Friday
Self-defeating expected values
In tapped, Sam Rosenfeld wonders why any Democrats or progressives would take action to hasten Tom DeLay's downfall, rather than making sure he stays in power so that his corruption is a usable election issue for the 2006 midterms. The naïve, why I could never be a politician reason is: Tom DeLay being in power is bad for the country in the sense that bills which pass the house while he is the majority leader are more likely to be bad policy than bills which pass the house when he is a position of lesser power or (knock on wood) out of office. The slightly less naïve version involves an expected values problem. I'm going to really simplify the actual problem, because I don't feel like dealing with all of the nested conditionals I should be. Also I'm going to pretend we can quantify 'badness,' though I don't think it harms my point that we can't really do so.
A = Badness of policies enacted between now and 110th Congress if DeLay remains majority leader - (minus) Badness of policies during the same time period if Democrats and affiliated groups make their utmost efforts to reduce DeLay's power as quickly as possible.
B = How bad the policies enacted from the 110th Congress onwards will be if the Democrats have the results they would have in the 2006 elections were DeLay's fall hastened - (minus) badness of 110th onwards policy if DeLay is used to maximal advantage as a 2006 election issue.
There should also be a future discounting function, but anyway, if A is greater than B, Democrats should do whatever it takes to drop DeLay ASAP.
Also, and this is probably the more important point, why would Rosenfeld say such a thing in a public forum? He is strategizing in public in the form of, "I think my party should, by omission, allow x to happen. I sincerely believe x is bad for the country, but it will also increase my parties chances at electoral success (which will later on be good for the country)." But some people will read that, ignore the parenthetical clause and just say, "The Democrats are in favor of things which they think are bad for the country if it's good for them." So if Sam believes that what he is saying is true, and wants what he thinks is best for the Democrats, he shouldn't state that it's true.
|
A = Badness of policies enacted between now and 110th Congress if DeLay remains majority leader - (minus) Badness of policies during the same time period if Democrats and affiliated groups make their utmost efforts to reduce DeLay's power as quickly as possible.
B = How bad the policies enacted from the 110th Congress onwards will be if the Democrats have the results they would have in the 2006 elections were DeLay's fall hastened - (minus) badness of 110th onwards policy if DeLay is used to maximal advantage as a 2006 election issue.
There should also be a future discounting function, but anyway, if A is greater than B, Democrats should do whatever it takes to drop DeLay ASAP.
Also, and this is probably the more important point, why would Rosenfeld say such a thing in a public forum? He is strategizing in public in the form of, "I think my party should, by omission, allow x to happen. I sincerely believe x is bad for the country, but it will also increase my parties chances at electoral success (which will later on be good for the country)." But some people will read that, ignore the parenthetical clause and just say, "The Democrats are in favor of things which they think are bad for the country if it's good for them." So if Sam believes that what he is saying is true, and wants what he thinks is best for the Democrats, he shouldn't state that it's true.
