The last 3 years have led me to a deep philosophical acceptance of Milton Friedman’s principle that effective politics is often about getting the wrong people to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Much as I detest Trump as a person, he sometimes rises to that level.
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This generally happens when he’s at his most random GAN-like petty level of grievance-driven button pushing. He sometimes does right thing for wrong reason.
But the more he thinks he knows what he’s doing (as in “business”) the less the chances of him being accidentally right
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Barbell principle: I’ll take either a GAN bot-politician OR a wonk who works hard to master difficult policy areas.
Shitshows happen when careful wonks try random-bot player style (they’re never random enough) or when random-bot players pretend they have achieved wonk-mastery.
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Someone being good enough at both ends to do both would be a Great Statesman precisely because it would be the mediocre combo.
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Lyndon Johnson seems like a champion of mediocrity then - wonkish in handling people and random bot style in everything else
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And that’s why Caro thought he was a great statesman I guess. I’m not so sure.

