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CNN Live Today

Interview with Peggy Noonan

Aired November 29, 2001 - 16:49   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the days since September 11, when words have sometimes failed many of us, as they often do with me, we have turned to those who are know for their thoughtful prose and their insights. I spoke recently with former Reagan speech writer, Peggy Noonan about her new book on the former president, conversations with the current president and about the ways that she has been changed by what happened in New York, the city she lives in and loves.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PEGGY NOONAN, AUTHOR, "WHEN CHARACTER WAS KING": I will tell you, cliches last because a lot of them are true. The big cliche about September 11 is that it changed everything. It has. It changed all of our lives up there, in a way that I actually think even though Washington was so badly hit, terribly hit on that day, it was a different drama in New York, where 4,500 people died and 4,500 families were impacted.

My own son, who was not on-site and who did not have anyone he loved in the World Trade Center, was with kids who saw it all happen in Brooklyn Heights. And they were all, you know, covered. They saw the horribleness of it. It looked like the end of the world to them. I think there is, as we were discussing before we went on there, is an untold part of this story and it has to do with the impact on our children of what they saw for about three days in September of 2001 on TV, and in New York and in person, some of them.

WOODRUFF: And making them grow up faster, robbing them, in some sense, of some of their childhood and their youth.

NOONAN: Do you know what I think it is? When you are young, when you are 11, or 12, or 13, you look so much forward to when you are 25. You have a romantic sense of what it is going to be to be an adult and on your own and with a job and chasing boys and girls and having fun. And my sense with my son's generation, he is 14, is that it has taken from them a beautiful assumption about ease and beauty of adulthood. That is sad, and that we are all going to have to work on, however one works on that.

WOODRUFF: You have written a book that started, of course, much before September 11, looking at a president that every American of any age over what, ten, five has heard of and knows about. You worked for Ronald Reagan. You worked in the White House. You must have known a lot about him beforehand, but what did you learn as you wrote this book?

NOONAN: You know, as I was writing this book, this book started out as a short book of anecdotes and became instead, a story of Ronald Reagan's life because all of the anecdotes seem to connect to each other in a way that actually told the story for me of his life.

What did I learn about him? So much. In simply reading about him, in reading his two memoirs, most people don't know he wrote two memoirs. One was in 1965, and was quite a fabulous and remarkable, candid piece of work, and talking to those who were in this his family and who were his many friends, I think I discovered three things. One: How tough his childhood had been; two: How important his religious faith was. It made him, which is to say his mother had made him, because she had been a very spiritual woman. Three: I got a strong sense of what it cost him every day to be Ronald Reagan.

This was a man who made it look easy. He was so sunny. He was such a handsome and optimistic looking and you know, kind of, handsome optimistic American man. But it cost him a lot to be who he was. This was a man who got an ulcer when he was governor of California from his worry over the job and the stressfulness of the situation he was in.

Fourth: Something we all know; Nancy Reagan was key, but she was even more key than I thought. And she paid a huge price to be married to him.

WOODRUFF: What do you mean, "paid a huge price?"

NOONAN: Nancy Reagan was once Nancy Davis. And it was the early 1950s and she met this guy, she admitted to me, she really wanted to meet him and made sure it happened. The official story is they met sort of by accident. They didn't meet by accident. She made it happen. She thought he was adorable. She really liked him she married him.

She the thought she married a man who was going to a local movie star in Hollywood, head of the Screen Actors Guild, a presence in a world that mattered to Nancy and they would have kids and be part of local starocracy.

Instead, she found, to her surprise, that when she married him, she walked into history. She hadn't expected that to happen. She didn't know she was marrying a future president. She paid a lot in terms of scrutiny, in terms of criticism, and she did her job which was to make it possible for him to do his job. I tell you, 20 years later I have a great new appreciation for Nancy Reagan.

WOODRUFF: She is a very strong woman. I have seen a little bit of her in the last year or so. She is an incredibly strong woman. "When Character was King," why did you make that the title?

NOONAN: I made it the title because I wanted to communicate that the essence of this man was not his attractiveness, his interesting philosophy, his good heart, his good brain. It was his character. It made his presidency, the things he had within him, essentially his courageous, his daily courage and his contagious courage. He had a way of spreading courage.

It was his character that made his presidency, which was the last greatly successful presidency in the United States, really starkly successful, and he was also the last wartime president, up until this one.

So, when you look at him, if you say, what was the secret to him, what was the magic? It wasn't magic, it was character. And when he was president, character was in charge.

WOODRUFF: You talk about so many different people who were part of his life. George W. Bush, our president, met Ronald Reagan at a time --Reagan might not remember, but George W. Bush remembered. He was 21, 22 years old? But later, of course, he got to know him. He observed him when his own father was vice president under Ronald Reagan. What lessons did George W. Bush take away from him, do you think?

NOONAN: I asked President Bush. I met with him just about six or serve months ago and I said, I have a hunch about you, Mr. President. You watched Reagan really closely from up close, the eight years Reagan was in the White House, and he said, you bet I did.

And I said, what did you learn? And he said Reagan understood what it was to be a leader and he defined leadership for me. He said it had to do with understanding what the nation was, the character of the nation, reflecting the character of the nation and moving forward as the representative of that nation.

That is what he thought he saw when he saw Reagan being president and that lesson was not lost upon him.

WOODRUFF: Former Reagan speech writer and author, Peggy Noonan.

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