The perils of excessive certainty

One of the problems with blogging is that it promotes excessive certainty. Exhibit A comes from Atrios, aka Duncan Black, in this post about fence-sitters:

It’s the season. I’m sure we’ll see a bunch of “reasonable” conservatives writing that if Kerry could just somehow say the magic combination of words, appealing to their idiosyncratic sense of what the Democratic should be (regaining what it has lost, blahblabblah), that they’d support him…. One thing it’s important to remember with all of these people – their public personas, their public writings, are to a great degree a pose. The only way to hold onto your reputation as being something other than a partisan hack is to make sure to provide enough public statements to back that up. Similarly those who really are supposed to be partisan hacks are only “allowed” a few chances to stray from the reservation, particularly on the conservative side of things. Ostracism from the movement can be quick and painful. But, the truth is a this point anyone who pays attention (as it’s their job) should have a very good idea what a 2nd Bush administration would be like, and a pretty good idea how a Kerry administration would differ. They should also understand that campaign rhetoric is what it is, and has little bearing on how a Kerry administration will actually govern, relative to what we already know about the guy.

As one of the fence-sitters, I’m highly skeptical of Atrios’ confidence about either the motivations of fence-sitters or future expectations. On the former, Mickey Kaus points out:

It’s always hard to distinguish those with genuinely ambivalent or heterodox or nuanced or muddled views from those who are just positioning (e.g., to “preserve their street cred on both sides”). But I wouldn’t think this is a distinction Kerry supporters, of all people, would want to encourage.

As for retaining cred on both sides, one shouldn’t rule out the possibility of equally pissing off both sides as well. On the latter point, I’m glad Atrios is so sure of himself — I’ll proceed with more caution this time around. Take the case of trade policy. I thought Bush was going to invest more political capiital into trade liberalization than he actually has (today’s good news aside) and dismissed the campaign pledge to West Virginia steelworkers to provide protection as “campaign rhetoric.” Whoops. Kerry’s rhetoric on outsourcing and trade has been more heated and more prominent than Bush’s trade talk in 2000. His choice for vice president used even stronger protectionist rhetoric during the primary campaign. Even if the Senator from Massachusetts doesn’t really mean it, there is the problem of “blowback” — becoming trapped by one’s rhetoric (See: George H.W. Bush, “no new taxes”). For the issues I care about, there’s still a fair amount of uncertainty about what either a Kerry or Bush administration would look like come January 2005. At this point I’m not thrilled with my choice either way. Bob Rubin’s “probabilistic” decision-making style rested in part on deferring decisions until they were absolutely necessary. I’m happy to bide my time.