MarkFord
The Politics of Goal-Setting
This week’s movie recommendation – Borat Subsequent Moviefilm – is a surprisingly well done bit of political satire aimed at the Trump administration.
But first, speaking of politics, take a look at David Leonhardt’s recent reporting on Biden. Leonhardt had been a big Biden supporter during and since the elections, castigating the Trump administration for everything and treating Biden’s statements and actions with kid gloves. But lately, he’s been less than a fan.
On Wednesday, in his column for the NYT digital edition, Leonhardt wrote:
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I have spent some time recently interviewing public-health experts about what the real goal [for fighting COVID] should be, and I came away with a clear message: The Biden administration is not being ambitious enough about vaccinations, at least not in its public statements. |
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An appropriate goal, experts say, is three million shots per day – probably by April. At that pace, half of adults would receive their first shot by April and all adults who wanted a shot could receive one by June, saving thousands of lives and allowing normal life to return by midsummer. |
This is the sort of thinking I love about young reporters. They have so little experience trying to deal with real-world problems that they will say something like that without any idea how dumb it is.
One of the most important lessons I ever learned about amassing support for big and difficult challenges was that it is always better to make the public goal less than, not equal to or greater than, the actual goal you are trying to achieve.
Here, Biden is doing exactly the right thing. His initial goal – to maintain the pace set during the early weeks of the vaccination – was obviously an intentional low-ball. But much better that than basing the number, as Leonhardt does, on what one might want to see, rather than what is probable.
And now, let’s talk about Sacha Baron Cohen’s mockumentary…