If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to - and you will - leave, and be something else.

She also wrote Reagan's address to the nation after the Challenger explosion drawing upon the poet John Magee's famous words about aviators who "slipped the surly bonds of earth. S. In 1989 Peggy Noonan returned with her son to her native New York.

Noonan is a trustee of the Manhattan Institute. Five of Noonan's books have been New York Times bestsellers. She has also been widely recognized for her regular appearances on ABC's This Week and NBC's Meet The Press.