in the absence of exogenous information (such as is provided by actual caucus-goers and voters), the politico-media complex takes on the characteristics of a giant echo chamber. By late fall, all you could hear in it was "Dean!!-Dean!-Dean-dean-deandeandean."Our system has a lot of feedback in it. Positive feedback is necessary to the desired instability known as "economic growth." But excessive positive feedback - e.g., when a microphone picks up and amplifies sound from a speaker it is controlling - causes dramatic and sometimes painful instability. In the example of the microphone/amplifier/speaker, too much gain causes the penetrating squeal we all have heard - and have no desire to be subjected to again.. . . unless I am very much mistaken, the politico-media complex is operating like an echo chamber once again: The noise reverberating from within it is, "Vulnerable!!-vulnerable!-vulnerable-vulnerablevulnerable" — referring, of course, to President Bush and his prospects for re-election. Every new fact has to operate in the context of this rumbling background of interpretation.
. . . before you climb into the echo chamber and start rumbling "vulnerable-vulnerable" yourself, you might want to ask those inside whatever happened to the Bush-Dean matchup they had planned for November 2004.
- A high-growth economy with a not-especially high unemployment rate: "vulnerable-vulnerable";
- a former staffer with the crackpot idea that Condoleezza Rice is incompetent: "vulnerable-vulnerable."
When pundits have insufficient information on which to base their predictions - when they are attempting to project further into the future than the available data (and the available conventional wisdom) allows - it is the equivalent of a technician turning up the gain of the sound system too much - the output is not information but noise. In the case of the sound system the phenomenon is easily recognized; in the case of punditry it is less so - because even the person with the correct perspective will have been chastened by surprises at one time or another, and hence at least somewhat unsure of his own judgment.
But Mark Steyn told you long before the balloting that Howard Dean would not be the Democratic nominee, and Mark Steyn told you that Bush is in a very strong position now. I think Steyn is right. By November I think the economy will be a serious problem - for the Democrats. By November the downside of the Iraq invasion will be old news, and the upside of it will still be current - and will have been dramatized by the prosecution of Saddam by a new Iraqi government.
And by November I think journalism will be exhausted from trying to levitate the candidacy of a Democratic nominee who is unlikeable and at once stale and lacking serious experience for the executive position he seeks. A man who will be seen as fit only for second guessing a leader, and not for leadership.