What I Saw At The Revolution

Peggy Noonan, “What I Saw At The Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era”, Random House, 1990, 346 Pages

Peggy Noonan is currently a columnist for The Wall Street Journal; she is the best selling author of seven books on American politics, history and culture. What I Saw At The Revolution was her first book. After beginning in radio and then working at CBS for Dan Rather, Peggy moved on to write speeches for Presidents Reagan and Bush from 1984 to 1989. This book does not offer comprehensive discussions of policies and politics, but it does give a very good portrayal of working day to day in the White House as a speech writer.

Reagan's was obviously a “rhetorical presidency,” as Noonan observes. The rhetorical presidency was not something envisioned by the founding generation but was conceived over a century later by Woodrow Wilson. The rhetorical President is supposed to supply, through popular speeches, the kind of leadership that can tap public feelings and rally support for needed legislative initiatives. In Wilsonian theory, such a presidency is the institution best suited to take us into the future. We sure have a rhetorical presidency with Obama.

My Notes:

Pg. 67: Speechwriting was where the administration got invented every day. And so Speechwriting was, for some, the center of gravity in that administration, the point where ideas and principles still counted. For others—at the State department, for instance—speechwriting was a natural and unhappy force of nature, a black hole from which no sophisticated thought could escape.

Pg. 70: The irony of modern speeches is that as our ability to disseminate them has exploded (an American president can speak live, not only to America but to Europe, to most of the world), their quality has declined. We as a nation no longer learn the rhythms of public utterance from Shakespeare and the Bible. When young Lincoln was sprawled in front of the fireplace reading Julius Caesar, he was, unconsciously learning to be a poet.

Pg. 106: What kind of body language tips you that a pol is lying? Well, it’s not when he tugs at his tie or straightens his cuffs, and it’s not when he moves his hands like this. What gives it away that a pol is lying is he moves his lips.

Pg. 249: Polls are the obsession of every modern White House and every political professional, Republican and Democratic. In every political meeting, of there was a pollster there his words carried the most weight because he is the only one with hard data, with actual numbers on actual paper. Everyone else has an opinion, the pollster has a fact.

Pg. 250: The chief tool of the pollster looking for an in-depth sense of the views of the people is the focus group. A modern focus group is simply, a group of a dozen or so citizens invited to attend a meeting at which they are asked to answer questions regarding their feelings on public issues as honesty as they can, and for which they are often paid a nominal fee.

Pg. 251: A focus group in 1863 would have backed a negotiated peace with the Confederates. A focus group in 1963 would have frowned on Martin Luther King, Jr., taking to the streets of Birmingham. Focus groups can communicate opinion, but they cannot tell you what is right.

Pg. 267: Reagan’s convictions: He was a conservative who truly believed that a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you’ve got. He believed that government out of control is the main threat to individual freedom in the modern world. And he believes that where man was, evil was possible; that there is good and bad in man and that while the better angels are there, so is the thing that makes the death camps and the boat people. He believed that when men too filled with evil organize the Reich results, and the Soviet revolution.

Pg. 345: Political activists moved by hate—for liberals, for conservatives, for the rich, for America’s sins—make the process ugly. They cannot engage in honorable debate because they cannot see the honor on the other side. They are like diggers who will never reach the treasure because they are too busy throwing the contents of their shovels at each other to get to the gold.