Reflections on last night’s World Series Game

The 2013 baseball playoffs have been among the most interesting in many years. Stellar pitching, timely hitting, great and awful fielding (often by the same team in the same game) and evenly matched teams in both league championships and in the World Series have kept fans like me on the edge of their seats or awake before their bedroom TVs. The dramatic finish to last night’s game with the St. Louis Cardinals scoring the winning run in the bottom of the ninth on an obstruction call – the first game to end on such a call in World Series history- added another compelling episode to the narrative.
Though I have been a fan of the Red Sox since listening to Curt Gowdy describe the exploits of Ted Williams, Jackie Jensen and Frank Malzone a young boy in the 1950’s on WAGM radio in Presque Isle, Maine, I have to admit that the third base umpire’s call of obstruction was correct. This is despite the fact that there was clearly no deliberate attempt to impede the runner. The crucial mistake was to try to get the third out by throwing out the runner at third after getting the second out at the plate on Pedroia’s brilliant play on the infield grounder. The Red Sox had their best reliever on the mound and the Cardinals’ best reliever was about to leave the game for a pinch hitter. Saltamacchia should have simply held the ball after recording the second out.
I can’t wait to see what happens tonight. My hope is that it involves better luck for and better judgement by the Red Sox fielders.

The first entry on this blog was a quotation from John Stuart Mill’s essay on Coleridge that “the besetting danger is not so much embracing falsehood for truth, as in mistaking a part of the truth for the whole.” The recent unsuccessful attempt by Congressional Republicans in the USA to overturn President Obama’s 2010 law to reform that country’s health care system (commonly known as Obamacare) by shutting down the federal government and threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling provides a classic illustration of Mill’s warning.
Republicans thought they would be supported by the American people in pursuing this radical strategy because they had correctly observed that polling since the passage of the 2010 legislation, by news organizations like CNN consistently showed that 7 to 24 percent more of the American people opposed Obamacare than supported it. That being the case, was it not logical to assume, in the words of freshman Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas that they were simply “listening to the American people” in adopting whatever measures were necessary to overturn this unpopular legislation that had been imposed by the Democrats.
Unfortunately for them, this justification for the Republican tactics made two assumptions that turned out not to be true. The first was that all opponents of Obamacare were as fanatical and intense in their opposition as Congressional Republicans. The second was that all opponents of Obamacare opposed it for the same reasons as they did. That is, they opposed it because they thought it was too interventionist, that it went too far in using government subsidies and regulations to encourage and coerce people into buying health insurance. But, in fact, a significant share of those who told pollsters they did not support Obamacare did not like it because they believed it did not go far enough in making health care coverage universal. These people were hardly likely to support shutting down the government or refusing to raise the debt ceiling in order to completely destroy legislation they felt was not liberal enough. Combined with those who supported Obamacare as it was they far outnumbered those who opposed Obamacare because they thought it was too interventionist. Going forward under the delusion that they represented a majority of the American people, Congressional Republicans in fact spoke for less than 40% of the electorate in opposing Obamacare because it was too liberal.
This combination of extreme radical tactics in support of a position whose substance was supported by a minority of voters was doomed to failure. The Congressional Republicans were forced by public opinion to re-open the government and defer refusing to raise the debt ceiling and got nothing in return. They paid a high political price for their folly. Ever since winning control of the House of Representatives in 2010 CNN polling had consistently showed that more voters thought it was “ good for the USA that Republicans controlled the House of Representatives” than thought it was a bad thing. In December 2012, just after re-electing President Obama, 51% of the American electorate thought it was a good thing that Republicans controlled the House compared to 43% who thought it was a bad thing. But after the debt ceiling showdown ended on October 17th , 54% thought it was a bad thing that the Republicans controlled the House compared to only 38% who thought it was a good thing.
The Congressional Republicans recognized the partial truth that more voters opposed Obamacare than supported it and persuaded themselves, against the empirical evidence, that that the whole truth was that they opposed it for the same reasons that they did. They ignored the crucial fact that a large share of that opposition thought Obamacare was not liberal enough and in mistaking part of the truth for the whole adopted a course that was to prove both ineffective and politically disastrous.