I'm on the other side of this argument, but I do agree with you on Peggy Noonan. The book you cite takes off spectacularly, and then dies because she falls in love with some shlub, and doesn't have the deire to finish the thing because of the ups and downs of her infatuation. She is highly emotional, as you say.
Yeah, What I saw at the Revolution does have a lot of good insights. The most impressive to me was her prediction that Edmund Morris would write an unflattering biography of Reagan because he wasn't the kind of guy who could "get" Reagan and was "immune to charm."
There are overly emotional people on both sides of this issue, Jason Riley and many others at the Wall Street Journal being among them... So maybe it's a Wall Street Journal thing.