A few weeks ago, when my houseman was cleaning for me, we engaged in a conversation about whether Trump should go to jail. Now I should say that my guy has worked for me for years and I have a terrific amount of respect for his insights. He graduated from St John’s prep school, an institution for which I have a lot of respect. Which means he knows how to analyze and think.
He asked whether I thought Trump should go to jail. I was very thoughtful about my response, responding rather slowly—out of verbal character--and saying, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” An obviously unexpected response, he jumped in and said that he thought Trump should be made accountable for his crimes. I responded, “I agree, but I’m not certain that he should go to jail.” He stopped vacuuming, raised his eyebrows, rather surprised, and asked, “why not.” My answer was again slow, but direct: “I don’t know what the consequences might be. I’m fearful of the consequences of jailing him.”
It's always political
Given my background in history and political science, I’m well aware that political actions, like jailing an ex-president, always have multiple consequences. But lots of ordinary behaviors also have multiple consequences. And there will always be political considerations. Remember, whenever any decision will impact two or more people, then the decision is political. Even in your family. So, here’s a simple family narrative that, hopefully, explains unintended consequences and my concerns about political process..
Politics and my family
As a father of three girls, we were usually quite careful about agreeing to the requests of one teen-aged daughter without thinking about the impact of that conclusion on the other daughters. Or making a decision for one daughter without thinking through the impact of that decision for the others. Such decisions are clearly political. Family politics, like governmental politics, are simply contexts where differing interests are satisfied by giving away a share of power that will ensure a reasonable amount of stability and order, a situation with built-in complications. The Democrats, like many of us, want stability and order.
With three daughters, each slightly less than two years apart, we were very certain that what we did for one might end up being used by the other two at a later date. And though a decision might work very well for one, it might become a fiasco—a serious conflict--for the others. So, a decision for one daughter was inevitably political and would require more thought and probably multiple interactions. One consequence of that was that we made very, very few rules. Trust of our daughters was easily the strongest rule in our family, though largely unstated. Still, my rather astute wife had long-since anticipated complexity with a simple guideline like this: never fight a battle with your kid you know you’re going to eventually lose. Either reframe the issue, or affirm the daughter’s request. “No” rarely passed our lips.
The unintended consequences look very, very messy.
Unique to our family, we always considered relationship problems as fundamentally political issues. Here's a simple political example in which we attempted (successfully) to anticipate potential consequences and avoid disorder and frustration. Shortly after our eldest had her sixteenth birthday, she had her driver’s license. My wife and I had let her drive a car with one of us in it for several weeks and observed that driver education had done its job well and she could be trusted with the car. So, on several occasions, she had taken a car for shopping with her sisters along, and sometimes alone, to do an errand us. A few months after we felt she had navigated most of the possible difficulties she might encounter, she came to me and asked whether she might have a car to take her girlfriends to the Friday nite football game. I’m not certain why she asked me about that one, because she was normally comfortable asking for privileges from either one of us. I remember commenting that we’d discuss it at dinner. Sometime before dinner, I mentioned to my wife that I had promised a decision over the dinner table.
Well into dinner, she brought up the situation and I responded that her mom and I had discussed it and we were fairly positive about it. Marilyn chimed in and responded that we were quite pleased with her schoolwork, that she was good about finishing her regular chores, that she kept her room neat so she didn’t have to waste study time looking for books and materials, and we were quite happy with her friends. A big mouthful, but I said that she’d also kept her room fairly neat. Marilyn chimed in again, saying, we’d decided that she could have a car for the evening.
Our youngest, ever the most political member of the family said, “So what you’re saying is that the use of the car is basically a reward?” I responded honestly, that I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but that yes, it was a reward. It’s utterly impossible to think through the potential interpretations of a consequence. And I’m certain that Trumpites could also think through potential interpretations of jailing him that might make it very difficult for Democrat wins.
So, what had happened—just in our little family? We had unknowingly reframed the issue as a reward for relevant family behaviors. The consequence of that was that when her sisters received their licenses, they both understood that the use of one of the family cars was a reward. We only discussed the issue once in the future, because they inevitably framed the use of the car as a reward for themselves and they got its use with little to no conversation. Like, “my homework’s done and the dishes are finished, so can I have a car to go to Liz’s?”
It's always the middle kid
But a couple years after our eldest started driving, it was the “Middler’s” turn. The only unanticipated discussion we ever had about car use circled around our middle daughter’s messy room, a mess which might mean she could be late on a number of school projects, although that never happened. When she came the first time, asking for a car, her mom commented that a messy room could result in late school projects, impacting her GPA. I wondered aloud whether that was mom’s problem or daughter’s problem which brought laughter from all three girls. Mom smiled, realizing that the messy room was not a battle that could be won, made a suggestion: “Look, if you’ll keep your bedroom door closed so I don’t have to look at your mess and promise to clean it up on the weekend, I’m OK with the decision.” It worked 100% of the time until she went off to college. An exceptionally high success rate.
Years later, when as a senior manager in a Boston pharmaceutical research company, she was showing us around her digs and finally got to her office, I walked in and started laughing, followed by my wife, who was almost teary with laughter. My daughter walked in and asked what was the matter. I laughingly said that I had never in my entire consulting life seen as neat and clean an office and desk as the one we were looking at. My wife confirmed the issue with more laughter. One of the things we’ve learned is that negotiating with your kids can eventually get you very unintended consequences. Sometimes very happy unintendeds.
Inevitably multiple, political consequences.
The importance of this narrative, I hope, is quite clear. Whenever an issue is political, involving just two or more people, the consequences are inevitably multiple and unexpected. In our family issue, the consequences were the enhancement of our daughters’ performances, the rather conscious understanding that hewing to just a very few family guidelines offered the potential for reward, and that their mom and dad could be flexible—an especially important issue we later learned. Some of their friends’ parents weren’t flexible, resulting in a fair share of griping from friends--and our daughters’ explanation that they don’t have that kind of problem. The further consequences, perhaps even more important, were the understandings that just a few guidelines can be very both useful for kids, that needs can be negotiated, that they were trusted by their parents--and that important issues required significant decision making. And most important to them, because of what they observed in some of their friends, if a request is within the realm of possibility, their mom and dad can usually be trusted to say yes. A strategy that has positively impacted our adult relations through all the years.
So, we attempted, at least in our thinking, to plan for unintended consequences, an issue which has been studied over the last half century in numerous settings. In the above narrative, we assumed that we were creating a model for the use of our cars—and we were successful in that. As a result, there were several very positive unintended consequences that we did not expect. Over time, only one negative consequence developed, our middle daughter’s messy room, requiring further political negotiation. But another successful negotiation.
But it takes very little creative imagination to understand that Trump and his people are capable of negative unintended consequences that the Democratic Party could notpossibly prepare for.
Unintended consequences are nothing new.
Research on unintended consequences is extensive and has been going on since at least the 1970s. In his book, Nudge, Cass Sunstein deals with governmental nudges that can bring unintended consequences of a positive nature, consequences that are not obviously explicit in new legislation. In one of the early approaches for constructively using the notion of “unintended consequences, Patrick Baert of the University of Cambridge reminds us in 1991 that unintended consequences inevitably arise out of intentionality, and that any intentional action always has multiple consequences. My house guy may just want to make Trump accountable, but that action will inevitably surface an infinite number of consequences. It would be very satisfying to just jail Trump, but we simply can’t control what will happen as a result of an ex-president’s imprisonment. That’s just how human behavior works.
Furthermore, as Baert’s study suggests, you may want to make Trump accountable, but if you try to do that, it will surface a whole lot of other shit. And eventually, you’re going to have to prioritize (my language) all the other potential shit you might surface. Of course, even a person with great smarts potentially will miss some of the real shit that might surface from imprisonment. In a complex problem like Trump’s potential imprisonment, it’s going to be utterly impossible to surface all the potential problems that could play out as a result of that imprisonment.
Jailing Trump?
What came to mind in the conversation with my apartment-keeping guy was that jailing Trump had one troubling potential: it could clearly define the legislative and presidential elections, turning everything back to the Republicans. Whereas, taking the trial to the end and making all of his criminality obvious, but not going after imprisonment, might scare the democrats, bringing them all out to vote and winning the presidential elections as well as both houses of legislature. But those ain’t possibly all the consequences.
Though my analysis is significantly incomplete, right now I’m at the place where the second consequence is much more satisfying than the first. Furthermore, the court’s short-sightedness on abortion provides even more significant unintended, positive consequences for Democrats. As Linda Greenhouse, the decades-long reporter on the Supreme Court has written, the anti-abortion decision is essentially a requiem for the court. For no other reason, the conservatives on the court did it solely because they could.
There’s a lesson in this. Just because Trump deserves to go to jail, and just because the Democrats can do it, doesn’t mean the Democrats should put him in jail. Instead, make a hullabaloo about all Trump’s criminality, scare all the democrats into voting, ignore the potential for imprisonment, and win the next two elections for the Democrats. Then we can go around Manchin and Sinema, revise the filibuster—very carefully—make DC a state with two added (Democratic) senators, ignore the Supreme Court and ditch (if possible) the Electoral College. My suspicion is that jailing Trump will make that very difficult. Republicans can use it against Democrats. So, I’ve decided that I am exceedingly resistant to imprisoning Ex-President Trump. Just focus on the indictment, don’t incarcerate Trump, yell loudly about the Court’s shortsightedness and win the next two elections! And probably all the elections for at least the next twenty years.
One thing is very clear: ALWAYS, TO THE DEGREE POSSIBLE, THINK THROUGH EVERY POTENTIAL CONSEQUENCE FOR EVERY POTENTIAL POLITICAL DECISION, AND MAKE THE DECISION WITH THE BEST POTENTIAL CONSEQUENCES!!