Easier PDF file reduction through InDesign than in Acrobat. WHY?

Three Creative Suites apps were involved in this:
I've spent a long evening following numerous instructions to reduce the a 14 page B&W PDF file through optimizer settings in Acrobat X Pro. Pages of a paper doc  were scanned in Photoshop as Black and White at about 200 dpi and each saved as a Photoshop PDF using the "smallest size" setting.  The 14 pages were assembled in Acrobat X Pro. I tried every recommended optimize setting and NOTHING ever got it below 19.3 MB.
Yet when I placed that same large pdf, page for page, into an inDesign document and exported it using the same "smallest size" option,  the results are astoundingly different. The resulting file from InDesign was 1.4 MB. Perfect! When viewed in Preview, both the large file and the new one created with InDesign looked nearly identical. I could have skipped using Acrobat altogether by using InDesign to assemble pages and TRULY get the smallest sized file without complicated optimizing settings. And that doesn't seem right somehow.
Is there anything in Acrobat, that's as simple as that to reduce a file? If Creative Suite works together, perhaps Acrobat can learn something from InDesign about ease.

1. If you want to reduce the resolution and control the size of things made in Photoshop, the best place to do that is Photoshop, which has the most sophisticated image processing. If you wanted 200 dpi, then it seems odd to reduce it; if you didn't want 200 dpi, then why save it that way? Also, look closely at the compression settings when saving the Photoshop PDF.
2. Photoshop PDF can be problematic to reduce because Photoshop "hides" extra informaiton in the PDF - a complete second copy of the image sometimes. You might be able to fix this, but again the solution is to get the pages the size you want first. Still, a Photoshop PDF is likely to be larger, and stay larger, than the corresponding page exported from PDF. (Some people have found the optimizer setting "Discard private data of other applications" helps).
3. It may seem unnatural to use InDesign, but that is definitely the best path. Acrobat is never the ideal place to do document assembly - just because it can do it doesn't mean it is the best choice. InDesign is a specialist tool for assembling finished documents.
4. If this all sounds convoluted, then why not scan into Acrobat? (Perhaps OCR would be suitable too)

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