{"id":37952,"date":"2017-04-03T04:00:51","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T08:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37952"},"modified":"2017-04-02T12:08:34","modified_gmt":"2017-04-02T16:08:34","slug":"politics-is-like-the-weather-it-doesnt-care-what-you-think-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/04\/03\/politics-is-like-the-weather-it-doesnt-care-what-you-think-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"“Politics is like the weather; it doesn\u2019t care what you think about it”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonah Goldberg<\/a>, from last week’s “G-File ‘News’letter”, on the notion that the old political rules no longer apply:<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the important point. Politics is like the weather; it doesn\u2019t care what you think about it. It simply is. And at least in this sense, I was right when I said that democracy gives the illusion of control. <\/p>\n

In 2006, I wrote in the Corner<\/a> about the Left\u2019s belief, as expressed by Simon Rosenberg, that we were entering an era of \u201cnew politics.\u201d Conservatism was over. A new era of modern, expert-driven political management was upon us. To his credit, Rosenberg didn\u2019t say that politics<\/em> was over, just that this was some new era where the old playbook didn\u2019t apply. But it\u2019s sort of the same thing. The idea that politics will go away if we elect the right person is a form of utopianism that plagues the Left \u2014 and, alas, the Right. <\/p>\n

Barack Obama entered office thinking the exact same thing (So did LBJ. So did JFK. So did FDR. So did Woodrow Wilson). As I\u2019ve written 8 trillion times, Obama really believed that he was a post-ideological president who only cared about \u201cwhat works.\u201d This progressive understanding of pragmatism is a kind of exquisite confirmation bias. We\u2019re not ideological, we just want to do the smartest, best thing (which just happens to line up with our undisclosed and unacknowledged ideological biases).<\/em> <\/p>\n

The problem? Politics doesn\u2019t vanish just because you want it to. Wilson was convinced that the wisdom of the Treaty of Versailles was akin to scientific fact. It wasn\u2019t, but let\u2019s say that it was. His view didn\u2019t erase the political necessity of selling it to Congress. <\/p>\n

During the election, lots of people told me that a businessman would cut through all the politics by running the government like a business. Jared Kushner is apparently heading up the latest version of this incredibly hackneyed and ancient idea. The simple problem is that government isn\u2019t a business (never mind that Donald Trump is not a typical businessman). The incentive structure of politics is entirely different than the incentive structure for a businessman. A CEO can walk into a meeting and explain to his employees<\/em> that if they don\u2019t hit their widget sales quota, no one will get their bonus. Politics doesn\u2019t work like that. <\/p>\n

Moreover, people who say \u201cWho cares about politics\u201d or \u201cPolitics are irrelevant\u201d are like people who go sailing in a hurricane on the assumption that weather shouldn\u2019t matter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonah Goldberg, from last week’s “G-File ‘News’letter”, on the notion that the old political rules no longer apply: Here\u2019s the important point. Politics is like the weather; it doesn\u2019t care what you think about it. It simply is. And at least in this sense, I was right when I said that democracy gives the illusion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,7,53,13],"tags":[158,1045,1037,942],"class_list":["post-37952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-history","category-politics","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-confirmationbias","tag-donaldtrump","tag-woodrowwilson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9S8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37953,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37952\/revisions\/37953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}