Assessing My Predictions

"What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens." - Benjamin Disraeli.

Edmund Burke once wrote, "You can never plan the future by the past." Nonetheless, it is of occasional modest benefit to look back and tally how well we have been able to foresee the future, the rough equivalent to a basketball shooting percentage.

In early January 1998, allegations of the presidential affair with Monica Lewinsky and the possibility that the President lied under oath in the Paula Jones civil rights action had just surfaced. At the time, the truth of the allegations was still an open question. I predicted that if the allegations proved true, the Clinton Presidency would quickly fade. If the charges were false no other charges would ever have saliency. Specifically, on January 29, 1998, I wrote:

"Either the allegations will remain unproven or the Administration will unravel."

I missed badly.

The President quickly realized that he should mislead, delay and avoid any unambiguous admission. Truth was largely irrelevant. A frog will jump out if dropped into a pot of boiling water. But if the water is cool, the frog will remain in the pot even if the heat is gradually raised to the boiling point. Like that frog that slowly boils to death, over seven months the public grew indifferent and anesthetized to presidential predatory and perjurious behavior

Given the uncertainties of the crumbling of a presidency and based on market behavior during the end of the Nixon Administration, in January 1998 I also worried that:

"Financial markets, already jittery with uncertainties in Asia, could suffer significant setbacks given the perceiving instability in the US."

I missed badly again.

The fortunes of the economy are apparently orthogonal to the fortunes of the president. The president is impeached and the market explodes upward. Now, if Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, were to leave, it might be different story, but President Clinton is inconsequential.

Throw up enough shots some may manage to make it into the net. In January 1998, I wrote:

"Long-term political victory comes by changing minds on the nature and role of government, not altering perceptions about who is more corrupt. Conservatives and Republicans should be careful what they wish for. They may get it."

Pretty good lay-up, wouldn't you say?

I further wrote:

"If we can extrapolate from history, potential witnesses will clam up and no unequivocal case will be made against the President. Enough dirt will be tossed into the air that people who hope the President succeeds politically will be able to suggest that this is just another political attack."

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