One of these stories is the biggest stories to break this year and the other only appeared to be. But they both leave the outside viewer asking themselves, “did they think we were stupid?”
The stories? Spitzer and the Pentagon’s puppet analysts.
Of course, we, the general public, aren’t stupid, well not that thatstupid. But that didn’t stop them. Maybe they thought we (read the general public again) just didn’t have the knowledge or resources to break the story, but investigative journalists did, and we were indeed smart enough to immediate assess how we felt about both stories. And my guess is that most of us concluded that neither demonstrated the kind of behavior that public leaders should have. This guess is not a hard one to make, it’s pretty obvious that the public is not going to shake the hand of either the Pentagon or Spitzer for these moves (not that you would want to – chances are you will encounter a disease at worst, and a slimy residue at best).
That being said – why did they do what they did? The way I see it, there are three scenarios that lead up to both parties making the choices they did.
- it did not occur to them to consider the outcome
- they not think they would be caught
- they thought people wouldn’t care
The point is, both Spitzer and Pentagon officials (powerful (or once powerful) institutions in charge of massive decisions on a day to day basis) did not properly assess all scenarios, even the likely ones. If they had, they would have realized the consequences (loss of credibility) was far more detrimental then the benefit (short term affection).
Tags: Ashleigh Williams, Eliot Spitzer, Jonathan Williams, opportunity costs, Pentagon, Pentagon’s puppet analysts
