BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

“It is important in life that you know what you don’t know and that you do not reject out of hand that which you do not understand.”
— Nobody said that. I just made it up.

I arrived at those conclusions about life through years of reading People Magazine.

I started reading People many years ago because of something one of my mentors told me when we worked together on the Hill. Bill Gavin, a true intellectual and great speechwriter, told me if you want to understand politics don’t just read what everyone in Washington reads, pick up what people reach for on the grocery store magazine rack. He was right. I quit reading Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and picked up People. 

I don’t know how many subscribers People Magazine has, but I do know it’s easier to find on newsstands than Newsweek. That tells you something.

People runs the gamut of human interest. Where can you find, on the cover of a national magazine, Christie Brinkley in a swimsuit one week and Hillary Clinton the next? A week or so before there was Princess Kate holding a princely looking baby George.

Babies are big in People: Jessica Simpson’s Ace, Kim and Kanye’s North, Jimmy Fallon and Nancy Juvonen’s Winnie, and Channing and Jenna Tatum’s Everly. I had no idea traditional names like Mike, John, Jill, Mary, Ann, and Barbara were no longer in vogue. Had I not read People, I probably would have made a fool of myself when introduced to a young couple’s new arrival, Choo Choo, Pooh, or Canyon.

People obviously knows what the public is interested in, and the editors clearly know what I need to know. For example, I had no idea that Simon Cowell of the X-Factor was, well, I’ll just quote from People: “He is known as Uncle Simon to the boys of One Direction, but the X-Factor mentor learned he would become a dad in classic Cowell Style—with lots of melodrama. His girlfriend Lauren Silverman, 36, was married to Cowell’s friend when she became pregnant this summer.” Cowell crowed: “I love Lauren and I love that I’m having a baby. You have to have a legacy in life.”

Right there, I not only learned something about Cowell that apparently everyone but me knew, but I was also exposed to a new twist on love triangles. Another example: The Kardashian family phenomenon. I don’t get how people are sucked into the Kardashian multi-media vortex and consume themselves with every aspect of their manufactured lives. The Kardashian women make millions just getting married and divorced. I have an equally difficult time understanding the interest in Tori Spelling or the tolerance for Justin Bieber. Reading about them is a journey into that world where reality isn’t real, where millions of people got to escape what is real. So much I don’t understand. So much to learn from People about people.

If Mickey Rooney could have ever mastered the Kardashian’s marketing skills, think how rich he would have become. He was married eight times. He once said his marriage license read: To whom it may concern. Yep, read that in People.

There are a lot of stories about real people (as opposed to celebrities), too, such as Joseph Carbone, a transplanted Utah optician who started Eye Care4Kids, which has provided free exams and frames for 75,000 children since 2006. Or the woman who was reunited with her daughter, after 54 years, only days before her son was killed in the recent attack at Fort Hood, Texas.

I read about a guy who invented a different kind of rubber band. There are also book reviews and summer recipes, and great ideas on where to vacation if you’re made of money.

I’m not the only one in politics who gets the people in People. I was pleasantly surprised to note that the new Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy of California, kept a copy of the magazine on his coffee table when he was a leader of the California General Assembly. According to the Washington Post: “He kept People magazine on the table in his office and always encouraged caucus members to read it every week on their way home to stay in touch with the electorate.” He gets it.

What McCarthy gets and what Gavin got 30 years before him is that it doesn’t matter two hoots whether you are what the media and political activists absurdly label an “establishment” Republican, or a “tea party conservative” or a “liberal progressive” Democrat. A good many (no, I don’t know how many “many” is) political professionals and the pundits who make a living following them, don’t get the connection or the disconnection between American life and politics, what matters to people, why, and when. The disconnect is far beyond ideological idiosyncrasies.

The political pros spend millions upon millions on polling data just to reinforce their preconceived notions about how their constituents feel about them and what issues are important. I’ve never seen a political pollster ask whether Justin Bieber ought to be deported, but I’d bet there are more people with strong opinions on that question than whether solar energy is a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Citizens are interested in energy, of course, but the media and the political process make it difficult if not impossible for them to focus on it and develop intelligent opinions on what ought to be done about it. They get their information from biased propaganda, campaign ads, and sound bites, too little too late. They are also witness to a dysfunctional government and political processes consumed by self-interest that are incapable of producing reasoned decision-making and actual governance.   So why bother. To hell with coal supplies, hand me the petition to send Bieber back to Canada.

People magazine is, no doubt, a great diversion for all of us who read it from the frustrations and aggravations of citizenship, watching the process without being able to affect it. Citizens, certainly not all, appreciate their responsibility under our form of government, but this is not self-government; it is a democratic-republic, a representative form in which the representatives have major responsibilities, too.

So if those we elect would just read People more often, they would understand people better and people would have more confidence in their ability to govern and things would get done and everyone would be happy, except maybe Tori Spelling. I don’t think she is ever going to recover, especially if she stays married to that jerk.

Editors’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff.   He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.