Recently there has been a lot of discussion - putting it most charitably - about whether President Obama is "just like" President Bush. There are certainly policy issues where they seem to agree, or where their differences are so nuanced as to be indistinguishable. From Afghanistan to surveillance to continuing bank bailouts, it can seem as if "Change We Can Believe In" were merely a convenient campaign slogan.
Whether that's true depends less on President Obama or President Bush than on the person making the claim, and the person reading that claim. It's entirely possible the claim can be both reasonably grounded in evidence for the former, and also absurd for the latter. The difference is not facts, but interests and values.
More below the fold....
Obama = Bush? Maybe, depending....
To some, President Obama's recently announced Afghanistan policy is eerily similar to former President Bush's "surge" in Iraq. To others, surveillance is the clearest case of Obama embracing Bush policy. For others, it's the bank bailouts. Each claim has merits, although rebuttals can and do show nuanced points of difference in each case.
But did Americans vote for "Nuanced Points of Difference," or "Change We Can Believe In?" If the differences are so nuanced as to be invisible to anyone who doesn't go deep into the policy weeds, are they differences at all? Is President Obama "just like" President Bush?
Your personal answer to that question is based on what issues and what policy solutions matter most to you. And we don't all agree on those, nor should we.
When is a cat a dog?
That seems an absurd question. A cat is never a dog. Cats and dogs are different species. How stupid can one be?
But if you're a baggage handler at the airport, it may not be a stupid question. Baggage handlers commonly count and load pet carriers, for passengers who are bringing their pets along. The baggage compartment of an airliner usually has an area set aside for pet carriers, and airlines often don't have separate areas for dogs and cats. A pet carrier of a given size is exactly that: a pet carrier of that size. To the baggage handler, it doesn't matter what kind of four-legged furry is in that pet carrier. In terms of what matters most to the baggage handler, a cat is a dog, or vice-versa, so long as the carriers are the same size.
The human passengers will of course disagree. They don't want to be handed the first pet carrier that comes off the aircraft. Indeed, they won't settle for any pet carrier containing a cat. They want their own pooties back.
Note: A cat is a mammal of the species Felis catus. A pootie is that cute, adorable, sweet, playful, most [insert trait here] cat ever: which happens to be yours.
So who's right, the baggage handlers or the passengers? They're both right, because they have different interests in a pet carrier, and each is thinking and acting on his/her own interests.
We evaluate based on our interests.
Whether we're evaluating pastimes or presidencies, we all evaluate them based on our interests. If you love to watch a rolling travelogue of the gorgeous French countryside, the Tour de France may be the sporting high point of your entire year. That doesn't mean die-hard baseball fans are idiots; it means they have other interests in evaluating a pastime.
And depending on what "Change We Can Believe In" meant for you - your interests, the changes you wanted to see in our government - President Obama may indeed be a profound disappointment. To someone else, he may be just as profound a success, because they have different interests, different changes they wanted to see in our government. That doesn't mean either of you are idiots. It means you have different interests, different changes you wanted to see in government.
In theory that would be so obvious as to go without saying. In practice, it's not, because we each believe our interests are the most important. And they are, to each of us. You may passionately and reasonably believe that restoring the Fourth Amendment and ending widespread surveillance, getting all of our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, or regulating the banking industry is the most important issue facing our society. Someone else may equally passionately and reasonably believe enacting universal health care, creating jobs, or confronting climate change is the most important issue facing our society. In terms of the issues that matter to you, the differences between Presidents Obama and Bush may be so trivial as to be insignificant. In terms of the issues that matter to someone else, the differences may be breathtakingly profound.
We cannot prove or disprove each others' interests.
The similarities and differences in President Obama's Afghanistan policy and President Bush's Iraq policy are issues of fact. The same is true for the similarities and differences of their surveillance and banking policies: they are issues of fact. To the extent that claims about those policies can be backed by evidence of those policies, the claims can be proved or disproved as issues of fact.
But your interests are not issues of fact. They are issues of opinion. They are what matters most to you. You can reasonably argue that they should matter most to others, but you can't reasonably argue that they must matter most to others. You cannot prove yours or disprove others, no matter how many facts you throw on the pile, because we weigh interests based on our own value-judgments, which are shaped by our own experiences, in our own subcultures. And if you deconstruct any value-judgment far enough, if you keep asking and answering the question "Why?" ...
... sooner or later you reach an arbitrary statement of the form "I prefer A over B," or a tautological loop of such statements. There is no such thing as an "objective" value-judgment. They are all arbitrary. We can advocate them, but we cannot prove them.
We can explore each others' interests.
When someone says "President Obama is just like President Bush," that person is really saying: "The ways they are the same matter more to me than the ways they are different."
When someone else replies "President Obama is nothing like President Bush," that person is really saying: "The ways they are different matter more to me than the ways they are the same."
If we can read those first statements as really expressing those second statements, we can discuss those positions much more reasonably. We can ask "Why are the ways they are the same more important to you than the ways they are different?" or its converse. And the answers to those questions might help us understand each others' different interests and why our interests differ. We might find reasons to change our minds, or at least be open to a wider perspective than our own. We might simply better understand why we disagree. Those are all useful outcomes of a civil dialogue.
But we can't get there if we treat our interests as facts.
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Happy Saturday!