PESSIMISM can be self-fulfilling, especially in politics. There’s a reason every candidate who has even a slight shot at victory tries to project a serene optimism about its inevitability. Volunteers, donors, voters: No one likes a loser. And there’s so much pessimism about the Republican party’s prospects in 2008 that it’s understandable that some party officials and conservative pundits feel an urge to tilt the other way.
But for all the understandable natural resistance to pessimism, it has its uses. Fear can be nature’s way to get us to realize that we’re in danger and to take appropriate action. Consider Iraq. If more supporters of the war had been willing to admit that the war was going badly in 2005-6, we might have undertaken the surge and switched our strategy earlier. Only after the Bush administration made that concession was it able to begin making progress on the ground.
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