What gets said aloud

AmericanDreamer — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 02:59:31 +0000

In reply to The Impact of Books on Washington Policy

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:

Back in the 1960s, a former assistant secretary of defense, John T. McNaughton, perhaps put it best: An outside idea has a chance to influence government policy only if it has two characteristics. First, it can be stated in a simple declarative sentence. Second, once stated it is obviously true.

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.

dagblog - Comments for "The Impact of Books on Washington Policy"

What gets said aloud