Rejoinder to the "Better of Two Evils"
Responses to John Ryder's recent essay.
John Ryder’s essay from this blog last Sunday was carefully read, and, as I hoped, encouraged an interesting response. For today’s newsletter I am repeating Ryder’s paper (for review) and two responses from readers, as well as a comment of my own. I think that we should then look forward to Ryder’s overall response in the next newsletter (or “blog,” which for me is a distasteful term, too close to “bog,” which my dictionary defines as a muddy area unable to support a solid object).
Ryder’s essay:
It is fairly clear now that the presidential competition in 2024 will be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I can already hear my Democratically oriented friends, which is most of them, telling me that I should vote for Biden, no matter how much I disapprove of some of his policies, because Trump is worse. I have been listening to this claim for the better part of fifty years: I should vote for Carter because Ford is worse; for Mondale because Reagan is worse; for Dukakis because Bush is worse; for Clinton because Bush and then Dole are worse; for Gore and then Kerry because G. W. Bush is worse; for H. Clinton and then Biden because Trump is worse; and now again Biden. I have rejected this logic at every turn, and I will reject it in 2024.
First, it is not clear to me what it means to say that candidate x is worse than candidate y in general. Candidates, like people overall, are typically better or worse in this or that respect, and the respects matter. If that is right, then there is something suspicious about the claim that “x is worse than y.”
Second, with respect to Trump and Biden, I think that they are both undesirable, though for quite different reasons. I have been familiar with Trump for forty or forty-five years, and for most of that time I knew of him as a slippery and suspicious Manhattan real estate crook. In his political manifestation, he is it seems the same person he always was. In his candidacy for the president, in all three of his attempts, he is running the Big Con, a grift so audacious that the rest of us would never have imagined it possible. This, however, does not make every idea he has or every policy he endorses wrong. To infer that would be to commit the fallacy of “poisoning the well”, and I will assume that we do not want to be committing logical fallacies unnecessarily. Nonetheless, as a presidential candidate and as a president, he is in many respects, though not all, indeed pretty bad.
As for Biden, I for one cannot get past the fact that his commitment to a Cold War Russophobia is so deep and by now second nature that his inclinations and decisions are, I would argue, deadly and dangerous, not only for Ukrainians and Russians but for the rest of Europe and the world in general. Along similar lines, his nearly uncritical support of Israel, no matter how many civilians it kills, is not consistent with his presentation of himself as a lover of freedom and democracy. Consider also his extraordinary capacity not even to notice Palestinian suffering, which has characterized his entire political career, until recently when his disapproval of Israeli settlement treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank was enough to make him impose some sanctions on four individual settlers. That, so far at least, is the extent of his objections to Israeli brutality, notwithstanding the Israeli government’s legitimate responsibility to defend its citizens. More generally, Biden is committed to the long-standing idea that the US should be in charge of the world, or what he calls “American leadership.” If America is the “leader”, that makes every other country either a follower or a hostile camp, an enemy. There are many problems with this view, not least of which is that because many other countries are tired of being told that they need to follow America’s lead whenever Washington calls for obedience, for Biden to insist as he does on American leadership is exceedingly dangerous, and there is scarce evidence that he can even think differently, never mind having any awareness of the dangerous character of the way he does think.
So both candidates are pretty bad, as far as I can tell, and I can see no good reason to endorse one bad choice over another. Trump is likely to be bad for the country, and maybe the world, in a number of ways; Biden is likely to be bad for the world, and probably for the country, in a number of other ways. Perfidy for perfidy, I do not see how either candidate deserves my support, despite the unacceptability of the other.
I also have a more general concern about the presumed wisdom of voting for one bad candidate in order to keep out the other bad candidate. The net effect of this practice over time is that we keep voting for and electing bad candidates, a practice that cannot be good for the country since, on the face of it anyway, it is a form of racing to the bottom. There is something, probably many things, wrong with our political structures and practices, despite the laughable American predilection to think that ours is the best of all possible political worlds. If we continue to support bad candidates because we think that the other is worse, the chances of addressing the failures of a political system that continues to offer up bad candidates become vanishingly small. One might even argue that our responsibility as concerned citizens is not to vote for people of whom we do not approve, not now and not in the future. If we continue to vote for them, they will continue to bubble up, to win elections, and to drive us closer to the bottom.
I do not pretend to have any easy answers to this problem, and I am fairly confident that there are no easy answers. There will almost certainly be an unacceptable person in the White House come January 20, 2025, as there has been for the bulk of my life. But that likelihood is not a reason for me to be complicit in such a deplorable outcome. I will find a candidate whom I can actually support, regardless of his or her chances of success. If others who see the situation more or less as I do would do the same, then perhaps we may have a chance of slowing the downward slide. Maybe not, but the worst that will happen is that we will continue to have unacceptable presidents, which is the situation we are in anyway, and then good luck to us all.
And here are two responses from readers:
Feb 18·edited Feb 18
I admire all students of the short form opinion piece because expressing a well-defended, persuasive argument briefly, without relying on vague, overly broad, or implausible implicit premises is not easy to do.
Professor Ryder wants to counter the vote-for-the-lesser-of-two-evils argument to vote for President Biden in November (or presumably, to vote for Donald Trump on the same grounds). His conclusion is that “both candidates are pretty bad, as far as I can tell, and I can see no good reason to endorse one bad choice over another.”
Lesser-of-two-evils arguments are fundamentally utilitarian in nature, so Ryder’s conclusion may be based on (1) an implicit rejection of utilitarian calculations in politics. The other possibility is that (2) Ryder accepts utilitarian political arguments, including the lesser-of-two-evils sort, but that in the case of Biden or Trump in 2024, neither person has a net positive good-over-evil rating over the other (or a net least negative evil-over-good rating).
Unfortunately, Ryder does not give us much direction on which one of those alternative implicit premises he wants his conclusion to rest on. Alternative 2, i.e., that on a utilitarian analysis, two political alternatives have exactly the same net positive/least net negative outcomes is extremely unlikely. So, the principle of charity alone tells us to reject that reconstruction of Ryder’s argument.
That leaves the reader with alternative 1, i.e., that Ryder’s rejection of the lesser-of-two-evils choice between Biden and Trump is based on an implicit rejection of utilitarian political calculations in favor of a political position that is grounded in some other principle. Ryder tells us in the very first paragraph that he has rejected lesser-of-two-evils choices between Presidential candidates since Carter-Ford, but we never learn his preferred alternative principle that has guided his decisions. Some hint would be a help to the reader.
Finally, consider Professor Ryder’s reference to “the laughable American predilection to think that ours is the best of all possible political worlds.” Opposition to de Tocqueville’s characterization of America as “exceptional” has a long history. I’m probably on the side of Richard Hofstadter, Boorstin, and other historians who subscribe to some version or other of American exceptionalism, so I don’t think such a position is “laughable.” That implies that it is obviously false. A more plausible view is that exceptionalism is worthy of debate. One doesn’t have to be a neoconservative to look at America as the best chance for advancing freedom and equality in parts of the world where those necessary grounds of human well-being are so desperately needed.
And
So help me out: if I’m hearing you correctly, your solution is not to vote. You don’t state that explicitly but I infer that based on your language that you won’t “support” either candidate, which “support” I equate with your vote. Somehow, this not voting will prevent these undesirable candidates from bubbling to the top.
How exactly does that work? If only 3 people vote for 2 candidates, one will win. Apologies if I missed your point completely.
Regarding your lack of any answers to this conundrum, I’d like to offer a few:
1. Eschew the cliche and quit wasting time wringing your hands about it. Identify your core values and determine the candidate that, even if only barely, most represents you. I’m sorry that your unicorn ideal candidate isn’t on the ballot, but here we are. Who cares if they are the lesser of two evils, Sleepy Joe vs the Grifter in Chief, or one of two extremely privileged old white men; pick a side and VOTE. To informally quote Alexey Navalny, don’t sit it out.
2. Advocate for ranked choice voting. Maybe your unicorn could be on the ballot if we had more positions open.
3. If that doesn’t float your boat, explore third parties.
4. Advocate for the restoration of the Fairness Doctrine. I’m not convinced voters are getting legitimate information on the candidates to begin with. Until we have real campaign reform this would be the next best option.
5. Speaking of campaign reform…
I have made my decision and have not a second thought about which candidate will come closer to shaping a world I want for my grandchildren. I hope you can find a way to do the same.
And one more:
If someone can't make a decision about how bad W was, I don't think I care who he thinks doesn't deserve his vote. So many Iraqis were killed, so much money was spent, American soldiers were killed and broken. Our chance to undo the Vietnam War. We lost so much. After the war, we saw nothing but the bumbling incompetence to instill a perfect "conservative" nirvana reforms on the Iraqis. For what? I had the unfortunate role of working with returning Iraq War veterans. The Iraq War was like an evil descended on this country stained us all, and we're still feeling the effects. The greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression wasn't a picnic either.
Finally, here is my take for what it is worth.
I see the core of Ryder’s approach as based on a positive outcome, an improvement over a failure to act as he suggests. So, perhaps utilitarian. Actually, most political choices can be seen through such a lens. It is always difficult to extend utilitarian arguments into future states. Achieving good in the long run may require paying a price in the short run. Since risk is involved, probability would need to be factored in to such calculations. And, you would have to place some degree of value on the wellbeing of future generations—stretching out to what end point in the future.
Actually, the problem of sacrifice in the present for a foreseeable but uncertain future is far from an abstract exercise. We engage in it daily. And few doubt that public choices should balance multiple goals and judge the consequences of potential failures.
Here is my take on what I think Ryder is advocating. Politics is a hard and very realistic “game.” It is always testing the market for a given “Party brand.” The object is winning. There is no “hardware” for coming in second. If I am consistently defeated, my moneyed supporters will look elsewhere. And my organization will fall apart, as I will lose patronage opportunities. Over time I will have to do better, or leave the game.
I interpret Ryder as refusing to accept the best of two bad choices in the hope that it will force Parties to run stronger candidates in the future. That is, if Ryder’s strategy is employed by many, political parties offering candidates only marginally better than the worst, will have no consistent success, will gain no advantage. And the party brand will suffer (from more frequent losing and the mediocracy of the candidates).
Since this is a very speculative position, we need to ask what additional assumptions we are making. First, is the belief that the present choice between two flawed candidates is not essentially critical to the future of the nation. Assuming, that is, that neither will do great good, and neither will do such harm as to cross an unacceptable line.
And second, that the difference between the two candidates in their potential for good is insufficient to offset such future gain from having better candidates running for office, discounted by its probability.
Finally, third, that the leaders of political parties (and their sponsors) are rational and will not continue to play a losing hand under such circumstances.
We can debate all three points.
More comments?
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