John Podhoretz does it again

When G.W. Bush won the Iowa caucuses in 2000, John Podhoretz writing in the New York Post declared with absolute certainty that the race was over and that Bush would be the nominee. When, a week late in New Hampshire, McCain crushed Bush by 17 points, Podhoretz, forgetting that his previous absolutely certain prediction had just been shattered, declared with absolute certainty that the race was over and that McCain would be the nominee. More recently, Podhoretz spent a year declaring, with absolute certainty, that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee in 2008. He even wrote a book about it. A whole book touting just two ideas: that Hillary would be the nominee, and that the Republicans must ignore all other possible GOP candidates and nominate Rudy Giuliani, because he was the only Republican who could beat Hillary. And now Obama has routed Hillary in Iowa and is surging in the polls, while she (at the moment I write this) is struggling to stay alive in New Hampshire. Even if she pulls out a New Hampshire victory (which I hope she does), she faces a long hard fight to the nomination.against a popular opponent.

Usually people emphasize their strengths, not their weaknesses. But J. Podhoretz seems driven to keep doing the very thing he is worst at, making political predictions. He even once cheerfully admitted that a spectacularly wrong prediction he had made—that President Bush would never withdraw Harriet Miers’s nomination to the Supreme Court—showed him, Podhoretz, to be an “idiot.” But that hasn’t stopped him.

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David W. writes from Canada:

You mention that our friend J. Podhoretz is terrible at political predictions. Another one is David Frum.

Smart guy, but breathtakingly self-assured. Also, very partisan. A bad combination in the punter business, where detachment is critical.

Hence Frum’s firm prediction in early 2000 that “John McCain and Bill Bradley” would that year’s nominees, and his breathless mid-1990s touting of Gingrich’s future: ” Unlike the soon to be utterly forgotten Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich—at whatever end of Pennsylvania Avenue he resides—is poised to dominate American politics for a generation” (Times Literary Supplement, Sept. 22, 1995).

As a Canadian, he made a number of low-visibility predictions, including that the 1997 federal elections there “may prove to be the last elections of a united Canada”. Not exactly a prediction, but you get the picture.

Anyways, it ain’t over till it’s over.

LA replies:

“Newt Gingrich—at whatever end of Pennsylvania Avenue he resides—is poised to dominate American politics for a generation.”

That’s a riot.

I think we might work out a theory here about neocons making wildly assured and wildly off-base predictions. Here’s a possible explanation. They don’t see anything whole, in context, and concretely. The same limited vision by which they reduce America to a phrase, a idea, not a country with a history, they also apply to other things. They pick up some “notion” of something, it fits their own interests or ideology in a certain way at a certain time, and they make judgments and predictions about it based on that very partial view.

Further, they never learn from their mistakes, because, as I’ve written about Frum, truth is not what they’re about, truth is not a concern for them, but rather being a part of a certain political environment and adjusting to the current fashion among their own group, and advancing their own career. That’s why they never explain their shifts from one view to another. It doesn’t even occur to them to do so. It’s not that they’re dishonest. It’s that they don’t have a concept of truth independent of what’s happening in the moment as it affects their political interests and careers.

P.S. By the way, I gave a talk a few months before Frum’s Gingrich prediction, in spring ‘95, on the theme that Gingrich was an intellectually immature, globalist ideologue whose understandings of the world were very unsound (as shown by his embrace of Alvin Toffler’s neo-Marxist The Third Wave), and who should not be embraced by conservatives.

David W. replies:

Greetings again,

” we might work out a theory here about neocons making wildly assured and wildly off-base predictions”. … I’m working on it !

BTW, memory fails me a bit here, but did Kristol not say in his maiden New York Times column that Obama HAD “prevented a Clinton Restoration”?

Hmm, it’s a start.

LA replies:

I’m LOL again! Unbelievable.

Also, the neocons’ excessive tendency to predictions is part and parcel of their ideological frame of mind. Neocons, who are a type of rationalist liberal, reduce human and historical reality to a few ideas and slogans, such as “everyone longs for democracy,” the better to control reality and control people’s minds. Given their assumption that reality can be easily understood and controlled with a simple phrase, and also given their “present-moment-ness,” it also stands to reason that they believe they can make sweeping predictions of reality based on what’s happening in this moment. Obama had won Iowa and was surging. The trend of that moment had to be the trend for the future as well.

P.S. Here’s what Kristol wrote the opening paragraph of his first column as a New York Times op-ed writers:

“Thank you, Senator Obama. You’ve defeated Senator Clinton in Iowa. It looks as if you’re about to beat her in New Hampshire. There will be no Clinton Restoration. A nation turns its grateful eyes to you.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 08, 2008 08:11 PM | Send