on treating politics as a game

[jrtom]

snagged from filkertom's other blog: Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo on the dangers of political strategizing.

Today we hear Democrats asking whether they should take a hard line on Social Security or a soft line, stand in opposition or come up with a contending plan. Here's what I propose whenever Democrats have a question about just what stance to take on the Social Security debate.

One question ...

What is the actual policy outcome that would be most preferable on Social Security (to protect, preserve or augment it -- whatever) and how important is it that it take place in this Congress?

Comments

Re: Oh for God's sake...

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry for the word games. I agree that last sentence was just semantic wanking.

But I'm trying to make a real point here: Everybody loves a "centrist" party (or candidate or whatever) because "centerist" doesn't really mean anything so everyone can project their own fantasies on the term.

So no, I don't know what you're getting at. I don't know very much about your politics so I don't know whether I should support your hypothetical party. I might consider your vision of a "centrist party" a bunch of lunatic anarchists or a bunch of repressed fascists or some other kind of extremism.

I (as I originally said) am skeptical of your proposal because I don't yet see anything to hang my hat on about real policy. I'm all for "centrist" and I'm all for "non-zero-sum compromises", but I share these enthusiasms with a vast horde of other people who frequently violently disagree with me about basically all matters of public policy.

I may be overly cynical, but I think none of the things you list are a source of moral clarity. The "center" is just whatever the majority opinion of the moment is (in 1850 the center believed that you have to support slavery but you should have the decency to feel bad about it in private). You can insert the obligatory philosophy lecture here about how rational thought alone can't generate moral principles, but it may be better to insert a history lesson about how many "realists" from Pilate to Kissinger have made really ugly choices. "reality based" only works as a sound-bite response to a small group of current idiots -- usually all sides of every argument believe they hold the key to "reality". As for "non-zero-sum", I'd say only tackling the non-zero-sum problems is cherry-picking -- the real test of a politician is what they do when it really is a zero sum game any they have to make a decision anyway.

I kind of like the notion of "civil" as in "civil society". It suggests to me a careful balance between the society's responsibility to serve the rights and dreams of individuals and the individuals' responsibilities to support the society. A political movement which articulates what a "civil society" should look like would eb a good thing. It can tackle issues from public transportation to freedom of speech. Heck, it can co-opt the quote "freedom isn't free" away from video games about shooting people and reapply it to things like serving on juries. Oops. I'm drifting off into semantic games again.

Two candidate rules of thumb for policy:
1. If somebody does something you don't like you aren't allowed to take it out on someone else who just happens to be standing near them (either literally as in "there was a terrorist inside so we blew up the whole apartment block" or figuratively as in "Bush is an idiot so I'll assume that applies to all Republicans")
2. If your moral principles are telling you to hurt people you should think carefully about why they're your moral principles. (I don't care of the people in question are "bad")

Right now I feel like advocating either one of these (let alone both) puts me unconfortably far left of center.

-JKL