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[On President Clinton's address:] It was the worst inaugural address of our lifetime, and I think the only controversy will be between those who say it was completely and utterly banal and those who say, 'Well, not completely and utterly.

Peggy Noonan

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Peggy Noonan
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: August 7
Author
Journalist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Thinking
Lifetime
Clinton
Completely
Inaugural
Worst
Banal
President
Controversy
Wells
Address
Well
Utterly
Think
Addresses

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The Democratic Party will now stick with its guy forever, no matter how harmful he is. Perhaps you call that loyalty, and perhaps there's something to it, but a bigger part, I believe, is that you have come to think that winning is everything-that victory is the purpose of politics.
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Here is an old tradition badly in need of return: You have to earn your way into politics. You should go have a life, build a string of accomplishments, then enter public service.
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What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition.
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Boundaries aren't all bad. That's why there are walls around mental institutions.
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My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage.
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[democrats] have become the party of snobs. You have become the party of Americans who think they're better than other Americans.
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The biggest improvement in the flow of information in America in our lifetimes is that no single group controls the news anymore.
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The first snow always startles. It covers the tricycle in the driveway, turning its frame into an abstact sculpture that says: See how quickly yesterday turns into today.
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Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.
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Part of courage is simple consistency.
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Some of the stupidest brilliant people who ever lived.
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The 2008 election settled nothing, not even for a while. Our national politics are reflecting what appears to be going on geologically, on the bottom of the oceans and beneath the crust of the Earth: the tectonic plates are moving.
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The Irish are often nervous about having the appropriate face for the occasion. They have to be happy at weddings, which is a strain, so they get depressed they have to be sad at funerals, which is easy, so they get happy.
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Wit penetrates humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence humor is imagination operating on good nature.
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The thing political figures fear most is a terror event that will ruin their careers. The biggest thing they fear is that a bomb goes off and it can be traced to something they did or didn’t do, an action they did or didn’t support. They all fear being accused of not doing enough to keep the citizenry safe.
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A great speech is literature.
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Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs.
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The Democrats often seem like the Not Republican Party, no more and no less.
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It's better for the country when each party looks like it stands for something serious, for some big things, but they're not narrow and they're not bought.
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Now he is a statesman, when what he really wants is to be what most reporters are, adult delinquents.
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