by Frank James
You’ve got to give credit to William Kristol, the neo-conservative polemicist who wrote a column in the Sunday Washington Post headlined “Why Bush will be a winner:” he doesn’t quit easily.
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Kristol, one of the Iraq War’s major promoters, editor of the Weekly Standard, and a familiar face in Washington TV studios, knows he’s running against the tide on this one. His opening is:
“I suppose I’ll merely expose myself to harmless ridicule if I make the following assertion: George W. Bush’s presidency will probably be a successful one.”Laugh if you will. As Kristol says, he expects that. And it doesn’t really matter since he’ll probably keep doing all right financially and socially in Washington even with all the poking he’s likely to take. As he says, he really doesn’t have much to lose by staking out this very contrarian position.
He’s kind of like a stock tout who urges people to buy an out-of-favor stock because he’s got a feeling it’s undervalued. No harm in trying. If he turns out to be wrong, American attention spans are so short, who will remember?
Kristol gives three reasons why Bush’s presidency will be seen as successful. It’s his view that the Iraq War has taken a successful turn, the economy has been strong and there haven’t been any more terrorist attacks on American soil.
Instead of arguing the merits or flaws with Kristol’s case, I have a modest proposal. If Kristol seriously believes his argument, why doesn’t he accept a version of Julian Simon’s famous wager.
Simon was another contrarian. He didn’t believe that the population explosion was going to deplete the earth’s resources like so many did in the ’60s and 70s. In 1980, Simon bet Paul Ehrlich, a noted ecologist and Malthusian, that if Ehrlich chose an imaginary basket of five commodities, that in ten years’ time the inflation-adjusted prices of those commodities would be lower.
Ten years later, the commodities’ prices were lower, certainly not what one would expect in a world whose teeming population exhaused resources. So Ehrlich lost the $1,000 bet.
Perhaps Kristol should set aside, oh, $50,000 and those who disagree violently with him should contribute to a fund that adds up to same amount. Ten years should be allowed to pass, time enough for the distance needed to tell if the Bush presidency, in hindsight, was indeed a success, as Kristol argues.
If Kristol turns out to be right, he would get the $100,000. If he’s wrong, he would pay up, perhaps into a scholarship fund for the child of a dead U.S. service member.