(2 of 2)
There is a lesson, finally, in the Stockman text: beware of what Education Secretary William Bennett calls overenchantment with "learned learning." Washington has a problem with people in its elite whose only knowledge comes from the books they have read, the statistics they have marshaled, the theories that rest on charts they have devised. Long years of leadership that hone instincts and crystallize common sense--a particular Reagan resource--are often more important than the "policy equations" Stockman found so consuming. It can be said about David Stockman that he knew a great deal but understood very little.