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The Thinker alone with his thoughts
reflections on the untidy relationship between thinking and acting
The Washington think tanker does not like to be alone with his thoughts. For outsiders, the idea of just thinking thoughts for a living seems pretty good. The average Washington thinker draws a decent salary, has few if any job responsibilities, and works hours that would make a French trade unionist blush. The Thinker has plenty of opportunities to name-drop at fancy cocktail parties and to travel to exotic locations to meet important Deputy Ministers. He regularly does quick hits on NPR and often provides quotes for the middle paragraphs of Washington Post articles. His mother is proud of him, even if she’s not sure what he does.
Overall, thinking is not a bad life.
But when he is alone with his thoughts, the Thinker remembers that thinking is not much valued in the imperial capital. Doing is the thing that gets you respect among your peers and the most coveted invitations to cool Alpine conferences. The Thinker can’t help but notice that every reporter and out-of-town visitor prefers to meet with thoughtless undersecretaries more than even the most revered Thinkers. He frequently gets calls from journalists asking if they can help him get in touch with his former intern who is now a youthful Minister of Defense in some minor European country. He hasn’t talked to Leo in years and the kid couldn’t even make a decent cup of coffee much less string together coherent thoughts. He is not a thinker. But he is a doer—and he had the wit to be at the right place at the moment that Russia invaded his poor benighted country.
When he is alone with his thoughts, the Thinker’s mind often strays to the untidy relationship between thought and action. His thought is pure, it is logical, and it is morally unambiguous. On the pages of some of our nation’s most august publications, the Thinker’s thoughts have rung clarion calls for action. His thoughts see with clarity what is true and know with certainty what is right. His words express those thoughts and thus tell others not just what they should do, but what, morally and practically, they must do.
But when he is alone with his thoughts, the Thinker can see that his exquisite prose has little impact on doers. At the fancy cocktail parties, he loudly condemns those who oppose his thoughts. The doers, he opines, just don’t get it, they lack a strategy, they can’t see the bigger picture, they focus too much on the short-term. Maybe, he impugns, they are just too stupid, too corrupt, or even too unpatriotic to see his light.
But when he is alone with his thoughts, the Thinker secretly wonders if maybe the doers know something about doing that he does not. After all, doers do think, however poorly, but he has never done. Even those thinkers that have become doers (by using personal connections that the Thinker doesn’t have, naturally) almost never recognize the value of his thought. To the contrary, they seem to immediately forget all the profound lessons the Thinker taught them during many long hours in wood-paneled seminar rooms on Massachusetts Avenue and summer sessions in New England. They quickly become just like all the other thoughtless doers. Doers just don’t seem very impressed with thinkers.
When he is alone with his thoughts, the Thinker can admit that the doers have done a lot without much thinking. They have prospered in the brutal competition of Washington and secured the jobs that everybody wants, even the Thinker if he is being honest. Maybe they intuit that the art of the possible cannot be adequately described in 800 words, even when published in The New York Times. Perhaps they have profited from the belief that doing is more about resources and politics than about morality and strategy. Maybe they succeed because they know that doing is not about the clarity of your thought, it is about your capacity to reconcile competing interests – and to overcome those interests that will not be reconciled. Perhaps doing is a messy business that must be lived in the halls of power and slogged through in interminable meetings that only occasionally refer to thoughts. Worst of all, maybe the doers have heard all his thoughts, indeed thought of them themselves, but also know such thoughts simply will not move minds in tough negotiations between doers.
Luckily, the Thinker is not often alone with his thoughts, so these considerations need not trouble him too much. He will continue to issue his clarion calls for action, to decry the lack of strategy and planning, and to question the intelligence and integrity of the doers who do not heed his thoughts. It is his job after all. And it is what he thinks.