An Off-Topic Comment

While I generally confine my remarks on this Blog to consumer law issues, every once in a while I write about something which is at best tangentially related to consumer law.  This is one of those comments.  If that bothers you, don't read it.

We all encounter areas of life from time to time where we have a history of exercising poor judgment.  My own approach to such issues (which I freely admit I don't always follow), is not to rely on my judgment in such circumstances. 

What brings this to mind is the presidential election.  The last time a president had an approval rating as low as President Bush's was in 1952.  People argue about whether he is the worst president of all time.  Republicans running for office this year do not exactly seem eager to be associated with him.  It appears that many of the people who voted for President Bush now regret having done so.  If that's so, perhaps they should recognize that they don't do a very good job of selecting presidents and sit this election out.

Of course, everyone has a right to vote, and people can learn from past errors.  But the country might be better off if those who have cast the wrong vote in recent years recognized that fact and deferred to the judgment of others. 

Indeed, both presidential campaigns seem to agree with the idea that past misjudgments are disqualifying.  Thus, Senator McCain's campaign argues that Senator Obama is not qualified to serve as president because he opposed the surge in Iraq.  Senator Obama's campaign claims that Senator McCain's support for the Iraq war means that he is not qualified.

And now, back to consumer law and policy. 

Comments

[beans]

I don't think this is a good suggestion. If people repeatedly exercises poor judgment on the same topic, then, sure, they may want to defer to others or "sit it out," at least until they have learned what is necessary to improve their judgment. But there is nothing to suggest that the same people repeatedly exercise poor judgment in electoral decisions or that electoral decisions are so similar to one another that it even makes sense to consider that a "mistake" made in one election has anything to do with whether the voter will make a similar "mistake" in a subsequent election.