Some people write books for love. Others write for fame, or more impractically for money. Then there are those who strive for impact in Washington. This may seem most delusional of all. But in today’s Washington, books do matter — even if they often have the most influence when presented in abbreviated form.
Last month, President Obama expressed unexpected admiration for the work of the neoconservative intellectual and Mitt Romney adviser Robert Kagan. In an excerpt from his book “The World America Made” that appeared in The New Republic, Kagan set out to debunk the popular idea that America’s power and influence are waning. For Obama, Kagan’s argument was a welcome rebuke to his opponents’ complaint that he was presiding over his country’s decline.
I saw the potency of books firsthand while serving recently on the State Department’s policy planning staff. Ideas that originated between covers often shaped conversations and found their way into major speeches or memos. Indeed, a book, by its mere existence, can lend legitimacy to an argument in a sound-bite-driven debate. “There are so many ideas flying around, it’s very important that some have been worked out more thoroughly and comprehensively,” says Anne-Marie Slaughter, the State Department’s policy planning director from 2009 to 2011. “When I find an idea I’ll immediately go to the book to make sure that it’s serious, even if I don’t read the whole book.”
Comments
What gets said aloud inside-the-D.C. Beltway is that people don't read books, they read book reviews. I have no way of knowing if that is true or not. But it seems clear that a good review can do a great deal to put an idea into circulation.
I was struck by this, from the article:
My reaction was to wonder whether McNaughton has ever read David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. Because, in referring to an idea which is "obviously true", he sounded hubristic or arrogant in the way so many of the folks Halberstam wrote about, his Secretary of Defense boss Robert McNamara included, apparently were. On a quick search to confirm that relationship, I see that according to wikipedia's bio of him, McNaughton was McNamara's closest advisor.
Anne-Marie Slaughter's comment led me to wonder whether policymakers, hearing of a sexy "new idea" and checking the book as she does to see if it has heft, ever conclude on further consideration that the idea is wrongheaded.
I find that the books I read usually inform me, delightfully confuse me, or both. But one book I read a couple of decades ago or more had an influence on me because it seemed so badly over the top and off base as to help me clarify some of my own thoughts on account of the highly negative reaction I had to the author's argument.
The book was William Ryan's Blaming the Victim. The basic argument of the book seemed to be that poor people are victims and it's entirely wrongheaded to think they might bear any responsibility whatever for their plight. Full stop. End of story.
I thought the book's argument was so one-sided, so unwilling to assign any real weight to the concept of personal responsibility, that it was kind of shocking to me that any actual person believed what the author had written and managed to find someone to publish such an argument. I thought Ryan offered a kind of caricature, albeit surely inadvertently so, of progressive politics.
Thanks for the link, EZ.
by AmericanDreamer on Sun, 02/19/2012 - 9:59pm