The rest falls to politics...the fault in us and not in stars or theories

Young people seek certainty, so they come upon a concept and embrace it with passion. A few years later, they cringe at their certitude, and maybe learn to laugh at themselves. A few reverse completely -- the Churchillian statement of young and not liberal equals heartless; old and not conservative equals brainless -- but most sort of drift. For every Churchill, a Reagan -- "His I didn't leave the Democratic party, they left me" means nothing; he opposed in later life everything that he embraced as a young guy.

The fundamentalist, the convert -- these are scary folk to Crusader AXE. Reason and nuanced thinking don't make for soundbites, but they make for sound policy if not great politics. The Clintons are incredibly bright people, very capable of getting more done than they did. The mistake they made was simple -- they were nuanced in their approaches, and the health care thing screwed them. Obama and his advisers are as bright, as nuanced, but trying to learn from the Clintons, and being more nuanced. We'll see how that goes.

Frankly, I find the drill fascinating; todays Crossroads column in the Times is fascinating for that reason. David Leonhardt focuses on Adam Smith, and how he was far less the true believer than most lasiez-faire  capitalists types can stand, or appreciate. For example, on wages Leonhardt cites the difference between what people think Smith meant and what he said:

Smith was indeed a champion of individual liberty and worried about how governments might muck up an economy. But he also wrote that the goal of employers, “always and everywhere,” was to keep wages as low as possible. “When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters,” he concluded. He supported a tax on luxury carriages and taxes on alcohol, sugar and tobacco. He said that “negligence and profusion” inevitably occur when corporate managers control shareholders’ money. And as the historian Emma Rothschild has noted, “The Wealth of Nations” uses the phrase “invisible hand” precisely once. In the 1,231-page Bantam edition, it appears on Page 572.

Now, if the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow made similar statements today, and somebody read them, the focus would be on everything else but the "invisible hand." We forget that Smith was primarily not interested in math and probably had no understanding of double-entry accounting. He was not a specialized, narrowly focused technocrat but an English philosopher and moralist writing during the Enlightenment, was for complex ideas is a pretty stupid way to operate. Not sure what I mean? Compare Jefferson's thought to Jefferson's policies and actions. Or Hamilton's. Or Madison. Or Franklin...one of the great frustrations that contemporary readers have with these guys, and a frustration that I share to an extent, is that "they won't say what they mean!" The frustration is with them of course; the flaw is in me.

In other words, turning to Smith, Newton or Jefferson to get talking points misses the point. you want complex ideas ground up and misinterpreted, go to Bill O'Reilly or Keith Obermann. Or, if you are really eager, go to Michelle Bachman.