The common public policy discourse follows a common pattern of One-Damned-Thing-After-Another, where events trigger attention and emotion, followed by a sense that Something Must be Done, followed by advocacy to follow principles, followed by attention moving to the next event. Doing better requires following a methodology that focuses on priorities, recognizing varied perspectives and intents, identifying what must be known rather than what steps to take, and creating self-correcting feedback loops.
Much of our public policy discourse follows a recurring pattern of event-attention-outrage-advocacy-distracting event-repeat. We learn best through stories, but anecdotes lead us astray.