Firing Line

- The voice of a generation.

This week on "Firing Line."

- I was there for a party beginning to change, and I could feel the populist impulses beginning to gather.

- [Margaret] Peggy Noonan was there as a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and George H.W.

Bush, and her writing helped presidents meet the moment again and again.

- These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc.

These are the heroes helped end a war.

- We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them as they slipped the surly bonds of earth.

- For an endless, enduring dream and a thousand points of light.

- [Margaret] She went on to become a bestselling author and one of the most influential columnists in America.

A lifelong conservative who never voted for Trump, she won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2017.

Donald Trump has called her a "simplistic writer" and "stuck in the past glory of Reagan."

- A lot had to happen for Donald Trump to win.

The entire Republican establishment, and I would say the Democratic establishment, would have to blow it big time for about 20 years.

And that is what happened.

- [Margaret] As she reflects on the transformation of the Republican Party, and the country, (supporters cheer) what does Peggy Noonan say now?

- [Announcer] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Cliff and Laurel Asness, the Meadowlark Foundation, the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. (bright music) - Peggy Noonan, welcome to "Firing Line."

- Thank you, Margaret.

It's great to be here.

- I've known you for many years, and it is a great pleasure to welcome you to this program.

Your new book, "A Certain Idea of America," is a compilation of 80 columns that you have written between 2016 and now.

As we sit here in the wake of a divisive election in which a twice-impeached convicted felon, a man for whom you never voted, and even called for his removal from office after January 6th, has been democratically reelected, in this moment, what is your idea?

- What is my certain idea of America?

- What is your certain idea of America?

- The phrase "a certain idea of America" comes from the famous first sentence of Charles de Gaulle's war memoirs, "All of my life I've had a certain idea of France."

And I remember that when I read it, read that translation, I thought, "Oh my gosh, that is true of me."

All of my life I feel I've had a certain idea of America; that it is new, that it is good, that it is great, that it is a startling and original thing in history, that it must be continued, that our proper generational attitude towards it is protectiveness.

Receive it from the older folk.

Keep it in your hands.

Shine it up a little bit.

Hand it on safely to the next generation.

And the pieces I picked for the book I think kind of reflect that general feeling and appreciation and affection.

- So how do you square the reelection of a man who you're very clear about doesn't uphold the same set of standards as any of the modern American conservative movement's forbearers in this moment?

- Well, I guess, you know, I continue feeling mellow, perhaps surprisingly to others, almost surprisingly to me.

My mellow feeling is this: if you believe in democracy, in this big, messy, inadequate system, which is still better than all the other messy, inadequate systems, if you believe in it, you believe in its outcomes, you must accept with as much grace as you can muster the outcomes that you did not want.

- Before you went into politics, you began your career as a writer at CBS News Radio working with Dan Rather.

- Yes.

- And you described the newsroom in the mainstream media environment in 1980 on the night that Ronald Reagan was elected.

- [Peggy] Yes.

- And you describe a silence that overcame the newsroom that actually made me think of how newsrooms across America must have felt in 2016 and in 2024.

- Totally.

Look, they're pretty similar.

That night at CBS News in New York at the big broadcast center on West 57th Street, I was a young professional.

But I notice, I'm looking around at the other young professionals all my age, in our 30s, late 20s to early 40s, they were like in a shocked disapproval at this horrible thing that had happened to America.

This movie star actor named Ronald Reagan had come along and, amazingly enough, been given the presidency by the crazy American people.

And I was just, "Jeez, I kind of like him, I think this is good news."

But the thing I will never forget is that my level of people were upset, the producers, the anchors, the writers.

But I would look up and see two people, one was the cameramen, regular working guys from Long Island and Jersey, and the secretaries who were working late to help the anchor, and they were happy.

And I would give them a look and go like this.

They'd give me the look.

Okay, that's 1980.

I am here to tell you that of course that same dynamic kicked in on election night 2016.

It is a class division that was starting with the Reagan Democrats back in the '70s and '80s that has continued and become more so.

- Yeah.

You criticized the mainstream media for losing its head, that's a direct quote, during Donald Trump's first term.

What advice do you have for the press heading into Donald Trump's second term?

- People look at the news now, say a big broadcast news shows, and also at newspapers, and they think, "Oh, there should be more conservative commentary."

That's not it.

That's not my advice.

There's enough conservative commentary.

It's all over the place.

There's enough liberal commentary.

You know what I'd say to newspapers right now?

Keep giving us information.

We don't need your views, your attitude, your sneaky, snarky headlines.

Newspapers and broadcast news, they've become lazy about reporting the news.

Young reporters age, say, 23 to 40 think that their job is thinking aloud about our culture and news things that happen and our ideology.

They're not such good reporters.

Become reporters again.

Dig.

"New York Times," "Wall Street Journal" put six people on a story that may take a year to report, but it's a life-changing story.

So my advice for the news would be, why don't you take your energy and brilliance and find the news?

- Yeah.

You started in the news, but you went on to write some of Ronald Reagan's most poignant and memorable speeches.

- [Engineer] Challenger now heading down range.

- When the space shuttle, the Challenger exploded in 1986, (explosion booming) you have a story about how when Ronald Reagan delivered the final line of the speech that you wrote, which, by the way, you mentioned was not heavily staffed or edited because it was rushed to the president- - It's what saved it.

It's what saves anything.

Don't have a thousand spoons in the fondue pot, you know?

Just have one or two.

- 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.

Thank you.

- How does a speech like that reflect your idea of the role of a president in a moment of national crisis?

- I was quite aware that the country was rattled and saddened.

I was aware that everybody had watched the trauma at the same moment.

You know, when John F. Kennedy was shot, most of us didn't see the tape until days, the Zapruder film for weeks.

We all watched the Challenger explode together and our kids were watching it at school.

So I thought the president simply must address what his nation has just experienced and he must address it as he is, which is a leader who knows, first of all, be truthful.

Don't shade this in any way.

We just saw a disaster.

But the disaster had meaning.

The disaster has repercussions.

He will address them.

That is what a real leader does.

- After the Republican National Convention, you observed that the Republican Party that we have today is an explicitly Trumpian party.

It has come a very long way.

I would say it's fallen a long way, that's my editorialization, not yours, from Ronald Reagan.

How do you think and understand the party's transformation?

- A lot had to happen for Donald Trump to stand up, gain purchase, move forward, and win.

What had to happen?

The entire Republican establishment, and I would say the Democratic establishment, would have to blow it big time for about 20 years.

And that is what happened.

That is the launching pad of Donald Trump.

We had two big, long, un-won wars that were the biggest foreign policy mistake in America since Vietnam, which was a horror.

And the Republican Party somehow never even got around to admitting it.

We had a 2008 economic crash.

One of the things you hire Republicans for is to understand money, understand what's going on on Wall Street, keep their little eagle eyes on those traders.

(scoffs) The entire economy just blows up.

A bunch of fraudsters were kiting the American economy and the Republicans in power didn't notice.

So the Republican establishment had to die through harakiri.

It killed itself.

Then it was extremely indignant when an opportunist named Donald Trump said, "You are yesterday.

You are a failure."

They were so surprised to be told that and they were so surprised that he won.

They were so surprised when he said, "We didn't need those wars."

They were so surprised when he said, "2008 was your fault."

Why were they so surprised?

Margaret, my own politics and political views, I guess, are a little more poignant in that I felt what Donald Trump felt and had been writing it for some time about the Republican establishment.

My politics as I've grown older has become more populist.

I relaxed about government spending.

I thought, America is in trouble.

I would rather we spend too much than we ignore people in the Midwest who are on these terrible drugs and seem to be giving up on life.

So I was politically more and more where Trump was while looking at Trump and thinking, "I've known him for 40 years as a figure in New York.

He's not a serious man.

This is not a man of substance, thoughtfulness, and depth.

He says things that no American president should ever say.

I think he's nuts.

So I'm not going to support him.

But yeah, his issues, yeah, they're my issues."

Especially, by the way, when I talked about the Republican establishment committing harakiri, refusing to control the American border for 20 years.

That's a form of harakiri too.

Donald Trump looked at it and thought, "Are you insane, you people?"

So that's where he came from.

But my own feelings are mixed and, for me, poignant.

- You say at one point that moving lives move you.

And many of the columns in the book are about lives that have moved you.

- Yeah.

- Historical figures, contemporary cultural icons like Taylor Swift.

- [Peggy] Yes.

- But one recurring character is Margaret Chase Smith.

- Yes.

- Who was the first Republican female senator from the state of Maine and the first Republican to speak out against Joe McCarthy amidst- - Yes.

Isn't that funny?

The only Republican senator and she was the only one who stood up to that bad man.

- You wrote this kind of courage is the kind of courage, I'm paraphrasing, not as beautifully as you, that we would like to see now against the backdrop of a lie about our elections.

And it was a more subtle criticism, it seemed to me, of Donald Trump in 2020 not accepting the election results, but without bamming him on the nose, right?

It used- - I achieved subtlety.

Yay.

I picked my columns that I wanted to give another chance, and I realized there was a theme to those I wanted to give another life to.

And it was that we need to remember as we self-criticize and beat ourselves up, as we take another look at our history, try to remember the great ones who lived difficult, arduous lives, but who produced wonder, who did fabulous things in politics, in art.

I just think it's an important thing for us now to hold on to a certain amount of wonder and awe about what wonderful people can do, like Billy Graham, Tom Wolfe, all these people.

And I just realized also that the thing that has given me most pleasure in my long career is giving honest, fact-based praise of human beings.

- There are a lot of journalists who would prefer to be honest, fact-based, and critical.

- And that has its place.

It may have taken up a bigger space than it should.

- But praise- - I mean, look, the news is always bad and criticism is something we can always do, and it's so often so warranted.

But when praise is in order, do that.

It's rarer and more helpful in some way.

You know, I sort of go through life thinking, no matter who you are, you're trying to keep up your morale.

Everybody's trying to keep up their morale.

You're just trying to think, "I can get through another day.

I can do this.

I can do it.

It's okay.

I'm doing my best."

It's not bad to help people keep up their morale.

- You're a devout Catholic.

- I am.

- You know that the original host of this program, William Buckley, Jr., was also a devout Catholic.

- Yeah.

- I want you to listen to this clip in 1978 of an interview that he had with a Catholic traditionalist about the pope that had just died, Paul VI, and Paul VI's approach to communism.

- But he has a left-wing touch.

And Paul was doing this deliberately from a rather cold-blooded, rational policy because he was persuaded from the year 1967 that come what may, we couldn't stop the advent of communist parties legally or by violence, and hence his idea was let's survive by making friends.

- You wrote a book about Pope John Paul II and also worked for Ronald Reagan.

And the two of them we know partnered in an effort that ultimately helped lead to the end of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Why did the church's stance on communism shift?

- Because they got a pope in John Paul who had lived under communism, knew what it was, survived it.

He was from Poland, part of the Warsaw Pact countries that were kept down, taken by Stalin and kept down and made communist and made ridiculous.

And one of the first things he did as pope was go back to Poland, amazingly, the Soviet Union allowed him to, and to have a huge mass held on an open field.

A million people showed up.

It was at that point the biggest mass, Catholic mass in human history.

And a kind of psychic break began at that point that was very helpful to the Western disapproval and resistance of communism.

It became part of, it was part of Ronald Reagan anyway, but after that, it was more understandable that he would speak of the evil empire.

Do you know what I mean?

It was really part of a big thing.

- Let me ask you then about the Vatican's position today towards the Chinese Communist Party and the criticism that the Catholic Church is receiving for failing to stand up for human rights abuses in China and for failing to, what critics say, take a stand consistent with its history.

- Yes, and consistent with its beliefs.

I think it is legitimate criticism, I must say.

I see the church right now as a great blur.

It is a confusing thing.

I do not understand what Pope Francis is up to or how internally he really sees things.

He confuses me.

He confuses me.

- You have said that you have faith in the institutions of our country even against the backdrop of a second Trump presidency.

When there have been threats to the media and promises of retribution that I think it's fair to say we don't know how seriously to take them.

I think some people are taking them more seriously than others.

- Yeah, I think that's fair.

I think we're gonna learn a lot maybe by what happens with the FBI.

I think the candidate to lead it, Kash Patel, is not someone who leaves you immediately impressed as to his accomplishments and attainments and ability to run that organization with a marvelous, impartial fairness and adherence to the law.

So I'm worried about that.

I have a funny feeling where I always sense, as a conservative, that our institutions are frail.

They are manmade and man-led.

They are frail.

At the same time, they've gotten us through a lot of the crap of history.

They've gotten us through a lot of life.

They've taken a lot of pressure and there's a lot of good people in them.

But I guess we're going to learn a few things about the strength of certain institutions in the next few years.

- You've also registered your concern about the nomination of Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary.

And what we've seen since that nomination is a full-on campaign to intimidate senators prior to these hearings.

What do you make of that?

That seems to be a new tactic.

- I don't like it.

It's not good.

Fabulous people like, I mean, just really solid conservatives like Joni Ernst of Iowa, Lisa Murkowski, coming under pressure for asking serious, correct, mature questions about the ability of this man to head the Department of Defense.

And these questions are not all based on, there was a woman who reported he was extremely inappropriate, there are friends or associates who report he drinks too much or... Guys, there is the central question of the head of the Defense Department must be one of your wise men, must be someone who knows where everything is, what is all possible throughout the world.

The head of your Defense Department is going to be in the Oval Office when North Korea launches and we're not quite sure of the warhead or the trajectory.

This must be a person of depthful experience, depthful knowledge of history on a George C Marshall, former Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, former Defense Secretary, Frank Carlucci level.

Big, smart people.

Pete Hegseth is a young man.

Has never worked in such an organization as Defense.

He is a culture warrior.

That's good.

The world needs culture warriors.

He's a morning TV host.

I'm glad.

The world needs them too.

Is that person right for that job?

Again, I'm so glad our republican setup, the Senate, will sit down, ask him every question.

I'm sure he'll have been speed-reading Thucydides and then will have quotes.

Do you know what I mean?

But you better be serious about this, senators.

You better make sure he's the right one for this job.

He doesn't have to be.

And if you decide he is not, very good.

Withstand the pressure.

Make your decision.

Make your vote.

These are life and death questions for the country.

They're not just, "Gee, Trump put up six appointments and they're the bad ones.

He had six good ones, six bad ones.

How many can I reject without getting in trouble?"

That's not the question.

The question is, what will be safe for America?

- How much confidence do you have in the Senate's constitutional responsibility to advise and consent, and to actually serve as a check against the executive branch, even if it's the same party?

- You know, I don't know if they will, but they better.

- Yeah.

- If they do not, they will regret it.

- You have written your column, Declarations, your commentary column at the Wall Street Journal for almost 25 years.

How do you think about the first quarter of the 21st century?

- A, I was lucky to be there.

I had a friend.

I'm quite serious.

I had a friend who died in a terrible plane explosion some years back.

And ever since then, when I think about life, I think, I am lucky to be here, Judith is not.

So we're lucky to be here.

No matter how terrible the history is, no matter what's happening.

And you can have a say in it and you can become part of it.

I would say of the American people, part of the reason for the rise of Donald Trump is that, so far, they've more or less, without thinking about it necessarily, they voted on what they think of the 21st century.

And they don't like it.

- Yeah.

- They don't like it for the five reasons you can immediately think of, from international things, foreign affair things, AI, what social media has done to their kids, - Economic opportunity.

- what's happened to American culture on the ground.

So they don't like it.

It would be really nice if I could see in the second quarter of the 21st century, which I hope to be here for, for some part, if I could see people start to think, this isn't so bad, I think I'm seeing progress.

If they could feel that way again, based on the facts around them, that would be a nice thing.

- Peggy Noonan, the book is "A Certain Idea of America."

Thank you for joining me on "Firing Line."

- Margaret, it was the best interview.

Thank you very much.

- [Announcer] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Cliff and Laurel Asness, the Meadowlark Foundation, the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. (bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music) - [Announcer] You're watching PBS.