Peggy Noonan Stayed in a Hotel

Peggy Noonan, a woman, of America, is a political columnist, yes. But first, she is an American. She does not go in for all the "data" and "numbers" and "relevant facts" mumbo-jumbo that clouds the political debates of our fine nation. Leave the "worthwhile" political theories for Nate Silver and other dewy younglings; Peggy Noonan will weave her own columns not out of "polls," but out of hazy, gin-soaked memories of Ronald Reagan, and trips to Brooklyn street fairs, and yard signs viewed out of her car window. And now: Peggy Noonan has taken a trip to a hotel. A hotel—in America.

One might think, "Oh, checking into a hotel, what a mundane experience, it would be absurd to attempt to glean some wistful conclusion about the state of an entire nation from such an everyday thing." And one would be correct. But one would not be Peggy Noonan.


Note the seamless segue from Peggy's statement of the preternaturally boring thing she is doing, straight into an unqualified statement about the "sense" of a nation of 300 million people. Peggy Noonan knows these things. She has traveled from frontier to frontier. Of airport hotels.



Crime... in hotels. Peggy thinks back... she once saw... who was it?... ah yes... a Mexican. Are Mexicans allowed in hotels... in America?

At that, Peggy Noonan screamed.

[WSJ. Photo: Getty]