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Of course the administration uses cherry-picked statistics to get credit. And of course the opponents of the administration use cherry-picked statistics to crit

Of course the administration uses cherry-picked statistics to get credit. And of course the opponents of the administration use cherry-picked statistics to criticize the administration. Beyond obvious short-term political goals, the reason for this is simple: in a machine as large and complicated as the government, it's really really hard to accurately ascribe meaningful credit (or guilt) for any change, and especially to do so in a way that is understandable by voters. Each administration makes changes (positive and negative) that won't be felt by voters for decades, if at all; and under each administration, voters endure the consequences (positive and negative) of previous administrations. But that doesn't get people to the polls, so why talk about it.

thrown_22 4y ago
- dustingetz 4y ago
  the problem is voters are uneducated, or rather the distribution of education will always be uneven so there will always be undesirable selection effects that every elected politician must definitionally survive
- elmomle 4y ago
  It would be good to have sane conversations in this country about what we can learn from the past few years (in which I think both this administration and the previous one could be accused of serious blunders and politicking) but pointing fingers is not a helpful contribution.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    It would be nice to have a sane conversation. That however is impossible when one side has decided that the other side should be muzzled, viz. every post even remotely critical of democrats getting flagged here, or until recently getting you banned off twitter.
akira2501 4y ago
> it's really really hard to accurately ascribe meaningful credit (or guilt) for any change It's a bitter pill to swallow that I not only have to give these people my money to do this work, but they're wasting time trying to ascribe credit or blame for it. > and especially to do so in a way that is understandable by voters. This is the old "voters are actually stupid" idea. I don't buy it. Voters seem to have no problem deciding for themselves who deserves what credit, what politicians want is to market their "success" and to pass off their "failure." Again.. using our own funds to do it. I find the whole thing inappropriate. If we decide to credit you, you will be re-elected, if we decide to blame you, we will invoke the courts.. and I doubt they will have a "really really hard time ascribing guilt" to the appropriate party.
- hackyhacky 4y ago
  > It's a bitter pill to swallow that I not only have to give these people my money to do this work, but they're wasting time trying to ascribe credit or blame for it. I agree, it is a bitter pill. The alternative is to live in a society where leaders don't need the goodwill of the people in order to rule, and therefore have no interest in proclaiming their accomplishments. Fortunately, there are lots of dictatorships for you to choose from. > Voters seem to have no problem deciding for themselves who deserves what credit, Voters certainly decide, but I see little evidence that they decide accurately. It's not that they're stupid, it's just that (a) they don't understand how the government or the economy work and (b) have no collective memory. So, they decide, if there is inflation under the Biden administration, it must be Biden's fault, QED.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > This is the old "voters are actually stupid" idea. I don't buy it. Voters seem to have no problem deciding for themselves who deserves what credit, what politicians want is to market their "success" and to pass off their "failure." It's been studied and is kinda true. You can pretty reliably do something like, over a controversial tax hike that affected 2% of the population, get 30% of respondents to claim it made their taxes go up, if there was a heavy media push about how it'd make everyone's taxes go up, and that's for something they should have direct experience with. You can also do things like get an amusingly-high percentage of people who oppose various social programs by name to tell you they'd support a law to replace them with some other program you describe... that's identical to what the program already does. Then there's all the people who tell you how much more dangerous America is now than when they were growing up in the 1960s or 70s. I dunno about dumb, but voters' views are rather less connected to reality than one might hope, and seem to have a whole lot more to do with what they're being told by pundits.
rsj_hn 4y ago
This is also true for other large bureaucracies. I see this type of cherry picking and fighting over credit often at work as well.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
This isn't common just in politics, but in your average big corp, even tech. You need to justify your accomplishments today even if the real benefit won't be seen a few months or few years from now.

thrown_22 4y ago

dustingetz 4y ago
the problem is voters are uneducated, or rather the distribution of education will always be uneven so there will always be undesirable selection effects that every elected politician must definitionally survive
elmomle 4y ago
It would be good to have sane conversations in this country about what we can learn from the past few years (in which I think both this administration and the previous one could be accused of serious blunders and politicking) but pointing fingers is not a helpful contribution.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  It would be nice to have a sane conversation. That however is impossible when one side has decided that the other side should be muzzled, viz. every post even remotely critical of democrats getting flagged here, or until recently getting you banned off twitter.

akira2501 4y ago

> it's really really hard to accurately ascribe meaningful credit (or guilt) for any change It's a bitter pill to swallow that I not only have to give these people my money to do this work, but they're wasting time trying to ascribe credit or blame for it. > and especially to do so in a way that is understandable by voters. This is the old "voters are actually stupid" idea. I don't buy it. Voters seem to have no problem deciding for themselves who deserves what credit, what politicians want is to market their "success" and to pass off their "failure." Again.. using our own funds to do it. I find the whole thing inappropriate. If we decide to credit you, you will be re-elected, if we decide to blame you, we will invoke the courts.. and I doubt they will have a "really really hard time ascribing guilt" to the appropriate party.

hackyhacky 4y ago
> It's a bitter pill to swallow that I not only have to give these people my money to do this work, but they're wasting time trying to ascribe credit or blame for it. I agree, it is a bitter pill. The alternative is to live in a society where leaders don't need the goodwill of the people in order to rule, and therefore have no interest in proclaiming their accomplishments. Fortunately, there are lots of dictatorships for you to choose from. > Voters seem to have no problem deciding for themselves who deserves what credit, Voters certainly decide, but I see little evidence that they decide accurately. It's not that they're stupid, it's just that (a) they don't understand how the government or the economy work and (b) have no collective memory. So, they decide, if there is inflation under the Biden administration, it must be Biden's fault, QED.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yamtaddle 4y ago
> This is the old "voters are actually stupid" idea. I don't buy it. Voters seem to have no problem deciding for themselves who deserves what credit, what politicians want is to market their "success" and to pass off their "failure." It's been studied and is kinda true. You can pretty reliably do something like, over a controversial tax hike that affected 2% of the population, get 30% of respondents to claim it made their taxes go up, if there was a heavy media push about how it'd make everyone's taxes go up, and that's for something they should have direct experience with. You can also do things like get an amusingly-high percentage of people who oppose various social programs by name to tell you they'd support a law to replace them with some other program you describe... that's identical to what the program already does. Then there's all the people who tell you how much more dangerous America is now than when they were growing up in the 1960s or 70s. I dunno about dumb, but voters' views are rather less connected to reality than one might hope, and seem to have a whole lot more to do with what they're being told by pundits.

rsj_hn 4y ago

This is also true for other large bureaucracies. I see this type of cherry picking and fighting over credit often at work as well.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

This isn't common just in politics, but in your average big corp, even tech. You need to justify your accomplishments today even if the real benefit won't be seen a few months or few years from now.