The March of Folly

Years ago the historian and writer Barbara Tuchman wrote a wonderful book entitled The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. In it she examined a number of cases (ranging from Troy to Vietnam, as the title suggests) in which nations pursued self-defeating strategies. For her purposes, she defined “folly” as pursuing a strategy which was AT THE TIME self-evidently destructive.

I am reminded of this as I watch Democrats commit political suicide by spending 14 months pushing through an unpopular health care bill while doing almost nothing about massive unemployment in the midst of a depression. As I argued many months ago, the Democrat’s fortunes in November, and President Obama’s fortune in 2012, hinge primarily on the unemployment figures. If unemployment is substantially reduced, they will get credit for it. If unemployment is still high, they will pay the price for it. It seems to me a classic case of folly, in Barbara Tuchmen’s terms, not to have spent most of the last 14 months addressing the recession, instead of wasting it on a peripheral issue like health care, important as that is.