To say Peggy Noonan is one of our finest political columnists is not wholly fair to her, since she writes so often about topics and people that are not political, or at least not overtly so. She is deeply fair and empathetic, and she writes in such a deceptively easy style that reading her every week is akin to sitting across the table from her and listening as you drink your coffee.
Her latest book, A Certain Idea of America, is a collection of 80 of her recent Wall Street Journal columns, culled from about 400, and in re-reading them I was struck not just by how timeless they are (a neat trick for a weekly columnist) but by how broad her knowledge is. 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 to think about a person, an issue, or life itself.
