FACTS AND POLITICS

Facts and politics, particular election politics, have at best a tenuous relationship. The major problem is that to a politician running for office, just about everything he or she says is a fact, but his or her opponent begs to differ. In other words, agreement between opposing politicians on the facts in an election year is likely to be nonexistent.

Agreement about the facts of what happened in the past and what is happening currently is difficult enough to reach. But extrapolating into the future—predicting, in other words—and labeling the result as fact is really pretty absurd. And politicians exacerbate the problem by leaving out the assumptions, economic and political relationships, and caveats that went into their predictions.

So why this sorry state of “facts” in the political world? Why are politicians so prone to label as “fact” every debatable point? Because politics, and especially elections, are geared toward the populace’s lowest common denominator, for whom most everything is viewed as either a fact or a falsehood. Those not in the lowest common denominator acquiesce in this approach, perhaps because acquiescence is the path of least resistance. Indeed, in a way politics can be quite soothing because intellectual rigor is not necessary.

So enjoy the next few weeks. Throw your “facts” around with abandon. Come November 7, election season “facts” will give way—not completely but significantly—to the end of the year’s fiscal cliff “facts.” That ought to be fun. And then will come the budget and budget deficit “facts.” That ought to really be fun.