What I Saw at the Revolution : A Political Life in the Reagan Era

Rating:
Summary: A Look "Behind the Curtain"
Review: "Specificity is the soul of credibility," Noonan tells us and goes on to earn her credibility through the detailed descriptions presented in this masterful slice of American history. The quote actually refers to the editing of a canned stump speech edited slighted for various locations so that local politicians and locations distinguish one place from another on the tour.

Noonan allows readers to capture the flavor of the internal fighting among the powers that be in a presidential administration. Nearly everyone can identify with the "experts" being totally wrong in their advice. She discusses several incidences where she was second-guessed by people trying to "help her" improve her speeches and shows how the ones that were unedited were the best received. Virtually anyone in communication can identify with that sort of experience at some level.

There's an element of mystery included. She talks about Reagan giving her a joke, mentioning that someday she could use it when she did other things. When he hung up the phone she says, "he knows something I don't know. He knows I'm going to write about these days." She did and the result tells a lot about human nature, politics, and dysfunctional systems. In spite of the dysfunctions, worthwhile accomplishments were made.

Rating:
Summary: A Look "Behind the Curtain"
Review: "Specificity is the soul of credibility," Noonan tells us and goes on to earn her credibility through the detailed descriptions presented in this masterful slice of American history. The quote actually refers to the editing of a canned stump speech edited slighted for various locations so that local politicians and locations distinguish one place from another on the tour.

Noonan allows readers to capture the flavor of the internal fighting among the powers that be in a presidential administration. Nearly everyone can identify with the "experts" being totally wrong in their advice. She discusses several incidences where she was second-guessed by people trying to "help her" improve her speeches and shows how the ones that were unedited were the best received. Virtually anyone in communication can identify with that sort of experience at some level.

There's an element of mystery included. She talks about Reagan giving her a joke, mentioning that someday she could use it when she did other things. When he hung up the phone she says, "he knows something I don't know. He knows I'm going to write about these days." She did and the result tells a lot about human nature, politics, and dysfunctional systems. In spite of the dysfunctions, worthwhile accomplishments were made.

Rating:
Summary: Noonan an Anti-Dote to Hillary, Oprah, The View, Fonda
Review: By listening to Media Gods you would never know that there are women who are conservative and can read and write and actually believed in Ronald Reagan.

Well, there goes all the invitations to fancy Manhattan parties. No more power-lunching with the hairy-armpit wing of feminism.

Rather than get pure policy and political argument, you get the perspective of a detached, amused observer in the middle of the White House world.

Noonan creates an image of what it would be like to run into Reagan, shake his hand, and say a few words. There are memorable images of Reagan's staff.

But Noonan gets beyond sensory data and provides historically important information: some on Reagan's staff and the administration tried to steer Reagan's speeches away from his convictions.

The myth is that Reagan was managed, handled, and marketed super-cynically. The truth is, through his speechmaking and Noonan's assistance, he stayed true to his principles.





Rating:
Summary: You'll get a real fee for life at the White House
Review: Heard the taped version of WHAT I SAW AT THE REVOLUTION,
written and read by Peggy Noonan . . . she was a special assistant to the president during the height of the Reagan era.

Noonan worked with him, and then vice-president Bush, on
some of their most famous and memorable speeches . . . she
eventually became a speechwriter for George Bush during his
first presidential campaign, helping to dispel his "wimpy" image
by coining such eloquent phrases as "a thousand points
of light" and "a kinder, gentler nation."

I got a real feel for the trials and tribulations of what it is
like working in the White House and would strongly recommend
this book to anybody wanting to learn more what such a
life entails.

Also, I think I'll always remember how Reagan wanted
his speeches to come across . . . he wanted them
to ALWAYS emphasize positive words, so rather
than say, "I'll never forget," he used, "I'll always
remember" . . . it might sound like a small thing;
however, the result was often quite the opposite.

Rating:
Summary: What I Now See at the Revolution
Review: I lived through the bulk of the Reagan revolution, having been born in 1982. Obviously, though, I hardly remember it. Bush is the first president I can begin to remember, and only during Clinton's second term did I fully open my eyes to the political world. What Peggy Noonan offers here is a look into the past that even few then-spectators would recognize. The inner-working of the Reagan administration are here partially revealed, and what is revealed is highly interesting. Furthermore, Ms. Noonan has shed light on some of the ways *every* White House *must* work. And yet Ms. Noonan doesn't stop with a mere description: she provides an eye-opening and well-written description of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue during the 80's. This book also opens the shades on the beginnings of the now-burgeoning neo/social conservative movement in the United States.

Rarely can you find so much in so few pages. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Peggy saw a lot
Review: Peggy helped see the revolution through. What she didn't tell us it was a revolution of the rich versus the poor and middle class. Peggy and Ronnie should feel great in the fact that "the revolution" makes it so we either don't have health care or have terrible health care, but still have to pay high premiums for service which should be available to everyone. That "the revolution" put many people out on the street and "the revolution" led to uncalled numerous deaths worldwide to benefit the wealthy. May they rot in hell!

Rating:
Summary: Reliving the Glory That Was The Reagan Revolution
Review: Peggy Noonan's account of life in the Reagan White House is clever, insightful and inspiring. Her vivid descriptons of the West Wing and Executive Office make you feel as if you are sitting right beside her as she crafts the speeches that for many defined the Reagan Presidency. In addition, I enjoyed the autobiographical elements of this book--which included Ms. Noonan's background and formation of her political ideology. In a straightforward, unpretentious style, both Ms. Noonan (and her former boss)remind us that there is still an American dream worth achieving.

Rating:
Summary: A delightful account of the Reagan era
Review: Peggy Noonan's autobiography of her years in the Reagan White House is simply a wonderful book. She has an engaging style, penetrating insight, and charming humor. Admittedly conservative, she defends her point-of-view with eloquence and logic. But this must be expected. She was a gifted speech writer. Reagan and Bush senior were fortunate to have the use of her talents. And now we have her account as a valuable historical record. Read it! You will enjoy this book. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Candide on the NY-DC shuttle.
Review: Peggy Noonan's political coming-of-age memoir is a delight for anyone, liberal or conservative. Noonan, a resolutely middle-class product of Long Island, New Jersey and Fairleigh Dickinson University, wrote first for Dan Rather, the CBS anchor, and then Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

She offers a wonderful recounting of her flirtation with and eventual repulsion from the American left, most vividly in her description of a bus trip to a Washington antiwar protest. It's a dim echo, really, of the intellectual journey taken by her political hero, Reagan.

Her recollection of the Reagan speechwriting shop is as compelling as any scene from Toby Ziegler's office in TV's "The West Wing." It rings true and its very exciting reading, even to this day. Also, her practical advice on political speechwriting is useful and valid whether you are a Democrat or Republican.

Working in that speechwriting shop, Noonan gave Reagan some of his most successful emotional appeals: The D-Day anniversary paean to "The Boys of Pointe du Hoc," the tribute to the Challenger astronauts. She followed that up with one of the most effective political attacks in US political history, George H.W. Bush's evisceration of his 1988 opponent, Michael Dukakis, at the New Orleans GOP convention.

I dock the book one star because of Noonan's lack of objectivity regarding Reagan, whom she loves like a kindly, if remote, grandfather. However, "What I Saw ..." is very much her best work. Her later books are either polemics or treacly valentines. Too bad, because she's such a wonderful memoirist.

Rating:
Summary: Very literate, but the partisan cheap shots bring it down
Review: This is a good book, although with some flaws. It's clear that Noonan is a good writer, and a lot of the book is very affecting. It's largely a bunch of sketches strung together by her loose reminescences and/or her exposition of some abstract theory, each taking up a chapter. This makes it very fun to just pick up the book and flip around - the theories are often pretty convincing and the sketches (typical Washington memoir stuff, although with a few concealed identities) are interesting, of course.

The drawbacks are that such a literate book has flashes of really cheap partisan snipping. When you consider it, what made Reagan (and Noonan's book) successful is their tapping into not just a Republican wellspring of thought, but into an American one. Noonan reads FDR to get the "voice" of the presidency, for example (hard to imagine that happening with W's minions). So it's jarring when in the midst of her book she makes some passive-aggressive, straw man attack on liberals, who of course aren't able to defend themselves. I remember Reagan used to make a speech in the 1980 campaign about how "some people will tell you America's day has passed, that its glory days are behind it, that it can no longer lead in the world today" or words to that effect. Carter did not say that, and no one with a clue ever would. Reagan could have made the same point about American heming and hawing without the straw man method.

So it is with Noonan: every now and then she'll make some comment about how Democrats are ashamed of the lower class, or some aside about how extreme some person is, and of course she can get away with it - it's her book. But it takes away from her appeal as a thoughtful conservative. It's ironic to see her do this and then, for example, absolve Pat Buchanan of any extremism by noting, "wow, he likes Auden!"

Which brings me to the other flaw: as the above review noted, she acts like a schoolgirl towards Reagan. He is SOOO perfect, nice, dreamy, etc. Gimme a break - has she ever heard of Truman, for example? But so much for conservative individualism: she seems content to worship the king to no end, to embarrassing and detrimental effect to her book.

So final verdict: well-done, but with flaws, but definitely worth it.