Read the entire column. An excerpt:

These days most writers land on the engaged side of the continuum. Look at most think tanks. They used to look like detached quasi universities; now some are more like rapid response teams for their partisan masters. If you ever want to get a political appointment, you have to be engaged, working on political campaigns and serving the team.

But I would still urge you to slide over toward the detached side of the scale. First, there is the matter of mental hygiene. You may think you can become a political partisan without becoming rigid and stale, and we all know people who achieve this, but the risk is high.

I am very sympathetic to Brooks’ point of view. If anything, I think he is more charitable than I would be toward what he calls the “engaged” pundit.

In fact, a major goal of The Three Languages of Politics is to encourage people to be more detached. Incidentally, for those of you who do not have Kindles, you can get a Kindle app that would enable you to buy and read the book.