I’ve often said, perhaps to you too, that the goal of a seasoned political strategist is to repackage a string of coincidences as brilliant political strategy.
David Cameron, as I understand it, responded to the crash o f'08 with Conservative ideology going back to at least Maggir Thatcher. He bailed out the banks by robbing the social welfare state - in effect inviting British taxpayers to bail out the gamblers. When this had the disastrous effect on the economy he scapegoats it by blaming it on the EU, those Polish plumbers willing to work cheap and "red tape" from Brussels. The obvious solution was to exit the EU and let Britain Be Great Again. I suspect Cameron was ideologically incapable.of letting the banks pay for their own mistakes. Iceland did and last I saw it's still a sovereign state. For GB it never ends. Another interesting fact: In 1937 Roosevelt actually reduced spending to try to balance the horrible deficit and debt and would've certainly crashed the economy again but for a little dust-up in europe. Can't say Labour would've behaved any better - Blair was a Conservative in all but name and the Germans managed to make the newly elected leader of Greece a deal he couldn't refuse. What I know is through the bank crisis and the plague the one constant is that the rich have gotten very much richer.
I think you're broadly right that we underestimate luck and happenstance (in politics and in life), but I think you also end up overestimating the role of luck -- at least in the case of the last US presidential election.
On aggregate, Biden led Trump by 3.8 points on February 27, 2020 (about two weeks before the pandemic really hit the United States):
So Trump wasn't an overwhelming favourite to win re-election before the pandemic hit. And it doesn't look like Trump got anything like the "rally around the flag" effect that leaders in other countries enjoyed after the pandemic hit (Trudeau's approval numbers, for example, basically flipped from majority negative to majority positive).
I'd guess that he didn't get much of a bump because he was deeply divisive president to begin with. But it also might have something to do with the fact that he didn't respond to the pandemic very well -- and that, more than the state of the economy, probably also explains why he lost in November 2020.
The state of the economy surely didn't help Trump's re-election effort and you can fairly say that a) it was bad luck that Covid-19 came along and b) that Covid-19 was to blame for the state of the economy. But I think there's a clear case for blaming his handling of Covid-19 for the fact that he lost (in addition to all the other liabilities he had going into the pandemic), more than the fact that Covid-19 simply had a negative impact on the economy.
"Figure 3 shows that the five issues most frequently designated as “top three” concerns include Covid‐19, the economy, health care, racism, and immigration. Covid‐19 led the list with slightly over three‐fifths (62 percent) citing it. The economy ranked second with 44 percent mentioning it, and 38 percent, 29 percent, and 18 percent selected health care, racism, and immigration, respectively. For the most important issue of all, Covid and, to a lesser extent, the economy again dominated—39 percent cited the former and 17 percent the latter. No other issue was mentioned as “most important” by as many as one respondent in 10.
"Figure 4 displays the survey respondents' evaluations of Trump's job performance on issues they designated as most important. The contrast between Covid‐19 and the economy is stark. Only 24 percent of those citing this issue as most important either “strongly approved” or “approved” of the president's performance, whereas fully 69 percent either “disapproved” or “strongly disapproved.” For the economy, the story is dramatically different; 73 percent approved of Trump's performance and only 21 percent disapproved. Figure 4 also shows that across all other most important issues, the president's ratings were less than stellar, with 40 percent approving and 50 percent disapproving."
For an intro to the discussion of the psychology of believing that there must be another compelling narrative other than luck, Kahneman is a good place to start. Thinking, Fast and Slow is such a nice little primer, and the discussion for the compulsion to look for reasons is quite good.
I’ve often said, perhaps to you too, that the goal of a seasoned political strategist is to repackage a string of coincidences as brilliant political strategy.
Brilliant article, keep up the great work Mr. Gardner.
David Cameron, as I understand it, responded to the crash o f'08 with Conservative ideology going back to at least Maggir Thatcher. He bailed out the banks by robbing the social welfare state - in effect inviting British taxpayers to bail out the gamblers. When this had the disastrous effect on the economy he scapegoats it by blaming it on the EU, those Polish plumbers willing to work cheap and "red tape" from Brussels. The obvious solution was to exit the EU and let Britain Be Great Again. I suspect Cameron was ideologically incapable.of letting the banks pay for their own mistakes. Iceland did and last I saw it's still a sovereign state. For GB it never ends. Another interesting fact: In 1937 Roosevelt actually reduced spending to try to balance the horrible deficit and debt and would've certainly crashed the economy again but for a little dust-up in europe. Can't say Labour would've behaved any better - Blair was a Conservative in all but name and the Germans managed to make the newly elected leader of Greece a deal he couldn't refuse. What I know is through the bank crisis and the plague the one constant is that the rich have gotten very much richer.
This is actually a fairly common view among the intelligent
I think you're broadly right that we underestimate luck and happenstance (in politics and in life), but I think you also end up overestimating the role of luck -- at least in the case of the last US presidential election.
On aggregate, Biden led Trump by 3.8 points on February 27, 2020 (about two weeks before the pandemic really hit the United States):
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2020/national/
So Trump wasn't an overwhelming favourite to win re-election before the pandemic hit. And it doesn't look like Trump got anything like the "rally around the flag" effect that leaders in other countries enjoyed after the pandemic hit (Trudeau's approval numbers, for example, basically flipped from majority negative to majority positive).
https://news.gallup.com/poll/328637/last-trump-job-approval-average-record-low.aspx
I'd guess that he didn't get much of a bump because he was deeply divisive president to begin with. But it also might have something to do with the fact that he didn't respond to the pandemic very well -- and that, more than the state of the economy, probably also explains why he lost in November 2020.
The state of the economy surely didn't help Trump's re-election effort and you can fairly say that a) it was bad luck that Covid-19 came along and b) that Covid-19 was to blame for the state of the economy. But I think there's a clear case for blaming his handling of Covid-19 for the fact that he lost (in addition to all the other liabilities he had going into the pandemic), more than the fact that Covid-19 simply had a negative impact on the economy.
Here's a study that seems to bear that out:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8242570/
Specifically:
"Figure 3 shows that the five issues most frequently designated as “top three” concerns include Covid‐19, the economy, health care, racism, and immigration. Covid‐19 led the list with slightly over three‐fifths (62 percent) citing it. The economy ranked second with 44 percent mentioning it, and 38 percent, 29 percent, and 18 percent selected health care, racism, and immigration, respectively. For the most important issue of all, Covid and, to a lesser extent, the economy again dominated—39 percent cited the former and 17 percent the latter. No other issue was mentioned as “most important” by as many as one respondent in 10.
"Figure 4 displays the survey respondents' evaluations of Trump's job performance on issues they designated as most important. The contrast between Covid‐19 and the economy is stark. Only 24 percent of those citing this issue as most important either “strongly approved” or “approved” of the president's performance, whereas fully 69 percent either “disapproved” or “strongly disapproved.” For the economy, the story is dramatically different; 73 percent approved of Trump's performance and only 21 percent disapproved. Figure 4 also shows that across all other most important issues, the president's ratings were less than stellar, with 40 percent approving and 50 percent disapproving."
Dan - Yes! Absolutely.
For an intro to the discussion of the psychology of believing that there must be another compelling narrative other than luck, Kahneman is a good place to start. Thinking, Fast and Slow is such a nice little primer, and the discussion for the compulsion to look for reasons is quite good.
Great article. I suppose many of us understand this at some level, but the illustrative examples were gold.