Optimism, our Achilles heel

A reader writes:

Good post on Ignatieff. The problem, though, is that optimism has become a sine qua non of a political career in the US today. For me, that has been the most instructive thing about the Democrats' You Tube debate the other week and the Republican debate this morning. NO ONE will admit to being at all pessimistic. Again, it's not a Democrat v. Republican thing, or, more surprisingly to me, a 'conservative' v. liberal thing (I put conservative in inverted commas because surely traditional conservatives do not fetishize optimism). It's an AMERICAN thing. And yet what Ignatieff is
calling for is for leaders who are brave enough not to act solely on their hopes, good wishes, good intentions, and best case scenarios. Good luck in these United States.

And it's not just foreign policy: much domestic policy too is being made on the basis of wishful thinking. To me, both sides in the immigration debate indulge in it to an amazing degree. For liberals and the business establishment, the mantra is 'this is America, so surely it will work out.' For conservatives, it's 'we can control our borders in an interdependent economy in which prosperity depends on open borders and in an era where somehow there is to be free movement of goods, services, and money, but people will be controlled as they were before globalization.'

I believe Radley Balko wrote something the other day -- I'll try to find it and post it tomorrow, when I'm less sleepy -- pointing out that conservative anger over immigration is never going to amount to much, because the conservative base, in the end, will not put up with the costs to the consumer economy that enacting their prescriptions on immigration would inflict. If memory serves, in the same essay, he observed that Democratic politicians will huff and puff about outsourcing and suchlike, given its socially disruptive effects, but won't do anything about it for pretty much the same reason.

The left-wing dogs and the right-wing dogs bark, but the economic caravan rolls on. Luxury is more ruthless than war. So said Juvenal -- or was it Daniel Larison?

Hey Larison, come set us straight!