No one predicted this exact pattern of breakage in the Water Pitcher

Scott Brown’s election this past Tuesday offers the Democratic Party a new hope.  A new hope for a politics of modesty in place of the politics of arrogance; a new hope for a politics of cooperation in place of the politics of demonization.  Democrats might not realize it now, but they have before them a historic opportunity to seize the day and regain the trust of the American people for at least a generation.  By turning their backs once and for all on the scorched-earth approach of the party’s liberal wing, Democrats can consolidate their legitimate gains while cutting loose their least reliable partners.  They have the ability; all they need is the will.

The problem — if there is one — is that time is tight, and the party will need to move on several fronts at once.  What follows is not an exhaustive list, but rather a series of first steps Democrats will need to take if they are to remain a meaningful majority party.

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I just listened to an EconTalk podcast interview with Richard Posner about his new book, A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression [amazon]. The book has gotten a bit of buzz for the way in which Posner semi-recants certain libertarian or Chicago-style economics positions he is known for. But certain other positions he has not recanted, such as his narrow view of economic actors’ duties to consider negative externalities of their activities (discussed at CT before here and here). In the podcast, Posner basically asserts that those actors in the financial sector who almost crashed the world economy were right to do so, in the sense that it was rational for them, individually, to be massive ‘risk polluters’ (to coin a phrase someone else has probably coined already.) He would probably go further, although he isn’t actually asked to in the podcast: some of these actors were obliged to take the risk. In at least some cases it would have been their strong, positive fiduciary duty, under the circumstances, to do something which – taking a larger view – seriously threatened to run the whole world economy off a cliff. Because that was the apparent route of profit-maximization. It was their job not to take the larger view. Posner blames regulators, not these profit-maximizing actors, for the market failure; for not seeing that the damage to everyone downwind of all that toxic risk was so great that it should not have been permitted. [click to continue…]

Martin Bright in the New StatesmanSpectator

bq. Incidentally, I now think the invasion was indeed an error: carried out at the wrong time, by the wrong coalition for the wrong reasons. But where I do agree with the “decents” is that those who opposed intervention in 2002/3 were arguing for the murderous Baathist regime to stay in power. This should remain on their conscience just as the murderous consequences of the invasion are on the conscience of those who supported the war.

(via comments at “Aaronovitch Watch”:http://aaronovitch.blogspot.com/ .)

Over the past few years, a certain argument form has become fairly common: yes, I was wrong (about Iraq, financial stuff), but critics on the other side, even if they were right about the overall dynamics of how things went wrong, were substantially mistaken about the details. So – in the invincible words of Monty Python’s Black Knight – ‘let’s call it a draw’.

I predict that, for some strange reason, the folks who entered this characteristic defensive crouch will uncurl, re-affix rhetorical arms and legs, and become altogether more aggressive after Obama takes office. It will be argued that the stimulus package/health care reform/etc. will inevitably be afflicted with bad unintended consequences. But, for some strange reason, those who make this argument will not feel obliged to predict, in detail, exactly what things will go wrong. They will feel it is sufficient to sketch, in a broad way, why the dynamics of certain policy directions seem fraught with potential hazards.

I somewhat regret that I haven’t been bothering to document the argumentative trend of which I speak, so I suggest that we make a collective effort in comments: who has made the ‘yes I was wrong, but the critics didn’t get the details exactly right so it’s a tie’ argument? For future reference.

Those more inclined to monger twiddly philosophy angels-on-a-pinhead-type problems can, alternatively, tackle the following: the defensive crouch of which I speak seems to presuppose a broadly Russellian theory of the objects of thought. That is, you shift blame for unintended consequences by subscribing to a highly stringent theory of intentionality – of the objects of thought. The theory would seem to be this: you can’t really be thinking about X – e.g. any Bush-era debacle – unless you have in mind a definite description of X. So those who quite clearly heard the drumhoofs of financial apocalypse but mistakenly thought the first rider’s name was ‘The collapse of the dollar’ didn’t really hear that guy who was actually riding up. Alternatively, on a more Kripkean view of the determination of the objects of our thoughts, it seems that critics could have been warning about the very financial crisis that we actually suffered, even if they couldn’t, in advance, give an accurate definite description. So we have an ontological issue about the identity of apocalypses across possible worlds. Discuss. Preferably with Twin-Earth cases. And Larry Kudlow. If possible, you should fly the actual Larry to Twin-Earth and leave him there.