Apples to Apples: Good and Bad Counterfactuals

How many bad apples are needed to spoil the bunch? 

When it comes to counterfactuals, perhaps not that many.  There is evidence that Gresham’s Law applies to the public perception of counterfactual history, in the sense that bad counterfactuals can drive out good ones – at least in the minds of outside observers who are eager to dismiss the entire genre based on its weakest examples.

A good example of a bad counterfactual appeared last week, when President Trump – building on an earlier howler about Andrew Jackson living well past his prime and preventing the Civil War – declared in his State of the Union address that:

If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea.

The Washington Post went on to report that "his prepared remarks added that he thought "potentially millions of people" would have been killed if that war had broken out, but Trump didn't say those words as he spoke."

In fact, Trump may actually have brought us closer to nuclear war with North Korea, at least according to many observers.  (See, for example, the Vox essay, “How Trump Made the North Korea Crisis Worse,” LINK).

While people’s political views will shape whether or not they accept Trump’s counterfactual, there is no question that it is a comparatively crude, inordinately speculative, and blatantly self-serving example of “what if” thinking.

A bad apple in other words.

But let's not forget about the good ones.

In an essay in today’s Washington Post, Megan McArdle offers an instructive counterfactual insight that shows how we can learn from the past and apply the lessons to the present and future.

She writes:

Trump never commanded a majority of Republican primary voters. He commanded a plurality only because too many candidates were splitting the major Republican constituencies.

If the field had winnowed earlier, Trump would have lost. Instead, through arrogance, through narcissism and through disbelief, the party’s leaders dallied until Trump’s momentum was unstoppable, and a hapless outsider at the head of a minority faction had somehow taken over their party.

After the cease-fire, most of those Republican leaders would end up cravenly capitulating to Trump, to the lies, the incompetence, the vulgarity…Terrified of his voters but not quite able to bring themselves to endorse his behavior, Republicans have mostly settled on pretending it’s not happening. Thus, the GOP is both a victim of Trump’s gaslighting and its guiltiest accomplice.

Do Democrats face a similar threat from far left presidential hopefuls?  

McArdle’s answer comes from an unlikely source, former Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker. She argues that he was onto something in 2015 when he begged “his fellow no-hopers to “clear the field” so that “the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive…alternative to the current front-runner.”

This is a mathematical problem the Democrats would be well advised to solve.

Thanks for the warning, counterfactual history!