The Loyal Opposition

In fantasy baseball, erstwhile managers construct their best fantasy team by "drafting: current professional players. Competing fantasy managers draft from the remaining players in the same pool. Under such circumstances, fantasy mangers are likely to acquire players on their fantasy teams who in actuality compete against the favorite real teams of the fantasy managers. If during the year, the players on the fantasy team do well in actual play, the fantasy team becomes more successful. A fantasy manager is thereby placed in the awkward position of having dual interests in the outcome of any particular baseball game. Fantasy managers root for their real favorite teams to win and at the same time hope the players on their fantasy team do well. Sometimes those wishes come into conflict. Managing a fantasy baseball team can thus strain the normal bonds to one's favorite real team.

This similar divided interest plagues the political party out of power. It is so hard to be the loyal opposition. It is not intellectually difficult to be loyal, while maintaining an honest agreement with the policies of a current Administration. However, it can put someone in the awkward position of realizing that if the country does well, then their party's chances of reclaiming political power shrink.

Yet, most of the loyal opposition are "loyal" and would rather see their country prosper even if it means reducing political opportunities. This remains true even though sometimes, the animal spirits of competition will temporarily blind some to their true desires. It is also politically imprudent to be seen to be rooting against the country's good fortune.

It is, unfortunately, sometimes difficult for the loyal opposition to distance themselves from those extreme elements for whom party is more important than country, for whom personal animosity toward a political adversary is a greater virtue than honesty, and for whom hunger for notoriety exceeds constraints of civility.

Old political pros know how to do this; less experience ones do not. That is one reason that retired Army General Wesley Clark, a presumed moderate, failed in this bid for the Democratic nomination. Not only was his standard campaign stump speech intemperate (he repeatedly called Bush "unpatriotic"), but when given an opportunity to distance himself from Michael Moore's assertion that Bush was a "deserter" he fumbled and stuttered and failed to do so. Clark looked so pathetic. He was struggling between two natural impulses. He did not want to forgo the red meat issue Moore uses to inflame partisans, but he also knew it was ignoble to support unsubstantiated accusations. It would have been politically wise for him to do the right thing and dismiss the charge, but the rookie politician succumbed to the temptation of excessive partisanship.

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