Remembering What Comes Next
17th June 2025
ZMan points the way.
Thirty years ago, when Bill Clinton was caught chasing interns around the Oval Office, many assumed it was the end of him. Instead, he not only wriggled free of the scandal, and many other scandals, but he seemed to be stronger for it. The reason is Clinton was an extraordinarily clever man. He was not a smart man, in the sense that he could anticipate and avoid problems. Smart men do not have sex with interns. He was clever like a fox in that he could always find a way to slip out of a trap.
The Clintons, of course, set the tone for post-Cold War politics. They brought to Washington the style of politics that is now normal. They formalized both narrative politics, which relies on abductive reasoning to win debates. They also introduced things like media spin and media jamming where they sought to control the narratives at any given moment by overwhelming the system with their messaging. The Clintons made politics into a guerilla media war.
This sort of politics selects for clever over smart. When everything is done in the moment, there is no patience for deliberative politics. In the current Middle East crisis, for example, the information space is controlled by actors chanting rehearsed lines to the other actors in the media. The mainstream media is a Greek chorus and whoever can get the chorus chanting their chants wins. In such an environment there is no room for well thought out arguments and serious debate.