Clarke and other ex-staffers 

Clarke and other ex-staffers

One thing that I think noone wants to talk much about is the whole phenomenon of ex-staffers rushing into print with a book about their experiences working with and for the decision-makers.

It's part of being a good, loyal staffer to stay out of sight, out of mind. It seems a major deviation from that understanding to go public within a few months of leaving, saying "look at me, look at me"--even if you have a lot of praise for former employers and colleagues.

Exhibit A would be Peggy Noonan. I like much of her writing, and I give her full credit for rising from an anonymous young speechwriter in the White House to one of these top echelon columnists. Her book on Reagan, unlike Clarke's book, was largely praise for her old boss. The somewhat newsworthy angle was that it was a bit surprising someone like her--a woman of Irish Catholic background, from a blue collar Democrat family, supported Reagan so strongly even before he gave her career a big lift.

So what's wrong here? Noonan's book, like all such books, brings the implication: "look at me, I'm so smart and accomplished". At the very least there is an implication: "not like some other staffers I could mention"; "boy, it's a good thing I was there to save the day". In practice it goes further: that former boss, for whom I continue to have great respect, was a little bit ... let us say ... lacking if he was left to himself. He needed a really energetic genius like me.

In the case of Reagan, Noonan's insinuations probably did no harm. Lots of people had already suggested in print that he was distracted and poorly briefed on many issues. She went to some trouble to indicate that he actually worked quite hard on specific speeches, making sure many of the words were his.

But what about Bush Senior? My theory, really just a guess, is that some of Reagan's staffers deliberately began to leak the news as to which speeches Noonan worked on--the D-Day ones, etc. Even there the idea was: we're not just a bunch of aging white guys from the country club, looking around for someplace to take a nap; look, we have a young, smart and funny Irish Catholic woman working for us!

As I say, this didn't harm Reagan, as far as I can tell. But poor Bush Senior constantly laboured under the perception that he had no ideas at all. He responded to this, unfortunately, by admitting that he might have lacked "the vision thing" (probably adding under this breath, "whatever the hell that is!"). Add the idea that Noonan is all kinds of smart, flexible and good with words (her book coming out in 1990), to the idea that Bush Sr. is indeed a kind of mannequin from the country club, and you deeply reinforce the notion that Bush Sr. doesn't have a chance against, say, Clinton (in 1992).

In short, it will usually happen that a book by a recently-departed staffer, if it succeeds at all, will diminish the former boss--you know, the one who has actually communicated directly with voters, and gotten elected. Not only that, these books collectively seem to reinforce the idea that staffers are young (or have far more credentials than the politicans), Machiavellian in a good way, just what a party needs to succeed, and they have to constantly work to make democratic leaders barely competent. There's something wrong here.

Update: According to a reviewer on Legal Libraries:

"Working in that speechwriting shop, Noonan gave Reagan some of his most successful emotional appeals: The D-Day anniversary paean to "The Boys of Pointe du Hoc," the tribute to the Challenger astronauts. She followed that up with one of the most effective political attacks in US political history, George H.W. Bushs evisceration of his 1988 opponent, Michael Dukakis, at the New Orleans GOP convention."