Outcome of election could very well be dictated by chance
How Not to Choose a President
By GARY GUTTING, NYT
As our election campaign moves into its last weeks, I'm reading ancient Greek literature and history with my class of first-year Notre Dame students. This reading has led me to question the way we evaluate our candidates. The Greeks see clearly things we don't.
They see, for example, that failure does not prove incompetence. Consider Oedipus. As classical scholars like Bernard Knox have noted, he is the model of the Athenian statesman described in Pericles' famous Funeral Oration. Nonetheless, Oedipus comes to a horrific end, blind and exiled. Why? Not because he is incompetent. He is remarkably smart, persistent and courageous. But he is a victim of fate.
For the tragedians, fate is tied to the gods, either their implacable will (Aeschylus in "Agamemnon") or their knowledge of what must happen (Sophocles in "Oedipus the King"). The historians - Thucydides and, especially, Herodotus - are more inclined to speak of luck or chance. We also are more comfortable with luck than with fate, but too seldom invoke either to explain why things go wrong for politicians.
In particular, we often forget that what happens may have nothing to do with a leader's decisions. In the present election, much may be made, for example, of the November employment numbers. A sharp rise in unemployment may well defeat President Obama and a sharp decrease may carry him to victory. In fact, those numbers will warrant no conclusion about Obama's handling of our economic problems. Employment figures fluctuate from month to month, and no single report is a good indicator of the state of the economy. Even the famous broader measure "Are we better off than we were four years ago" ignores the multitude of extrinsic factors that determine the economic cycle. As we gradually come out of the recession, the odds are that whoever wins this election will, at the end of his term, claim credit for a significantly improved economy.
(More here.)
By GARY GUTTING, NYT
As our election campaign moves into its last weeks, I'm reading ancient Greek literature and history with my class of first-year Notre Dame students. This reading has led me to question the way we evaluate our candidates. The Greeks see clearly things we don't.
They see, for example, that failure does not prove incompetence. Consider Oedipus. As classical scholars like Bernard Knox have noted, he is the model of the Athenian statesman described in Pericles' famous Funeral Oration. Nonetheless, Oedipus comes to a horrific end, blind and exiled. Why? Not because he is incompetent. He is remarkably smart, persistent and courageous. But he is a victim of fate.
For the tragedians, fate is tied to the gods, either their implacable will (Aeschylus in "Agamemnon") or their knowledge of what must happen (Sophocles in "Oedipus the King"). The historians - Thucydides and, especially, Herodotus - are more inclined to speak of luck or chance. We also are more comfortable with luck than with fate, but too seldom invoke either to explain why things go wrong for politicians.
In particular, we often forget that what happens may have nothing to do with a leader's decisions. In the present election, much may be made, for example, of the November employment numbers. A sharp rise in unemployment may well defeat President Obama and a sharp decrease may carry him to victory. In fact, those numbers will warrant no conclusion about Obama's handling of our economic problems. Employment figures fluctuate from month to month, and no single report is a good indicator of the state of the economy. Even the famous broader measure "Are we better off than we were four years ago" ignores the multitude of extrinsic factors that determine the economic cycle. As we gradually come out of the recession, the odds are that whoever wins this election will, at the end of his term, claim credit for a significantly improved economy.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
The Greeks told stories, just like today's Democrats.
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