Matthew Yglesias asks me to please not jiggle his elbow, and to refrain from pointing out that Bush's "grand strategy"--even if completely and successfully implemented--would still be a clown show:
matthew: Drezner Outreach Program: I come to get Dan Drezner to vote for John Kerry, not to bury him, and since he's edging in the right direction we'll continue to accept his premises ad arguendo and kindly ask Professor DeLong to avoid antagonizing anyone. This is like wondering if you should hire the architectural firm whose structural engineer doesn't know what he's doing just because you like their clear, aesthetic vision for your house. The only problem is -- your house is going to fall down, so the aesthetic qualities aren't all that relevant. You want to just buy the firm's pretty model and put it up as an object in your less-pretty, but non-collapsed, house constructed by the competition. Implementation is very important.
But the clear, aesthetic vision is not a house. Or, rather, it's one of those Escher drawings of a house with an ever-climbing circular staircase.
Posted by DeLong at August 18, 2004 11:38 AM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postBe good!
Posted by: praktike on August 18, 2004 11:44 AMAs if the Bush Illusion had any of the aesthetic coherence of an Escher illusion.
Posted by: Strange Doctrines on August 18, 2004 12:31 PMNow you've done it, getting all shrill like that. Dan will have to whole-heartedly endorse Bush now, just to show you.
Posted by: Buck on August 18, 2004 01:07 PMWill someone please explain to me why we want Drezner to vote for Kerry? If he can't yet see how horrific Bush is(.4?, .4?!), why-oh-why do we want his judgment lumped in with ours as Kerry voters? His vote for Kerry won't change the outcome of the election; all it will do is allow him to cynically distance himself from a Bush team that will be increasingly discredited with time. And then, ten or 20 years hence, we'll have to deal with Drezner's horrific judgment again; he'll have retained some influence in foreign policy spheres because we weren't willing to judge that judgment now.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim on August 18, 2004 01:50 PMUnless Drezner lives in one of a handfull of swing states, his vote doesn't count anyways, so let him vote for Bush.
Posted by: Kuas on August 18, 2004 03:31 PMHi Brad,
If Escher is the paradigm for Bush which artistic, strategy -free, process-driven, genius would you care to nominate for Bosnia and Rwanda ?
Just curious ;o)
Posted by: mark safranski on August 18, 2004 06:12 PMI think Brad and Matt have finally acheived the "deadly embrace" condition. Matt writes about Brad,
Brad posts Matt's posts and then Matt...
"Will someone please explain to me why we want Drezner to vote for Kerry? If he can't yet see how horrific Bush is(.4?, .4?!), why-oh-why do we want his judgment lumped in with ours as Kerry voters?"
Yes, because the key isn't to persuade other people, make alliances, and win votes and win the election, it's to preserve our pride in our judgment.
Posted by: Gary Farber on August 19, 2004 12:30 AMI care about who Dan Drezner votes for because I want Kerry to win the election. A winning coalition can not be comprised of people with whom any one individual agrees 100% with everyone else's opinions. Instead is a coalition of the better off under this alternative than the other options available. Drezner by the virtue of his living in a non-swing state has no swing power with his vote. However if you treat him as a proxy for others with an issue and salience profile similiar to his own admitted profile, then it is some damm good news that his p=0.4 to vote for Bush. This means that there are some take over chances available from Bush's 2000 winning coalition who are living in swing states. Now the relevant question is how big of a population can Drezner proxy for and on that I have no clue.
Posted by: fester on August 19, 2004 08:08 AMWill someone please explain to me why we want swing voters to vote for Kerry? If they can't yet see how horrific Bush is, why-oh-why do we want their judgment lumped in with ours as Kerry voters? True, their votes for Kerry might change the outcome of the election; but it will also allow them to cynically distance themselves from a Bush team that will be increasingly discredited with time. And then, ten or twenty years hence, we'll have to deal with the swing voters' horrific judgment again; they'll have retained the impression that their political views should matter in the public debate because we weren't willing to judge that judgment now.
Posted by: SomeCallMeIdiot on August 19, 2004 12:27 PMGary:
1. I specifically claimed that his vote wouldn't change the outcome of the election. Now, that might be wrong, but I'm clearly not arguing that I'd rather lose the election and preserve the purity of the judgment.
2. I think any venom in the post springs from two concerns. First, I can't understand how Dan couldn't already be convinced that he should vote against Bush. So I search for theories, and come up with (a) bad faith, or (b) bad judgment. I opt for (b).
Second, Kerry's been pandering to that judgment for a while - or at least that's how I interpret the "I'd still vote to go into Iraq." This is at least consistent with Dan's desire for a "grand strategy." I think that the problem is/was the grand strategy. I'm worried that we won't renounce the new, lowered standard for attacking another country, and therefore the rest of the world will remain skittish about American foreign policy.
3. If you agree with the "grand strategy," then obviously you don't see a problem. But can you point me to a post (of your's or Drezner's or others') that explains why the new lowered standard for invasion makes sense? (One that doesn't conflate nukes with bio- or chem-weapons). I don't understand it, and I find that maddening.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim on August 19, 2004 01:09 PMDrezner influenced foreign policy thinking?????
Posted by: kharris on August 19, 2004 06:02 PM