Peggy Noonan makes Sarah Palin gaffe

Peggy Noonan (pictured), doyenne of Republican strategists and a speechwriter for both Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, is in the doghouse after being caught by a live microphone making disparaging remarks about John McCain's choice of running mate.

Just hours before Sarah Palin took to the stage at the Republican convention in St Paul, Minnesota for her keynote acceptance speech, Noonan had been discussing the campaign with a fellow conservative Mike Murphy, a former adviser to both McCain and Mitt Romney, on NBC television. Thinking the microphone had been turned off at the end of the segment, the two continued talking...

Murphy: "It's not going to work!"

Noonan: "It's over... They went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives. Every time Republicans do that... they blow it."

Murphy: "You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatest of McCain is no cynicism, and it is cynical."

In an effort to minimise the damage, Noonan later wrote an addendum to her regular online column for the Wall Street Journal, saying that what she meant by it being "over" was not the race, but rather the perception by the Republican Party that its base is in tune with the American people. She also apologised for what she called her "barnyard epithet".

Noonan has been responsible some of the most famous American political speeches of recent years. She wrote Ronald Reagan's address to the nation after the Challenger explosion in which all seven crew died in 1986, drawing on the poet John Magee's words about aviators who "slipped the surly bonds of earth... and touched the face of God".

And she provided George Bush Snr with two of his most memorable catch-phrases - "a thousand points of light", in a speech about volunteerism in America, and "Read my lips: no new taxes", in his 1988 presidential nomination acceptance speech.

Concluding her Wall Street Journal posting following yesterday's gaffe, Noonan wrote: "The Sarah Palin choice is really going to work, or really not going to work. It's not going to be a little successful or a little not; it's not going to be a wash. She is either going to be magic or one of history's accidents." ·