Stephen Bush

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 00:15 UTC

(And even then, a lot of the trade-offs I was writing about was 'one side of the government believes that ending coronavirus restrictions before a vaccine is developed will be good for the economy and society, somehow'.)

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 00:15 UTC

It's such a welcome change to be able to sit down and write my newsletter and have it be about actual policy issues and trade-offs in an area the government is interested in, something I haven't really been able to do since 2022.

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 23:39 UTC

It’s Mitterand’s last days turned up to 11.

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 23:18 UTC

No, as there is no mechanism, all they can do is shut up in public, because they can only make their problem worse.

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:50 UTC

Right - it’s not my beat, but it seems clear to me that the first question is “is a change desirable?” and the second is “can you bring it about, and how?” and it doesn’t feel to me that many in the party are engaging with that second one.

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:43 UTC

Mine, too. I think that being in a party (or indeed any mission-aligned third sectory thing) controls heavily for not giving up, which is mostly good but I think here resolves to “why don’t we make this bad situation much worse?”

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:30 UTC

Fair point - I should have added a “broadly” in my skeet about losing their senses. (I think a lot of the “oh, it’s the centrists who are being difficult!” takes miss that, hmm, maybe your incentives are quite different if you are D+1 than if you are D+20)

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:25 UTC

Yeah - which is of course an ultra-common failure mode among political parties to go 'here's the reality we'd like' and/or 'here's the optimal strategy from six months ago'.

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:15 UTC

Like, that's what I would want to know if I was the news editor at any of these outlets: like, you guys are on the Hill and in the White House all the time, is the guy mentally unfit or not? Because if he is unfit then the issue isn't 'this may be a drag on the Democtatic ticket'!!

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:13 UTC

Indeed. I know this is a 'you can take the boy out of the editor gig but you can't take the editor gig out of the boy' take, but IMV this is what is missing from a lot of the coverage: surely the political team should *know* if he is mentally fit, and if he isn't, that is a story?

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:11 UTC

From an 'part of my beat is how organisations behave' perspective, I find it fascinating how basically, when a 'mission-aligned' organisation, be it a political party or an NGO or a charitable foundation, starts panicking, the first thing to go is 'what is our theory of change'?

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:09 UTC

I don't know, it hasn't been a beat I've been across in any capacity for - gosh, the whole of his presidency - but I sort of feel, either he is unfit for office, in which case, *people around him would know, and they should have actioned it*, or he's not, in which case, well, it's even madder.

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