David McElroy

About half of my friends think the other half are moron. And the other half think the first group are idiots (or worse).

It’s not that I have stupid friend. I merely have friends who disagree with each other about political issues. Actually, I’m vastly oversimplifying to say that it’s half against half. Among my friends, I have libertarians, anarchists (of different stripes), social conservatives, progressives, “new Democrats” and some who are just plain hard to classify.

There’s overlap between the groups as well. The problem is that almost everybody is certain that his position is the right one — and it’s hard for him to understand how a right-thinking person could have to a different conclusion. Each person sees the weaknesses in the things the other person believes, not few see the potential weakness in their own positions. It’s just human nature.

This is why almost everyone believes that there’s a conspiracy against his position. Just Tuesday, Mitt Romney was talking about a “vast left-wing conspiracy” among the media and progressive left groups to stop his campaign. In 1998, Hillary Clinton spoke on NBC’s Today show of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” against Bill Clinton. So which side is telling the truth? Is there a left-wing conspiracy or a right-wing conspiracy? Or are they they just two different sides of the same coin?

The problem for every side is that humans have a tremendous tendency toward confirmation bias. I think about this frequently when I see things that my (very bright) friends say in opposition to one another about politics, but I thought about it in a much more serious way because of a great article that I read Tuesday by a libertarian economist who wrote an article in The Atlantic in December in which he had to admit to having been wrong. (Thanks to Andrew Coulson at the Cato Institute for linking to it.)

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About 10 years ago, I was at the home of a new political client for a photo shoot involving his family. He lived with a wife and two teen-age kids in a large, sprawling house that looked really impressive. When I got there, the candidate wasn’t home yet, but his daughter was expecting me and let me in.

I told her I wanted to look around at the different rooms to find the best place to shoot pictures. She started showing me the downstairs and then mentioned a large den upstairs with a fireplace that she thought might be nice, so we went to look. We walked up a massive staircase that led to two upper floors, one of which partially looked over the foyer and living room.

We walked down a couple of halls and I started feeling as though I was in a motel. There were doors everywhere. We looked at the den, but I finally asked her about all the other rooms.

“What’s in all of those rooms?” I asked. “It’s just the four of you who live here, isn’t it?”

It turns out that most of the rooms in the house where empty. She showed me. They were large and bare. The daughter couldn’t explain why they had all that empty space and she didn’t seem to understand why I found it odd to have all that much space for so few people.

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Cleaning out the notebook…

Since Richard Nixon set the modern precedent in 1969, almost every president has released his tax returns. Even candidates do it. Is it just a coincidence that the president who started the tradition is the only one so far to resign in disgrace?

I can’t figure out what presidential tax returns are supposed to prove. If I’m a president engaging in financial hanky-panky, I’m not going to report the illicit income on my tax returns. So what exactly is the point? Does anybody know?

By the way, Nixon was the first to do it in the modern era, but Franklin Roosevelt did it for years during his (almost) four terms in office. After Nixon started doing it in ’69, Gerald Ford is the only president who hasn’t done it. If I were a candidate, I wouldn’t do it, but that’s probably just one more of the many reasons why I’d never be a candidate.

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I’m still constantly amazed at the lengths to which some people will go to make everything into a political issue. I saw several tweets over the weekend similar to this one: “Obama presides over biggest sex scandal in Secret Service history.”

I’m certainly no fan of Barack Obama, but he just happened to be president when this scandal involving Secret Service agents and prostitutes happened. It’s political demagoguery to blame this sort of thing on a president who isn’t responsible, but happened to be in office — whether that president is Obama or Bush or anyone else. It’s intellectually dishonest.

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