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Informationen zum Autor Peggy Noonan’s New York Times bestselling books include When Character Was King and What I Saw at the Revolution . She is a columnist and contributing editor at the Wall Street Journal and the winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Klappentext No one has ever captured Ronald Reagan like Peggy Noonan. In When Character Was King, Noonan brings her own reflections on Reagan to bear as well as new stories—from Presidents George W. Bush and his father, George H. W. Bush, his Secret Service men and White House colleagues, his wife, his daughter Patti Davis, and his close friends—to reveal the true nature of a man even his opponents now view as a maker of big history. Marked by incisive wit and elegant prose, When Character Was King will both enlighten and move readers. It may well be the last word on Ronald Reagan, not only as a leader but as a man.Chapter One "I Remember You" It was like the last gathering of the clans, the reunion of five hundred friends, cabinet secretaries, aides, staffers, clique, tong and cabal members and appointees of Ronald Wilson Reagan, fortieth president of the United States, in Williamsburg, Virginia, on March 3, 2001. It was the biggest coming together of the Reagan hands since the day he left office, in January of 1989. The big room in the Kingsmill Resort rocked with greeting. "I don't beleeeve it," "Great to seeeee you," "Where you hangin' your hat, where you causin' trouble?" People with young eyes, lifted eyes, crinkled eyes from being in the sun; people with strollers, with walkers ... That guy over there—that young kid from what, OMB? I used to see him in the tall cool halls of the Old Executive Office Building. Now he's married, with a baby who, from the look of things, is teething, in full red-gummed wail. I get some ice chips for the baby to suck on, return and say hello to the parents. Yes, it was OMB, the young father says, yes, down the hall and up a flight. "Those were great days." He smiles. Across the room I see a once-young advance man who now walks with a cane. And Tom Dawson, one of the famous Mice, the young aides to Don Regan whom we always saw as nibbling away at good work. He looked exactly like Tom Dawson, with all of his hair, only now what was black is gray. He looks like a photo negative of Tom Dawson. I turn and see Don Regan himself, the Chief, the controversial former chief of staff. He still looks like George Raft, he is still in a sharp gray suit, and at the sight of him I laugh. He sees me and does the same. "I'm an artist!" he booms as we hug. "Did you know I paint?" he demands. "I have pictures in museums! Started after I left. They didn't teach me to paint in the marines or at Merrill Lynch or in the White House, I can tell you that!" There's Ed Meese, with his soft pink face and soft white hair. George Shultz once said he reminded him of a jolly St. Patrick, and that is how Meese looks to me now, chuckling and patting people's arms. He was under bad pressure once, the focus of charges, but now it's almost twenty years since those days and he looks like he's found what everyone wants: happiness. He looks happy. I stand and survey the room. Carl Anderson, who worked on domestic policy, now head of the Knights of Columbus of America, is talking to Becky Norton Dunlop, formerly of presidential personnel. I used to hide from her. I had come into the White House without having been politically vetted, was not a registered Republican, had no party background—only conservative beliefs. They snuck me in and hid me from her. By the time we met I'd been there awhile. We became colleagues, then allies, then friends. There's Kathy Osborne, Ronald Reagan's personal secretary, and Elaine Crispin, who worked for Nancy. She's slim, bubbly, unchanged save in one respect—"Elaine Crispin...
