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A post by Maynard

This note will shed light on a basic trick used by just about all politicians, both left and right. The tactic relies upon two points:

1. It’s an old cliché that a clock that loses a minute each hour is almost always wrong, wheras a broken clock is right twice a day. But which one is of more practical use?
2. The human heart is deceptive. Whatever the current trend is, it feels like it will continue forever. When things are getting worse, they feel like they’ll never get better. Likewise, good times feel like they’ll never end. Intellectually, we know the world is dynamic, and trends come and go. But we don’t really believe it.

So the manipulative politician’s task is very simple: Like the broken clock, he regularly makes the statement that the bad trend is about to break (or, if he’s out of power, he makes the opposite statement). This is completely without regard to the reality. If he turns out to have been wrong, his words are forgotten. But he keeps predicting, and eventually he’ll turn out to be right (or at least his claim may not seem ridiculous). At that point, he trumpets his genius to the four corners of the earth, and people start listening to him as if he knew what he was talking about.

At a time of serious financial crisis, Mr. Obama’s strategy is obvious enough: On one hand, declare the dawn of a new day, meanwhile doing whatever it takes to quickly create the aura of a turnaround, and never mind the cost. Then repeatedly claim “success”, watching carefully to see whether anyone believes you. When your number eventually comes up, use the influx of political capital to act upon your agenda. That last step has got to be taken quickly, before the sham becomes apparent.

There’s a pitfall here, and it’s a big part of the reason politics is so dysfunctional: The quick-fix feelgood “solutions” usually do harm rather than good. For example, “Cash for Clunkers” borrows money from China to buy cars from Japan; this is ridiculous on the face of it, but it causes a short-term uptick in statistics for auto sales. The result is bad for the nation but good for the politicians, as the day ends with a “good” headline. Thus Obama claims credit for “saving” the economy, and anybody opposing his plan to take over the health care industry is labeled as an ungrateful un-American swastika-carrying evil-monger.

We’ve heard furious debate about whether the “stimulus” has done any good. I’d argue this is the wrong question entirely. As you see, “Cash for Clunkers” “works”. But then, a shot of heroin “works” for an addict. That doesn’t make it right. There will be hell to pay when the bill comes due.

The reality is it takes years for the full effects of policies to percolate through the system, and we only have full feedback when it’s far too late. Ronald Reagan beat the Soviet Union, but we didn’t see his policies bear fruit until he’d been out of office for ten years. Jimmy Carter served as midwife to the genocidal Iranian regime and enabler of the North Korean madmen, and we’ve watched his missteps metastasize into region-threatening monsters. History reveals the true legacy of leaders, and it’s to history we must look for wisdom, rather than at yesterday’s unemployment report. Keep this in mind the next time you hear a broken clock announcing the time.