After graduating from college I moved to Washington DC. As a young civil servant eager to understand how the city worked I read what were at the time the DC-must-read books. President Reagan's term was coming to a close and there was much discussion of his place in history. David Stockman's The Triumph of Politics (loved it), Hedrick Smith's The Power Game (ok), a few years later Draper's A Very Thin Line (made me angry) and Chris Matthews' Hardball (good) each were steeped in the policy battles of the Reagan years.
And then there was Peggy Noonan's What I Saw At The Revolution. I should have read it again before writing this post because it has been a long time. But I do clearly recall my reaction to reading it the first time. "What she saw at the revolution ...was apparently nothing." Stockmans' book was full of philosophy and economics as well as policy minutiae. You may disagree with him on policy but he was trying to make an honest case for smaller government. In contrast What I Saw At The Revolution was nearly devoid of any policy content. It's focus was the character of the people involved in policy and the peripherally the selling of policies, but there was almost nothing about why a particular policy was good or bad - as if it did not matter.
Over the years - God knows why - I continued to read Peggy Noonan's op-eds in the WSJ. But the more I read the more I understood - she was not about selling policies she was about selling people. While my view of the world was that good policies imply good person (or at least someone that I would support) her view of the world was the reverse - good person implies good policy. I found that just very strange. Sure Ronald Reagan may have been a very nice person and a good family man - but there are a lot of people of high moral stature and most of them would do a lousy job at deciding macroeconomic policy. On the other hand LBJ may have been an asshole to be around but if he made good policy (questionable) that is fine with me since I didn't have to hang around with him.
Even when I agreed with the final outcome of a Peggy Noonan article I strongly disagreed with her reasoning. Here is her surprise endorsement of Barack Obama for President. Notice anything missing? Here is an archive of her articles if you can stand to read them. Each article has minimum policy content in the sense of why we should or should not do something. Rather each public policy skirmish becomes an act in a larger moralistic play to determine who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. And then one day it hit me. The true brilliance of "Noonan-ism".
The truth is that most people don't follow public policy that closely. There are two reasons for this. (1) No context for decision making. When distinguished academics cannot agree on the impact of alternative policy alternatives how is someone who has no exposure to the topic area and no supporting data supposed to determine the impact of a policy. Lobbyists produce questionable studies which get recycled as expert testimony. Unless you are a topic area expert it is difficult to separate garbage from serious research. (2) People have lives to live and limited time to spend reading up on public policies which in reality they will have minimal say in. Decisions made in Washington DC may have a big impact on your life but if you have to decide between spending time deciding which house to buy or reading alternative bills on tax credits for oil depreciation - which will you have more ability to influence and which will directly impact your life more?
TV news provides minimal illumination. FOX News / MSNBC / CNBC / etc...rarely if ever get into the actual content of policy. Their focus is either regurgitating party talking points, or interviewing partisans who regurgitate party talking points, or reporting on who is winning and losing the horse-race. While the first two are policy related they tend to be unfiltered for quality and context. The third while being policy free is not the same as Noonan-ism. TV is obsessed with winning and losing whereas Noonan-ism is obsessed with the goodness of the person involved. But this is where Noonan-ism is so brilliant!
If you can't follow the twists and turns of every bill and policy proposal then what can you rely on to decide whether a policy is good or not? Well there is the party identification and the reputation of particular indicative legislators. If you know that you generally agree with a legislator and s/he is strongly in favor of a particular bill then that acts as a signal that you should be in favor of that same bill. Ted Kennedy was known to be pro-labor and pro-single payer health care. If you are generally pro-labor / pro-single payer and Ted Kennedy supports a labor or health care bill then that is an indicator that you should support it as well. I believe that most people do rely on the politician to indicate which policies they are in favor of even if they don't know all the specifics of the bill. Under my signalling model it does not matter if you think that Ted Kennedy is a good human being or not. He only acts as a signal for you.
However Noonan-ism breaks the chain. If you subscribe to Noonan-ism and find out that Ted Kennedy is a horrible human being then you should oppose all bills that he supports (because bad person implies bad policy). Hence the focus of a typical Peggy Noonan column is on the goodness (or at least the goodness as she wants you to see it) of the people involved in the policy. That's what I see at the revolution.
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