WASHINGTON.

• Author: Noah, Timothy
• Position: Review

"Washington IS THE FIRST PIECE of Meg Greenfield's writing that I have ever read from start to finish. Or rather, the first bylined piece of writing; as the longtime editorial page editor of The Washington Post, she must have penned many unsigned editorials that I got through, and probably quite a lot that I admired. Before her untimely death from cancer in 1999, Greenfield was among the most respected figures in Washington journalism, much-praised for her sharp intelligence and much-feared for her ability to shape opinion. Among her many assets was a close friendship with Katharine Graham, the publisher who elevated the Post to the top ranks of American journalism. But the high esteem in which Washington held Greenfield was more than just Machiavellian; as an editor, Greenfield really was capable of shucking respectability and embracing truly creative ideas, the best example being her decision to sign up Village Voice cartoonist Mark Alan Stamaty to write "Washingtoon," a seemingly naive but in fact quite canny and subversive sendup of Washington politics that made an enormous hit in the 1980s.

Why, then, was I never able to hurtle my eyeballs through the bylined columns Greenfield wrote for Newsweek and The Washington Post? For several years, I blamed myself. Over time, though, it dawned on me that almost nobody else I knew seemed to be reading her, either, even though I traveled in journalism circles where people tended to read the op-ed pages and talk about what they found there with deep interest. It was one of those great unmentionable facts of Washington life: Meg Greenfield, writer, was a bore.

I'd like to be able to report that the authorial light Greenfield kept decorously hidden under a bushel in life blazes forth in this posthumous volume. But Washington, I'm afraid, is a bore, too. The book sums up Greenfield's views about Washington, and traces her own mental development from a smug Adlai Stevenson liberal to a more mature and inquisitive person capable of empathizing with politicians of various political stripes. That's just the sort of evolution this magazine is always urging on Washington journalists so that they might better understand how and why policymaking goes poorly or well. For Greenfield, though, empathy seems to have been an end in itself. Although as editorial page editor and writer she was no doubt called upon to apply her subtle understanding of Washington anthropology in deciding where the Post should stand on...