Stochastic fake scandals
Deciphering the impact of "Obamagate"
Scandals are a wild card in political analysis.
Most of the time, we look at politics through the lens of economic fundamentals, polling averages, and various metrics that are tested through scientific study.
But sometimes, a scandal can overwhelm everything else.
Economic conditions wouldn’t have predicted that Bill Clinton would be impeached, or that Richard Nixon would resign. Far-sighted analysts who were able to construct ad hoc models and parse through the meaning of the evidence were able to see that they would be presidency-defining before others.
There is a dilemma for analysts, though.
How do we make our predictions if we know that the scandal is nonsense?
Untangling “Obamagate”
This week I want to get into the latest incomprehensible DC faux scandal. If you do not understand what it is, don’t worry. You’re not the only one.
The scandal is nonsense and should not be taken seriously. But it is being pushed by powerful actors in politics.
Shotgun approach to scandalmongering
I try to maintain a dispassionate and objective perspective towards politics. As colleagues of mine like to say, the first part of being a good analyst is keeping an analytical attitude and an open mind to new information.
But this scandal is obviously bogus. What’s more, it makes little sense as a political strategy.
Trump is heading into a difficult election. Republicans in the Senate are heading into a difficult election. So why would you center your strategy around reminding everyone that your first National Security Advisor was told by a judge that “You sold your country out” and that Russia was involved in the 2016 election?
What’s more, why base your strategy on a story that few people understand. As Frum puts it:
The “Obamagate” that Trump tweets about—like the comic-book universes on which it seems to be modeled—is a tangle of backstories. The main characters do things for reasons that make no objective sense, things that can be decoded only by obsessive superfans on long Reddit threads.
This doesn’t seem to be the way to a path to Electoral College victory. While it might muddy the waters - and “flooding the zone” appears to be what this is intended to do - it is a poorly targeted choice. Obama advised Trump not to hire Flynn, so it’s a scandal that includes the president’s own decisions and the corruption of the person he would have put in charge of the nation’s security.
Manufactured scandals that matter
This issue highlights a real problem for any political analyst. We read about this story. We see there’s nothing there. We assume that nothing will come out of it. If anything, it’ll backfire.
But what if we’re wrong? There have been fake scandals in recent US politics - allegations of wrongdoing without a real misdeed - that have had huge consequences.
We can create a simple taxonomy of scandals in recent US politics to illustrate this point.
Watergate: real scandal, real impact
Iran-Contra: real scandal, minimal impact
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: fake scandal, real impact
Jade Helm: fake scandal, no impact
We could also expand the taxonomy to include the Clinton email server, which had a kernel of a poor decision, but was blown out of proportion, or the Whitewater investigation, which had little impact by itself, but led to Monica Lewinsky’s recorded conversations.
Either way, the challenge for an analyst is to identify which manufactured scandal will fade into obscurity, and which will change an election.
It’s difficult enough to know when a real scandal will be a game-changer. How do we predict when a fake scandal resonates, especially since they can be thrown out into the world at a moment’s notice?
Stochastic scandals
“Stochastic terrorism” refers to the probability of lone wolf attacks growing as a political ecosystem becomes more radicalized.
Although we cannot predict whether a single person becomes a terrorist, we know that the probability of a terrorist attack goes up if there is extremist rhetoric in the media, access to weapons, and even if there is a lack of employment opportunities for educated individuals. We can predict the likelihood of a type of event based on background factors even if we can’t predict each individual event on its own.
I propose a similar way to approach these types of scandals.
There is no way, in advance, to know whether something as anodyne as Hillary Clinton’s Blackberry would dominate a political campaign. But we could have known that a scandal involving a presidential candidate is more likely to stick than one related to the candidate’s son. This might also explain why so far Hunter Biden and Burisma have not turned into this type of scandal.
It also seems to be more likely to stick if it plays into something deep in a country’s psyche. The Willie Horton ad related to a scandal that barely had a connection to the candidate (it involved a prisoner released under a policy implemented by Dukakis’ predecessor). But it was racist - to the point where the strategist behind it had deathbed regrets over it - and that worked in 1988.
In many cases, these scandals are just a way for someone to prove what they already believed. People saw Hillary Clinton as secretive, so it made perfect sense to them that she would be hiding her emails. John Kerry was known for his service in Vietnam, so the Swift Boat scandal gave those who didn’t trust him the “proof” that they needed to undermine him. Some scandals are real; some are just a chance to drum up negative attention and distract from the real issues. It’s not about the facts; it’s about confirmation bias.
This, of course, is not a full model. We don’t know the exact factors we should include and how to weigh them. Perhaps they party accused should be a larger factor due the conservative media ecosystem. Or perhaps a scandal created by the White House needs to be given a boost in gaining media traction.
For now, based only on this rough model, I wouldn’t expect too much out of Obamagate. It is not directly about the candidate, it doesn’t connect to anything deeper, and it doesn’t connect to anything salient about Biden.
If anything, I would expect this to undermine the president’s campaign. “My opponent knew that my NSA was compromised by Russia” is not a winning slogan.
So I am keeping my eyes open, as any good analyst should, but I am not basing my election forecast on this.
About Two Lanterns
Two Lanterns Advisory is a political risk consultancy based in Boston, Massachusetts. For information on training courses in political risk, hiring a consultant, or commissioning reports, check us out at http://www.twolanterns.co.