Repeatedly Wrong

The weatherman on the news probably has the best job in the world. He is wrong, over and over again, yet people still believe him.

The rest of the world doesn't work that way.

If I tell clients that I will win a lawsuit and then I don't, those clients probably will not retain me again. If I tell a client that the worst-case scenario of a lawsuit gone bad is a verdict of $100,000 against him, and the jury comes back with a $250,000 verdict, I have a lot of explaining.

If a mechanic tells me that the problem with my car is the fuel pump, I expect him to be right when I pay him $500 (or however much) to fix the fuel pump; I expect that to address the problem.

However, if you are a prominent member of Congress who spent the years 2009-2017 warning that a certain, unnamed president was going to create "runaway inflation," you apparently get to keep your credibility, even though you couldn't have been more wrong. You might even get to become Speaker of the House.

Indeed, some of those who spent such years warning that deficit spending of any kind would absolutely destroy America now have jobs directing the federal Office of Management and Budget, even though none of these predictions came true.

It's a good thing we listen to these same people now, don't you think? Now that I think of it, aren't these the same people who told us that the Iraq War was going to be a huge success, that we would be greeted as liberators, that the "insurgency" was in its "last throes" in 2004? Have these people ever atoned for their errors? Have they ever been held to account? Has anyone who voted for these people ever asked, "Why do I believe anything these people tell me, when they've been proven wrong repeatedly over the years?"

Huh.