To err is human, to ignore errors is political

Jenni Russell's article (here) about Theresa May's (UK minister) problems with admitting a mistake highlights something important and paradoxical about modern politics - the combination between wanting a human leader, but also an infallible one. As the power of the label 'flip-flopper' shows in the US, there is little that can do more damage to a politician's reputation than admitting a mistake, or performing a u-turn.

But, this is in stark contrast to normal life, where mistakes are accepted, and it is the willingness to acknowledge, learn from and rectify them that is what really matters. Indeed even in areas of expertise it is readily admitted that one learns most not from what one does right, but from what one does wrong.


Of course the power involved in politics means errors have real human cost, and so must not be treated lightly, but this still doesn't mean that when a course starts to go wrong, we value more highly leaders who stick to their misguided guns than try to change direction.


What is needed is the ability of both sides, public and politician, to appreciate that there are many kinds of mistakes, those that are rooted in the past, and those that portend for the future. Mistakes arising from incompetence, negligence, and even through fixed ideologies, do indeed say something about the person involved, and how likely the mistakes are to re-occur in the future. But mistakes made due to trying to solve a probem with incomplete information, or a plausible misinterpretation of th facts, are not necessarily something which means the person involved cannot be relied upon, or, more importantly, that someone else would do better. What is important is whether that person will do better, and admitting mistakes is part of that.



Bill Clinton is someone who has impressed me more and more since he left office, in large part I think because without the need to constantly cover himself politically, he can reveal some of his qualities which may have been misinterpreted as a politician. For example to hear him talk about subjects without caging his words, reveals how he is actually very thoughftul and intellectual, but had hidden this under a 'good old guy' demeanour. So I am not that surprised to see him espouse exactly the sort of mentality that is needed (in all walks of life) :

Bill Clinton has a new mantra. Once a day, as he told an audience this week, he makes it a rule to find a reason to say "I didn't know that" and "I was wrong". He takes it so seriously that if the opportunity doesn't come up naturally, he creates one.

We could all do worse, then being honest about needing to do better.

Letting the lunatics run the economic asylum

It is true that a dominant theme in the recent economic crises is how stupendously misguided the economist 'powers that be' have been, and so it is slightly worrying that they are now being handed even more power.


Whether they were blinded by group think, or simply delusioned masters of an uncontrollable science, a lot of the world's problems have been precisesly caused, and exasperated by governments being devoted to 'accepted' economic policies, not disregarding them. Not spotting the mortgage and building bubbles, or the impact of one-size-fits-all interest rates on diverging economies, is the equivalent to a aeronautics engineer assuming once a plane manages to take off, it  can there keep flying indefinitely (no more boom and bust land-and-takeoff cycle) and almost as devastating.

It is good to see many articles on the subject at the moment (e.g. this one in the guardian today, which interestingly points out that in countries like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea economic policy has been largely set by engineers and lawyers, or this editorial yesterday) but it does seem a bit like the journalists on the sidelines screaming about clothes while the economists parade past after their emporer.

While of course to avoid total collapse the economic system needs economists to rectify it, it also cannot be left solely to the economists. Otherwise it will be like the situation after the 2008 crisis when it was asked why all the financial whizkids weren't fired from the banks they'd brought to ruin, and the response was that it was exactly at a tough time like that when those whizkids were needed. The logic being if you're dog leads you into a swamp, then you're best way of getting out is to keep following him. It is worth remembering that this is the industry that lays claim to the best and brightest of society.

Now that I think about it, we're doomed...