Conventional wisdom
Yesterday David and I attended an Ohio post-election forum hosted by the Columbus Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society. It was a fine event and one of the topics included the U.S. Senate race between Rob Portman and Lee Fisher.
During the event, Bill Cohen, a veteran Ohio reporter, commented that if someone had asked him two years ago, following the Obama win, who Republicans should run for the U.S, Senate seat, he would not have suggested a former trade representative and Director of the Office of Management and Budget for George W. Bush (Portman). Cohen's point, of course, was that the Portman pick and victory is impressive looking back today, but given the criticism of the Bush administration, it wouldn't have been one that he would have picked two years ago. Tom Suddes, columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Assistant Professor at Ohio University had earlier chuckled about the success of John Kasich as a candidate in spite of the fact that he worked as an employee of Lehman Brothers.
Peter Schramm, Director of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, followed up with the point that perhaps the voting results undermine an assumption that the Obama election was a referendum on the policies of George W. Bush. Perhaps, and I only quote Schramm from memory: "Obama wasn't elected for the reasons he thought he was."
The problem with conventional wisdom is that it doesn't account for those players who defy it.
Update: I've always said that CO has the highest quality comments - a tribute (but never a pander) to you all. Be sure to read David's comments.
During the event, Bill Cohen, a veteran Ohio reporter, commented that if someone had asked him two years ago, following the Obama win, who Republicans should run for the U.S, Senate seat, he would not have suggested a former trade representative and Director of the Office of Management and Budget for George W. Bush (Portman). Cohen's point, of course, was that the Portman pick and victory is impressive looking back today, but given the criticism of the Bush administration, it wouldn't have been one that he would have picked two years ago. Tom Suddes, columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Assistant Professor at Ohio University had earlier chuckled about the success of John Kasich as a candidate in spite of the fact that he worked as an employee of Lehman Brothers.
Peter Schramm, Director of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, followed up with the point that perhaps the voting results undermine an assumption that the Obama election was a referendum on the policies of George W. Bush. Perhaps, and I only quote Schramm from memory: "Obama wasn't elected for the reasons he thought he was."
The problem with conventional wisdom is that it doesn't account for those players who defy it.
Update: I've always said that CO has the highest quality comments - a tribute (but never a pander) to you all. Be sure to read David's comments.
Schramm began his response to Cohen by saying something like:
"That would have been a correct conclusion, if your assumptions had been correct, but since your conclusion was wrong, maybe your assumption was wrong." Cohen is a fine reporter, but like most in media, he accepts the assumptions du jour, and when one of those assumption requires a result that didn't happen, he still never thinks to question the assumption. He'd rather chalk up the unexpected result as one of life's inexplicable mysteries than re-examine his assumptions.
"The obvious is sometimes the most difficult thing to discern, and few things are more amusing than the efforts of our journals of record to keep open' minds about the self-evident, and thus to create mysteries when the real task of reportage is to dispel them." -Christopher Hitchens
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You said it better than I did.
Thanks, David.
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What you said was entirely correct. I believe you got it verbatim. I just added the first part of it.
It's interesting how often an argument can be demolished in just that way. E.g.: "That's logical conclusion — if you accept the highly questionable premises. Take the first one. . . . Now the second premise: . . . Thus, we have two questionable premises leading to a flawed conclusion."
Cohen admitted - declared - that his conclusion had proved untrue. Detectives would call that a clue. But it still didn't occur to Cohen that his premises might be wrong. His facial expression suggested that he was immediately ruling out Schramm's logic lesson. As my partner says when he sees this kind of thing happening, "More power to the forward shields, Scotty, the truth is getting through."
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