The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.

Noonan likens the struggle among advisers, allies, and factions to shape Ronald Reagan’s thinking to World War I trench warfare: intense, exhausting, and costly, yet yielding little meaningful ground. The metaphor suggests that Reagan’s core convictions and temperament were not easily “captured” by competing ideological camps, and that insiders may have overestimated how much influence they could exert. Calling the terrain “barren” implies that even when someone “won” access or rhetorical advantage, the practical payoff was limited—either because Reagan’s mind was already made up, or because the contested issues were less substantive than the combatants believed.