ABC of Politics: Blame

I was reading a piece by a friend mourning how politicians never admit they are wrong. And that set me to thinking. Why not? Why don't politicians admit when they are wrong? I realize that politicians are not like ordinary people that can just say, sorry, I screwed up. Not that anyone ever likes to admit being wrong or take the blame.

It's obvious really.

It starts with this: there is no politics without an enemy. The corollary is that a politician is always fighting an enemy. And when you are fighting an enemy you are in a battle of life and death. You cannot just say: "aw shucks, we screwed up."

If something goes wrong with the Emperor of China, it is said that he has lost the Mandate of Heaven. So it's the end of him, the end of his dynasty, and a Time of Troubles until the next emperor appears and crowns himself with the Mandate of Heaven.

Put it this way: Imagine that President Roosevelt had said, on December 8, 1941, that "gee fellas, we really screwed up the intelligence, allowing a Japanese naval fleet to steam half way across the Pacific and attack our naval base at Pearl Harbor. Better luck next time." If he had done that he would have had to resign.

No, instead President Roosevelt rallied America to arms, starting with: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941— a date which will live. In infamy." And went on to win the biggest war in world history. That's how a political leader acts. That's how a political leader must act.

But most questions in this life are not a matter of life and death. But still, a politician never admits a mistake, and never takes the blame.

So the question becomes: what questions should come under the care of politics, given that politics requires an enemy, and treats every issue as a matter of life and death?

Or to put the issue another way, when we consider the question of an enemy, there is the fact of conflict, extending "to the real possibility of physical killing", according to Carl Schmitt. Just who among the people with whom we interact deserve to be named and treated as enemies?

Or suppose that we have misinterpreted someone else's action as an act of malevolence, when it was just an act of selfishness?

And that is the key to the question of why a politician can never admit a mistake and stay in office. Because politics is about the enemy, and action against the enemy involves the possibility of conflict and "the real possibility of physical killing," a mistake in politics is always colored by the possibility of killing someone that didn't deserve to be killed, or "one of ours" being killed for nothing.

If a politician identifies an enemy and it turns out that the so-called enemy is really our friend, then the politician is a monster.

If a politician sends our young men out against the enemy, and it turns out it was all a mistake, then that politician is a monster.

If a politician sends our young men out against the enemy, and the enemy beats them, then the politician is a monster.

So, a politician can never admit a mistake and take the blame. Because if he has made a mistake he is a monster.

And he is history.

So, politics should only be involved in issues where the leader cannot admit to being wrong, because the issue is a matter of life and death about which we must fight to the death right now or get annihilated, where doing nothing and making a mistake amounts to the same thing: oblivion.

Everything else we should resolve in a free and good-natured discussion of the issues among equals.