More About ‘Values’ From Peggy Noonan : Television: The conservative pundit once put words in the mouths of Presidents. Now she brings to PBS a three-part series dealing with faith, family and freedom.

Once, in her role as speech writer, Peggy Noonan articulated the thoughts of Presidents.

Those were her words Ronald Reagan spoke at Normandy--”These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs.” After the space shuttle Challenger exploded live on TV, killing seven astronauts, that was her speech Reagan delivered, so aptly quoting a poem about those who “slipped the surly bonds of Earth” to “touch the face of God.”

She gave candidate George Bush a “thousand points of light,” the “kinder, gentler” America and “read my lips.”

Now, after two books and a third in the works on the Republican Revolution, this 44-year-old conservative star with strawberry-blond hair, a girl-next-door manner and a voice just shy of sultry, comes to public television--of all places--with a three-part series on values.

In the midst of the fight for its life with the congressional conservatives she’s writing about, PBS tonight begins airing “On Values: Talking With Peggy Noonan.” The first hour deals with “Faith”; “Family” and “Freedom” air on subsequent Fridays.

Seven men and two women, covering a range of political thought, explore these issues, with questions and reflective commentary by Noonan, who invites confidences with blazing blue eyes and an upward tilt of chin.

Could any program be more propitious? Can it redress the grievance of those--including herself--who believe PBS has too much of a liberal tilt and, in any case, ought to be stripped of its federal subsidy because government shouldn’t be involved in the arts or television?

“My own small self in one three-hour series will never redress that grievance,” she says with laughter by phone from her New York apartment. “Do you think one person doing one (series) would make a difference in this debate? Do you think someone could change 25 years (of) a certain political bias, and someone would say, ‘No, look, Peggy Noonan has a show on values,’ and that would change anything one iota?’ ”

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Joan Ganz Cooney, co-founder of Children’s Television Workshop, which produces “Sesame Street,” was godmother to “Values.” Cooney, a Democrat, said she hit on the idea after listening to the “rather abrasive set of speeches” on values at the 1992 Republican Convention, and also reading then-Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole’s comments about public broadcasting being “left-leaning liberal.” She thought “Values” needed a host like William J. Bennett, secretary of education under Reagan and drug czar under Bush, because Republicans “really owned these issues.”

Cooney, who lunches once a month with Diane Sawyer, Lesley Stahl, Nancy Dickerson and Noonan, mentioned Bennett to Noonan, who thought he might do it.

“I got home,” Cooney said, “and I thought, ‘Oh my God, how dumb can you be! There are no women anchors on public broadcasting, no (baby) boomer generation member. Peggy would be perfect.”

The central theme of “Values,” whose executive producer is Tom Lennon, a veteran of “Frontline” and “American Experience,” is accessible to diverse political persuasions.

“When I’m speaking about values,” Noonan says, “(it’s) about the cultural waters in which we all swim. . . . The values debate is always heard in a political context, people running for office, Dan Quayle. But when you just talk about the things that are disturbing us, you find liberals and conservatives share the same level of anxiety and frequently are anxious about the same things. Everyone is disturbed about the culture in which we’re bringing up our kids.”

Still, the arguments presented could be viewed as more conservative: loss of religious values in the public arena; the high rate of divorce and single motherhood; attacks on affirmative action, political correctness and rap music.

Noonan, who begins the interview in the bathroom to escape the antics of her 7 1/2-year-old son, is a single mother who has been divorced five years. Does she see irony in that?

“Absolutely,” she replies easily. “I felt very strongly (that) divorce hasn’t been talked about as a social problem in America very much, because everybody who talks or writes for a living is divorced. This is our taboo . . . because in a way we are the problem.”

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There’s an anomaly in Noonan’s association with PBS. She’s also co-chair of PBS President Ervin Duggan’s “Democracy Project,” a series of public-affairs programs leading up to the 1996 elections.

Noonan insists that she “loves PBS,” that “there are things that PBS has done in the last quarter-century that have made my heart soar.” She cites “I, Claudius” and “Upstairs, Downstairs,” even as she recoils at the 1991 “P.O.V.” documentary “Stop the Church,” which “in effect celebrated that horrid moment when ACT UP went into St. Patrick’s Cathedral and disturbed the giving out of the Holy Eucharist.”

Ironically, of the $750,000 that went into her “Values” series, $100,000 came from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting; PBS contributed another $300,000, some of which was of federal origin.

While Noonan notes that you “cannot politically neuter those in the arts and communications,” and that “everyone ought to be in the (PBS) pool--liberals, conservatives, anarchists, libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, wackos, everybody in ,” she draws a firm line in the sand: That does not apply to government.

“There’s a lot of things I’ve changed my mind on in the past 20 years, but one of the things I have not changed my mind on is this: Government is not to be trusted in the area of arts and communication. They don’t belong in that pea patch. . . . If they decide to make up the loss of federal funds and hold a three-day telethon, I’ll go for 24 hours and answer the phones and talk. I’ll (write) a check for $100. It would be more, but I don’t have lots of money.”