, weak and furious, before cold-eyed Michael Corleone:

There was this kid I grew up with. He was younger than me, sort of looked up to me, you know. We did our first work together, worked our way out of the street. Things were good, we made the most of it. In Prohibition we ran molasses into Canada, made a fortune — your father too.

As much as anyone I loved him and trusted him.

Later on he had an idea: to build a city out of a desert stopover for GIs on the way to the coast.

That kid's name was Moe Green. And the city he invented was Las Vegas.

This was a great man, a man of vision and guts. And there isn't even a plaque or a signpost or a statue of him in that town.

Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn't angry. I knew Moe, I knew he was headstrong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go.

And I said to myself, This is the business we've chosen. I didn't ask who gave the order. Because it had nothing to do with business.

You have two million in a bag in your room. I'm going in to take a nap. When I wake, if the money's on the table I'll know I have a partner. If it isn't I'll know I don't.

That man's name was Moe Green. And the city he invented was Las Vegas.

When Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola wrote those words they thought they were writing dialogue, a theatrical speech of a major character. But... they were writing a great speech.

It is simple, unadorned, direct, declarative. There isn't anything in it that is "eloquent," and yet taken as a whole it is deeply eloquent: It tells you something big in an unforgettable way. There is in it no obvious, signaled rhythm, and yet if you read it aloud you will find in it the beautiful, unconscious rhythm of concentrated human speech. There are no phrases that seem to attempt to conjure up pictures, and yet when you hear it you imagine a Moe Green and see the dusty nothingness of early Las Vegas.

It is simplicity that gives the speech its power. Each word means something and each seems to inevitably follow the word that precedes it and summon the word that follows. And so a kind of propulsion is created: It moves forward, and with good speed.

One of the great things about this speech is that as you hear it you realize that for the first time you're hearing what Hyman Roth really thinks. The plain and unadorned quality of his words signals this. And we pick the signal up because we have gained a sense in our lives that true things are usually said straight and plain and direct.

Most of the important things you will ever say or hear in your life are composed of simple, good, sturdy words. "I love you." "It's over." "It's a boy." "We're going to win." "He's dead."

These are the words of big events. Because they are big you speak with utter and unconscious concentration as you communicate them. You unconsciously edit out the extraneous, the unneeded. (When soldiers take a bullet they don't say, "I have been shot," they say, "I'm hit."

Good hard simple words with good hard clear meanings are good things to use when you speak. They are like pickets in a fence, slim and unimpressive on their own but sturdy and effective when strung together.

(The only bad thing about the Hyman Roth speech is that young Hollywood producers often quote it, changing "This is the business..." to "This is the life we have chosen." It is their way of ironically noting that Hollywood is a tough place. But in this they seem to me like the young men and women of Wall Street and Capitol Hill who use the language of war — holding positions, closing fronts, calling in air cover, making strategic retreats — to talk about business deals and legislation. When I hear them I sometimes wince because they remind me of how I spoke when I was twenty-five, for I too appropriated the metaphors of others. What had I done to earn the right to the metaphors? Not much. That's why I used them. Pascal said doctors wear tall hats because they can't cure you. Kids starting out talking like veterans because they're not. The reason I'm on this small rant is: When you adopt the language of others it usually doesn't make you seem more like them but less. It highlights the differences. It's like wearing a sign that says, "I'm talking big because I'm small." So don't do it. Because you're not small. You're just young. Be patient, the metaphors of your life will come, and you will earn them.)

Another thought on the words you choose when you write. It is not good to flee a longer, more demanding or more unusual word when you write if it is the right word, the one you first thought of naturally as you formulated your thought. If you feel it is the right word, use it. Your don't have to dumb it down. But never strain for a long or demanding word if it does not present itself naturally. If a plain word presents itself first, take that.

An example of the power of plain words:

In late 1996 the writer Tom Wolfe made a speech in New York in which, according to a Talk of the Town piece in the New Yorker, he raised doubts about the spirit and assumptions of modern science. He quoted Nietzsche and questioned whether science would not ultimately destroy its own foundations. As Wolfe summed up his argument, reporter Jay Fieden wrote, "Wolfe's voice dropped to a stage whisper; 'Suddenly I had a picture in my mind of the whole fantastic modern edifice collapsing and man suddenly dropping — stricken! — into the primordial ooze. And he's there floundering around, and he's treading ooze and wondering what's going to become of himself. And suddenly something huge and smooth swims underneath him and boosts him up. He can't see it! He doesn't know what it is! But he's very much impressed. And he gives it a name: God.'"

This is the right stuff. You could never, in an audience, not listen to this, not hear it. Its driving-forward rhythm communicates the speaker's excitement. You can also see it in the swiftness of his imagery — edifice collapsing, man dropping, force lifting. But for me the power of Wolfe's style is seen in two simple words: huge and smooth.

A less gifted writer, knowing he was about to introduce God, would have employed big, godlike words — incredibly vast, colossal. But huge and smoothmade me think as I read (and would have made me think as I heard) of a submarine, and then of a big hand — God's big hand. Which I saw once he got to the word God.

Only a confident communicator, one who knows he can use the word he's thinking, the word that came naturally to him, can talk like that.

Let me make a last point about words and the power of simplicity. (I am asking you to let me out of respect, and also letting you know that if I'm boring it will be over soon.)

When I was a teenager I used words like "coruscatingly" and "obfuscate" and "ameliorate." They are good words and I still use them, but not as much. The reason is connected to what I said about young Hollywood producers and the Hyman Roth speech.

It's that when you are young and life is less packed with events, history, knowledge and experience, your vocabulary is often more elaborate, as if to make up for the lack. You want to show that you're alive to the bigness of adulthood and its thoughts.

As you grow older and life itself becomes more elaborate and complex, you find yourself using simpler words. And this is not only because your brain cells are dying. It is also, for some of us, because you have grown used to life, even comfortable with it, and understand that it comes down to essentials, that the big things count and the rest is commentary, and that way down deep in the heart of life's extraordinary complexity is... extraordinary simplicity.

I think that to achieve true adulthood is to understand the simplicity of things. We're locked in a funny arc, most of us, in terms of what we know. When you are goony and fourteen years old you think the most important thing in life is love. Then you mature, become more sober and thoughtful, and realize the most important thing in life is achieving, leaving your mark — making breakthroughs in the field of science, or winning an Academy Award in recognition of a serious body of work, or creating security for yourself and your family through having a good house and sending your kids to good schools. And then you get old and realize... the most important thing in life is love. Giving love to others and receiving it from God. All the rest, the sober thoughtful things, are good and constructive... but love is the thing. The rest is just more or less what you were doing between fourteen and wisdom.

The language of love is simple, it is simplicity itself. The great novelist Edith Wharton noted this when she talked about romantic love. She said that no matter what the gift of the writer, whether genius or dunce, the language of love letters is always the same: "I love you, I love you, my darling, you are so wonderful...."

The language of love is simple because love is big. And big things are best said, are almost always said, in small words.

All right, let's cool off and get back to politics.

Here is another speech to keep in mind as you write, for it too is marked by lovely simplicity.

The best speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1996 was not Bill Clinton's or Al Gore's but that of the actor Christopher Reeve. Reeve's speech promised to be memorable, if only for the moving sight of a paralyzed man in a wheelchair gallantly addressing a throng from a stage. But it was a truly impressive speech because in it he said things that he believed to be true, and said them in a strikingly simple way.

Over the last few years we've heard a lot about something called family values. And like many of you I've struggled to figure out what that means. But since my accident I've found a definition that seems to make sense. I think it means that we're all family, and that we all have values. And if that's true, if America really is a family, then we have to recognize that many of our family are hurting.

He was talking about how he was thinking about a great question, who we are and what we owe each other. And though "hurting" in this context is one of those horrid boomer clichés, Reeves could get away with it.

... One of the smartest things we can do about disability is invest in research that will protect us from disease and lead to cures. This country already has a long history of doing that.

He is asking for money but doing it graciously: We need more, but then giving is an American tradition.

During my rehabilitation I met a young man named Gregory Patterson. When he was innocently driving through Newark, New Jersey, a stray bullet from a gang shooting went through his car window right into his neck, and severed his spinal cord. Five years ago he might have died. Today because of research he's alive. But merely alive is not enough. We have a moral and economic responsibility to ease his suffering and prevent others from experiencing such pain. And to do that, we don't need to raise taxes. We just need to raise our expectations.

He is painting a picture; you're seeing it as he's saying it. He makes a point to call Patterson innocent because he wants you to know this wasn't some lowlife gangbanger but a person like you, and that it could happen to you.

At the end of this section he will say, and will say again, "This is not a partisan exhortation." Now, the canny Reeve is a very partisan fellow, the former head of the left-liberal Creative Coalition, but he knows that sometimes the best way to be effectively partisan is to be rhetorically nonpartisan.

...On the wall of my room when I was in rehab was a picture of the space shuttle blasting off, autographed by every astronaut now at NASA. On top of the picture it says, "We found nothing is impossible." That should be our motto. Not a Democratic motto, not a Republican motto, but an American motto. Because this is not something one party can do alone. It's something we as a nation must do together.

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible. Then they seem improbable. And then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable....

This was rousing.

The whole speech was rousing. Part of the reason: his language was so simple and plain, his sentences were like sentences in conversation, short and to the point. Because of the nature of his injury, Reeve cannot breathe without assistance. He has to pause and take in air from a tube; as he speaks he exhales. And so his sentences and phrases had to be short and sharp, no words could be wasted, he didn't have time for show-off stuff. Each word had its own weight and dropped like a smooth coin.

Keep this in mind as you write.

By the way, on "painting pictures:" I think it is natural to humans but particularly natural today, in a media-saturated environment, for people to be doing two or three things while they're listening. I watch TV and read newspapers at the same time. My son monitors The X-Files and draws illustrations for the fourth-grade sports newspapers at the same time. This may not be good, but I suspect it's true of a lot of us. So when you stand and speak it is good, if you can, and if it is appropriate to what you're saying, to give people the outlines of a picture that they can fill in with their imaginations as you speak. Like a fellow who was driving through Newark and was shot in the neck.

If you don't, they will probably come up with their own pictures and imaginings, which may not have anything to do with what you're trying to say.

Excerpt from Noonan, Peggy. Simply Speaking. New York: ReganBooks, 1998, pp. 46-57. Used with permission.

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