Two epistemologies reprise

Matt Yglesias responds to my post, Duelling Epistemologies. He writes:

I note for the record that what I was trying to say in the post [Lindsay] criticizes is that the Bush/Guard doesn't especially hinge on the authenticity of the Killian memos.

Here's the comment I was addressing. It's from Matt's Two Epistemologies:

It's not clear to me, though, that anything really does hinge on the Killian allegations. Among other things, the general relevance of Bush's Guard service is not manifestly clear. I'm not going to pretend that this is the reason I don't think he deserves reelection, though I wish Bush supporters would have exercized the same courtesy when they were busy uncritically repeating lies about John Kerry's war record. What's more, if it is important to you to know whether or not Bush conducted himself in an honorable manner, it's manifestly clear -- Killian aside -- that he did not. [Emphasis added.]

These remarks follow a paragraph about what the Killian memos ought to mean to people. Matt was responding to a third party who claimed that it would look bad for Kerry if the memos turned out to be fake. Matt argued convincingly the Kerry campaign is blameless, regardless of the authenticity of the memos. If we want to judge the Kerry camp fairly, all we need to know is whether their evidence justified their assumptions, not whether they ended up being right.

I'm still not sure what Matt means when he claims that very little is riding on the authenticity of the Killian memos. I think Matt is arguing as follows: We shouldn't expect the Killian memos to make much difference in the outcome of the election because Bush detractors already know the score, Bush supporters already have an excuse for him, and undecided voters already have so much evidence that another set of memos won't matter. (Let's ignore what's riding on the vindication of the memos, given that they were contested.)

I'm making three points: that the Killian memos ought to influence some people, that they will influence some people, and, finally, that these two groups don't overlap much. The people who ought to care about the memos are those who believe that Bush's character is very important and that his record and his ongoing claims about his record reflect his character. Those who will be influenced are the swing voters. The will be influenced if the Kerry campaign can use this visible example to spin a new and damning narrative about Bush as a privileged, cowardly, disgraceful, hypocrite. Benjamin Hellie, Josh Marshall, Tom Schaller and others are already championing the moral cowardice meme. They started with an open and shut case, but the Killian memos are giving them an entree to mainstream media at a critical time.

As Matt points out, the Killian memos are somewhat redundant. They confirm what most of us already knew about Bush's dissolute youth and his lackluster military service. However, the veracity of the Killian memos ought to convince anyone who was clinging to the benefit of the doubt. Basically, they are proof that Bush shirked his duty and continues to lie about it to this day. So, anyone who believes the Killian memos are real must also believe that Bush is a coward and liar.

(Strictly speaking "must" is too strong. I guess it's logically possible to admit that the memos are genuine but deny that they are incriminating. Maybe Killian wrote fictional memos to himself because he'd gone quietly insane, or because he was being blackmailed. Or maybe God planted those memos to test our faith, like He did with the dinosaur fossils....)

Matt is primarily objecting to my prediction that the Killian memos will make a difference to swing voters. He thinks they won't because they're redundant, and, moreover, because, Bush's salvation gives him a clean slate in the minds of many voters.

I agree that if people buy Bush's self-serving religious excuse, they may also write off his disgraceful record. Although they ought not to because Bush shows neither remorse or humility. Contrition is a minimal precondition for forgiveness according to any Christian morality. I'm no Amy Sullivan, but even I know that it would be obscene for a Christian to confess sins, announce his absolution, and go on lying and profiting from these aforementioned abominations. Religious conservatives who forgave Bush after the Killian memos would be making a mistake on their own terms.

Moreover, we shouldn't assume that swing voters will actually believe that Bush's religious conversion excuses him. We should expect that attitude from Bush's base, but it's an empirical question whether swing voters will accept it.

Comments

[bob mcmanus]

I might say that the intensity of effort the Right is expending on discrediting these documents certainly indicates that, for whatever reasons, the right considers them very important.
Should be taken in account. Why? I suspect we may actually be going beyond electoral politics here, and into courtrooms.

1) Is Bush still criminally liable?
2) Were document files cleansed in the 90's, under whose direction, with criminal liability extending into the Texas Governor's Office? Do these documents offer proof that files were intentionally cleansed?
3) Are there more, and more serious, documents forthcoming that need to be pre-emptively discredited?
4) And if MY doesn't understand the importance of physical evidence vs testimony, he needs to watch Court TV or have a talk with Jeralyn.

[Swopa]

I think the key point is that the authenticity of the Killian memos is now sufficiently in dispute that few swing voters will use them as the basis for deciding anything. (If they were willing to spend much effort sifting through competing claims, they wouldn't be swing voters, would they?)

Like Matt, I also think that since Bush has been president for four years, events earlier in his life are much less relevant to voters than they are for a relative blank slate (to the typical, not especially well-informed voter) like Kerry.

But if a voter was conflicted over Bush's performance in office, and some of this conflict was attributable to questions of character (e.g., how consciously did he lie us into war with Iraq), then I can see how clear proof of a dishonorable act like refusing an order in the National Guard might push him or her into the Kerry column. Hence the importance for the GOP of clouding the issue.

[poputonian]

events earlier in his life are much less relevant to voters

...except that this type of event is an unbroken pattern in l'il shrubbies life: AWOL, cocaine, alcohol, insider trading (Harken), political smears (McCain, Cleland, Kerry), invading foreign sovereigns on unproven assertions ... the list goes on. Maybe it requires too many synaptic passes for the voter to get this, but it's probably worth a try.