on Defining Success in Politics

from Twitter

The way that pundits, politicians, and frankly most people measure political success is so absurd, it can hardly be applied to any other facet of life.



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To use a common metaphor, imagine you’re taking a roadtrip to Scottsdale (or the destination of your choosing). Your plan is to take the interstate all the way there, stopping as little as possible.

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While en route, a pileup accident ahead of you on the interstate causes a leg of it to close, so you must take a detour. At this point, if we were measuring success by political standards, the trip to Scottsdale is already a failure.

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The pundits and your opponents all line up to mock you for not having the foresight to predict a sudden road closure. The trip is marked as ill-fated from the start, a fiasco that should have never been undertaken.

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But it doesn’t stop there. Let’s say the pile up is so bad that you might consider abandoning the trip. Well, the press would have a field day with that! But let’s say you decide to go with the detour, after all. Same problem. Maybe worse!

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Now, you’ve abandoned course! You’re off the map. Nobody knows where you’re headed. You said Scottsdale, but now you’re pointed toward Denver. It’s chaos! And just how long will this take? You can’t possibly reach Scottsdale by the time you said you would!

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And it gets worse. Thanks to the detour, you now have to make an extra stop. Did you ever plan to go to Scottsdale? Or was this just an elaborate ruse to build up more Speedway Rewards points? We should launch an investigation!

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By the time you get into Scottsdale, not much later than expected, your arrival is panned as a weak attempt to save face in the wake of so many setbacks. The accident is cleared and forgotten, the detour is branded fake news, and experts are weighing in to blame your car.

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Put simply, this sort of analysis regards the plan as the goal. Because the plan had to change due to circumstances, even the achievement of the goal is counted as a failure.

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This timely quote just entered my TL:

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
 —Dwight D. Eisenhower

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