[ontos-on]

I lost a lot of respect for Peggy Noonan after reading the entire article. The Reagan stuff is great, but then she uses the end of the article to settle some personal scores with old "colleagues". Very inappropriate. Very much unlike her.

I would rx that you give Peggy the benefit of the doubt. Look at the Thacher quote and all you know about Peggy and how she feels it is so important to protect and defend our country from enemies in all their forms.

I will grant to her that this is not so much personal as an attempt to warn others who could be in a position to harm Reagan's true legacy and our country's future.

Note how she described the "bad guys" in the administration that Bently had ot war with over getting Reagan's actual conservative philosophy into his speeches.

I do not think this is merely catiness by Peggy. She is a lot bigger than that, IMHO.

[Diddle E. Squat]

You may be right, the larger message may be a reminder and warning about those beyond the speechwriters, warning about 'Pragmatists' like David Gergen and the Buchanan-types. Both said some extremely infuriating things last week while trying to spin Reagan's death and demean President Bush.