Politics aside, Noonan is a damned good writer. One of my majors was English.
You may like her style, but I find it overly wordy and too flowery. It’s a matter of taste, not competence. I like my politics and news to be more cut and dry. I’m not really interested her little personal stories or analogies that she feels compelled to include in most of her articles. Her choice of adjectives often seems pretentious, but like I said, it’s a matter of taste.
Can you imagine President Bush adopting her style of speech writing? It would have been like Al Gore wearing brown suits.