In an important sense, other people (and culture) characterize me as perhaps moderate (or something else). I could be right, wrong, anything in between, or not even wrong. I get labeled largely based on what others think and say of me.
How do I decide on my policy positions? One could make a pretty compelling argument (from rationality, broadly speaking) that my best assessments of the world should determine my policy positions.
Therefore, to the extent I do a good job of #2, I should end up recommending policies that I think will accomplish my desired goals even when accounting for how I will be perceived (#1).
This (obvious?) framework, executed well, might subsume various common (even clichéd) advice that gets thrown around:
Be yourself and do what needs to be done, then let the cards fall as they may.
No one will take your advice if you are perceived as crazy.
Many movements are born by passionate people perceived as “extreme” because important issues are often polarizing.
It can be difficult to rally people around a position that feels watered down.
Pick something doable and execute well to build momentum for the next harder thing.
Writing legislation can be an awful slog. Whipping votes requires a lot of negotiation, some unsavory. But all this depends on years of intellectual and cultural groundwork that softened the ground for the key ideas.
P.S. when I first came here to write this comment, I had only a rough feeling along the lines of “shouldn’t I choose my policy positions based on what I think will actually work and not worry about how I’m perceived?” But I chewed on it for a while. I hope this is a better contribution to the discussion, because I think it is quite a messy space to figure out.
Consider the following numbered points:
In an important sense, other people (and culture) characterize me as perhaps moderate (or something else). I could be right, wrong, anything in between, or not even wrong. I get labeled largely based on what others think and say of me.
How do I decide on my policy positions? One could make a pretty compelling argument (from rationality, broadly speaking) that my best assessments of the world should determine my policy positions.
Therefore, to the extent I do a good job of #2, I should end up recommending policies that I think will accomplish my desired goals even when accounting for how I will be perceived (#1).
This (obvious?) framework, executed well, might subsume various common (even clichéd) advice that gets thrown around:
Be yourself and do what needs to be done, then let the cards fall as they may.
No one will take your advice if you are perceived as crazy.
Many movements are born by passionate people perceived as “extreme” because important issues are often polarizing.
It can be difficult to rally people around a position that feels watered down.
Pick something doable and execute well to build momentum for the next harder thing.
Writing legislation can be an awful slog. Whipping votes requires a lot of negotiation, some unsavory. But all this depends on years of intellectual and cultural groundwork that softened the ground for the key ideas.
P.S. when I first came here to write this comment, I had only a rough feeling along the lines of “shouldn’t I choose my policy positions based on what I think will actually work and not worry about how I’m perceived?” But I chewed on it for a while. I hope this is a better contribution to the discussion, because I think it is quite a messy space to figure out.