Work the Problem
A sketch of political entrepreneur psychology
When you try to do something big, new, or interesting in politics, you’ll get resistance. Internally, you might wonder whether you really are the person for the job, whether you’re deluding yourself, or whether you’re perceiving possibility correctly. Externally, others might call you naive, unrealistic, or arrogant.
Regarding the internal doubts,
wrote “Vision or delusion,” which addresses this question: “At some point in the startup journey, every ambitious founder wrestles with the question: am I one of the visionaries? Or am I just deluding myself?” She lays things out plainly: doing big things means risking failure, otherwise everyone would do them, but fidelity to reality and your values will guide the way.Regarding the external doubts—that’s what this piece is about. I just want to sketch out the things political entrepreneurs often hear, and how I think about them.
What you think versus what critics impute
Let’s say you think you have a plan that will result in 100 miles of new subways being built in New York City, or a plan to retrofit 3,000 miles of sewers, or a plan to build two million new housing units. When you announce something like that, you might get responses that impute the following thoughts:
I know better than everyone who has worked on this and failed.
I know better than everyone who is working on this now, but who haven’t yet succeeded.
I claim absolute certainty that I am correct, and see no way this can go wrong.
In the view of some critics, you would be overconfident, dismissive of others, and naive to real-world constraints. If you’re on the receiving end of comments like these, it’s worth taking a step back before reacting. Why? First: it’s possible they are correct! Maybe you are messing up. Second: it’s possible that you are correct, and prevailing wisdom is wrong. It takes some thought to validate either option, and if you are proposing something bold, your evidence for it should be sufficiently bold.
However: you don’t have to take someone else’s words for what you think. A well-calibrated political entrepreneur really thinks more like this:
I think [this hard thing] is possible from what I’ve seen; up until the point when the thing is done, though, there is work to do to match the possibility with reality. And it is possible that I know better than everyone who’s come before me and failed; human history is filled with those stories. But my emphasis isn’t on “me being special,” which is a common, imputed frame by critics. My emphasis is “I can do the thing.” The specialness is incidental.
The people who have tried and failed in the past might have had different macro conditions than me. It’s possible they were exactly as smart and capable as they needed to be to accomplish their task, but they were overtaken by events. In that case, I am not exactly claiming special knowledge, but I am claiming special timing that enables that knowledge to be operationalized. That in itself actually is a kind of special insight.
The people who have tried and not yet succeeded in the present might be ahead of me, might be behind me, might have different constraints and contexts than me. We could possibly be partners at some point. We’re both working the problem. I do my best to understand how we’re the same, and how we’re different. But if I think my way is better, I will pursue it. Reality will decide if either of us is correct in the end.
My knowledge is not static. I will continue to learn and update about the world and my perceived prospects for my project. I do not shy away from hard truths, even if they correctly come from incumbent actors who have thus far failed to achieve the thing I think is possible.
Attempting to do hard things is worth it, even if the odds of succeeding are only 10%. In that case, it is imperative that more people try so that civilizational development can force its way through the gates of probability into the future.
When I look at politics, I see possibility. I see many things worth trying. There are not nearly enough people trying things
As a political entrepreneur myself, here are things I observe about the world of government, law, and politics:
There are many affordances, and even the best players probably don’t know them all. The regular players have hardly covered the basics. There are many things to try.
People lean far too much on “what others say is possible.” This is a problem, because “others” often haven’t looked fully into things—either because they’re busy flying the plane, or because they simply didn’t think to:
Few people know all their authorities, because they don’t take the time to read statute and history directly.
People do not do the reading! Not in high school, not in college, not in life. Do not assume they have, or ground your judgment of their knowledge in that assumption.
Things take time, things are random, causality flows in many directions. Let people try things, don’t smack them down. Observe the level of rigor and seriousness with which they approach it, and encourage that. Even if you think they’re naive, they are on track to become the kind of person who marries rigor with non-naive reality once they’ve been immersed in the space. Help them through it, if you’re so non-naive yourself.
Sometimes people just say things, are mean, put others down, don’t want someone else to figure it out when they failed, etc. Standard human failings. You don’t have to replicate those failings. You can succeed, and help others succeed.
Work the problem
“Work the problem, don’t make things worse by guessing,” is a line attributed to NASA’s erstwhile flight director Gene Kranz (back when NASA acted more like SpaceX does now). It’s also one I take into my own political thought.
If something is hard, but you think it’s necessary (like 100 new miles of subways in New York City), don’t give up before you’ve worked the problem. How much work have you put into investigating what can be done? Most people don’t even read a whole book about the history of the subway before giving up.
Often, once someone completes one of my foundations classes, they see all kinds of possibility in government. They want to pursue big things that the incumbent political actors haven’t been able to achieve. My advice to them is always some version of “work the problem.” Investigate it with true depth. See what you think is possible, and why. Talk to people who’ve already tried. Try to do things. Validate your knowledge. Don’t torpedo your own ideas when someone deploys an argument from incredulity—when someone rejects your idea because they can’t imagine how it would come to be—even if that person is a valued mentor. Let reality be the ultimate arbiter.
“Correct and incorrect” versus “worth trying and not worth trying”
Relatedly: if you want to try something hard, the primary frame might not be “Is your idea right or wrong?” It might be impossible to know until you actually try it, like running for election or drafting a bill and shopping it around.
Just like science is greatly benefitted by invalidating hypotheses, so is politics. Striving to “always be correct” as a goal, rather than “have fidelity to truth” will stunt your mind and your courage—it also means you’ll never try things that do not have a clear victory in sight. That rules out trying almost anything big and bold, which always have a good chance of failure.
The right question is not “are you 100% right,” but “is this worth trying?”
Whatever you want to try, I’m excited to see your attempt. New York City and America need more courageous political aspirants. Work the problem. Excelsior.