Yet Another Triumph of Numbers Over Words
Iceberg Problems, Iceberg Solutions, the Inflation Reduction Act, a Personal Admission
Hi everyone, first a bit of a housekeeping note:
It’s been a while - a long while - since I posted anything on this newsletter. Not too long ago, in recognition of that fact, I turned off payments. So this is now completely free, and I’m writing here when I have a thought that’s too long for a tweet and not quite right for an article in a more established publication, and I don’t see either of those things changes in the near future.
Anyway, if you’re a recent subscriber, hello! And if not, hello again.
Right now I’m more inclined to post because a) I just got back from vacation and this seems like a nice way to ease into working again and b) Joe Biden’s presidency went from looking kind of disappointing to kind of a historically successful one. (You know things are going great now when loyal democrats like myself are finally willing to admit that previously they really weren’t.)
There’s a lot to say about the Inflation Reduction Act. For example, it’s the biggest step we’ve ever taken toward preserving a planet fit for human habitation. That’s nice. But the thing on my mind right now is about how politics works - and how I forgot politics works.
One of my favorite quotes about politics is from former Clinton strategist Paul Begala. “The Titanic didn’t have a messaging problem. It had an iceberg problem.” (I’ve never found the source for that quote, so maybe he didn’t actually say that, but as Mark Twain once famously remarked, newsletters don’t have the same journalistic standards as other forms of writing so who cares.)
In any event, for the past year, Joe Biden and the Democrats have been vexed by iceberg problems. Supply chain issues. Rising energy costs. Labor shortages. Omicron. An Afghanistan withdrawal that, to put it euphemistically, could have been smoother. I say this as a former and occasionally current speechwriter: no amount of speechwriting - or digital messaging, or press conferences, or whatever - was going to solve this stuff.
Then there was the second-order iceberg problem: the Democrats control Washington in theory but not in practice. The right-wing Supreme Court is busy legislating from the bench and making most of the issues facing America worse instead of better. Democrats’ ability to address those issues depends on Senators Sinema and Manchin, two Senators who often seem to relish disappointing their colleagues.
None of this is fair. But that’s the thing about numbers - they don’t recognize fairness or unfairness. They just are. For the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, Democrats have needed to get to 50, and 50 has been very hard to get to. End of story.
But since humans like stories, and the numbers story is boring, our natural instinct is to go with something more interesting. It’s not conspiracy-theorizing, but it’s the same instinct - to assume that the simplest explanation is too simple, that there must be more to what’s going on than meets the eye.
In Democrats’ case, that’s mostly involved convincing ourselves that there must be some set of magic words, a magic message, that the president or his allies can use to solve these math based problems. Relatedly, we convince ourselves that Republicans are messaging masters. Both these ideas - that the good guys are one good talking point away from triumph, and that the bad guys are only successful because they’re good at sloganeering - are forms of wishful thinking. They’re more pleasant than the truth: passing progressive laws with slim majorities when political institutions favor conservatives is very, very hard.
Over the last few months, I didn’t write much about messaging or political strategy, in part because I wasn’t confident that I would be able to stand by anything I said a few months after I said it. But privately, in conversations with DC friends and fellow armchair quarterbacks, I made a version of this mistake. I spent a lot of time worrying and wondering about the president’s message - which tone he would adopt, which villains he would single out. All that stuff mattered, but only around the margins. It wasn’t worth the attention I gave it.
I’m grateful for the people who focused less on the narrative and more on playing the hand they were dealt. The heroes of the reconciliation bill - the people who may have done more than anyone else, thus far, to save the planet - are the people who care more about being persistent than being inspiring. For months, they plodded along in relative silence, trying to figure out how to get to 50 Senate votes. The White House, which could have made a big show of attacking Manchin and Sinema (a show that I would have, completely incorrectly, deemed strategic), held its fire. There was no guarantee it would work. But it worked.
I think there are two lessons here. One is that the most important thing politicians can do is solve the second-order iceberg problems. Elect fifty senators who will end the legislative filibuster, rein in an out-of-control Supreme Court, and protect voting rights. Keep fighting back against gerrymandering in the House.
The lesson lesson - and the one I hope will stay with me - is that when things get bad, as they inevitably due, we overweight the importance of messaging and underweight the importance of persistence and patience. Those are instincts. There’s not much we can do to avoid them. But we can acknowledge those instincts, anticipate them, and try to consciously balance them out.
If we do, we’ll get fewer exciting stories but make a lot more people’s lives better. As a words person, it’s a bit frustrating that we have to make that tradeoff. But it seems like a worthwhile trade.
David