Peggy Noonan was born in 1950 in Brooklyn, New York. After attending college, she worked as a news and editorial writer and then as a broadcast writer and producer. In 1984, Noonan became a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. During the next two years, she wrote speeches for him on a number of occasions. She later worked with George Bush, writing the speech for his inauguration as president. Her political experiences in Washington, DC, provided material for her memoir, What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era.