Downside risk – 2parse

Only if the plan becomes law will the American people see that all the scary things Sarah Palin and others have predicted — such as the so-called death panels — were baseless. We own the bill and health-care votes. We need to get some of the upside.

This quote suggests the flip side of the focus on downside risk that Ezra Klein observed. It seems a rather good approach – and a substantial improvement from Bush’s continuous insistence that we much achieve the upside and that admitting the downside was failure. Plouffe’s political instinct on this is much the same as mine, as I expressed some months ago:

To break these idiocratic forces, Obama needs to force these controversial measures through and allow the Republicans opposing it to demagogue it in every way possible. Then make sure there are strong transparency measures in place. And then let those who predicted a Holocaust look foolish. It’s the first step to discrediting their methods and reforming our national conversation.

Ezra Klein points out a fundamental aspect of his this White House approaches problems, especially in comparison to George “drain the swamps,” “deficits don’t matter” Bush:

The White House thinks a lot about downside risk. Nationalization might have had the opportunity to be better policy than muddling through, but if it went wrong, everything would blow up. Similarly, there’s a good argument for nominating someone more concerned with employment, but if a bad election and some congressional opposition force them to let go of Bernanke and then the markets freak out and the Republicans hold up the new Federal Reserve nominee which further circumscribes the Federal Reserve’s ability to act and further unsettles the markets, that could be a seriously bad scene.

You can see this in the Afghanistan decision, in the form the health care bill took, in their overall legislative approach, and in their national security policy. They make changes slowly, gradually – very aware of the potential downsides of their actions – while making the case against the status quo.