Peggy Noonan on Trump and her new book “A Certain Idea of ​​America”

To say that Peggy Noonan is one of our best political columnists is not entirely fair to her, as she so often writes about subjects and people that are not political, or at least not overtly so. She is profoundly fair and empathetic, and she writes in such a deceptively easy style that reading her every week is like sitting across the table and listening while drinking your coffee.

Her latest book, A certain idea of ​​America, is a collection of 80 of her latest The Wall Street Journal columns drawn from some 400, and re-reading them I was struck not only by how timeless they are (a neat trick for a weekly columnist), but by the breadth of her knowledge. There is an old saying that a columnist can be wrong, but can never be in doubt; However, Noonan brilliantly disproves that rule by gently suggesting rather than loudly proclaiming a way of thinking about a person, a problem, or life itself.