We are attracted to sports because of the reality. In week 15 the Colts led the Vikings 33 to zero at halftime and lost 39-36. You can’t make it up. On the other hand, George Santos, the newly elected GOP Congressman, can make stuff up. What the GOP should do with George is useful for understanding the GOP in the era after The Donald. Kevin D. Williamson at The Dispatch, as always, has an interesting take on George. As always, you should read it all and support The Dispatch but here is just the start:
George Santos is a liar. George Santos is a ridiculous liar. George Santos is a habitual liar. George Santos is a liar who lies about things that it doesn’t make sense to lie about, apparently just to keep in practice. George Santos lies about lying, and then he lies about having lied about lying. George Santos is such a pathetic and risible liar that QAnon kook Marjorie Taylor Greene—a hobbyist liar who turned pro a few years back—rolls her eyes about what a lying liar that lying liar is.
We would describe Kevin’s essay as Foreigner level Hot-Blooded. Being Hot Blooded is integral to politics and persuasion. Kevin may persuade the GOP to solve the problem but they should be very cold blooded when they try to solve the problem. It is part of the candidate problem that the GOP and the Democrats share as demonstrated by the recent Senate race in Pennsylvania. The summary of the discussion by Jack Butler at NRO’s Corner about the involvement of Mitch McConnell in selecting candidates to support in 2024 makes great sense to us. Mitch should be part of the process but the voters might not listen. He has expertise on the Senate and other political issues that make him useful but not all-knowing.
Here is a Churchill quote from Steven Hayward at PowerLine that is relevant but needs interpretation to see how it fits into politics a century later:
Nothing would be more fatal than for the government of States to get into the hands of the experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge: and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows only what hurts is a safer guide, than any vigorous direction of a specialised character. Why should you assume that all except doctors, engineers etc., are drones or worse?
To manage men, to explain difficult things to simple people, to reconcile opposite interests, to weigh the evidence of disputing experts, to deal with the clamorous emergency of the hour; are not these things in themselves worth the consideration and labour of a lifetime? If the Ruler is to be an expert in anything he should be an expert in everything; and that is plainly impossible. Wherefore I say from the dominion of all specialists (particularly military specialists) good Lord deliver us.
Experts are expert about a very limited number of issues. You get a very different answer from expert depending on the question. For example, should the question be: How do we stop Climate Change? Or: What do we do about Climate Change? And, of course, Churchill was no shrinking violet. Churchill wanted to be the Ruler to manage all those experts. We are not quite sure we need a Ruler but Churchill was right to not leave everything to the experts because their objective function might not be the one we want to use.
So in dealing with George and finding GOP candidates for 2024 there is a great need for expertise from Mitch and others. The first step is to create a catalog of all of George’s misdeeds. The second step is expert evaluation of each one of those misdeeds along with the penalties, if any, associated with those misdeeds. The third step is a very cold blooded analysis by the GOP of what steps to take with George. The hot-blooded solution, through George out of Congress, might not be the right choice. The steps, just like the candidates in 2024, should be based on benefits to the GOP.
Churchill lost several elections despite his expertise on politics and his insight into experts. Experts are just experts. The GOP’s success in 2024 will be measured by their, hopefully, cold blooded decisions about George and other candidates. The nature of politics and sports, however, is that momentum and all those hot-blooded folks will make the evaluation of those cold blooded decisions. Good luck to the GOP and remember the difficulties of momentum as you watch the end of the football season.
menwithgloves 