I am the Decider
Jay
February 25, 2010, 12:15 am

"What was he thinking?"

You've probably heard variations of that phrase throughout your entire life. Whether it's a sports commentator or rabid fan questioning the coach's calls or a politician adding insult to injury to another politician's misfortune, people love to say "I told ya so".

The problem with that is you can only say that after the fact, and you might not even get the opportunity if their gamble pays off. But all of that after the fact nonsense is meaningless. It's crying over spilled milk. Or, rather, gloating over someone else's spilled milk. It serves no function except to assuage our own egos.

During the 2009 NFL regular season, the New England Patriots squared off against the Indianapolis Colts. Faced with a 4th and 2 situation on their own 35 with less than 2 minutes of game time, Coach Bill Belichick gave the call to go for it on 4th down even though his team was up by 6. His team failed to convert and the Indianapolis Colts went on offense from a turnover on downs. They scored a touchdown and won the game on that drive.

Belichick was castigated in the sports press. Everybody questioned his call, said how awful it was, that it was disrespectful of his defense, that it was disrespectful of the Colt's defense, and that it was generally one of the dumbest things a head coach could do. The sports media had a field day crowing over the alleged brain fart of a heralded coach.



And yet, the Indianapolis Colts have come from behind to win on their last drive on 7 out of 16 of the games they had played in the regular season. Whenever sports commentators talk about the Colts, they have to talk about how "cerebral" and "clutch" that Peyton Manning (the Colts' quarterback) is. He always comes through in the end. In fact, that was the primary reason Belichick cited for his decision to go for it. He wanted his offense to control the game's destiny, not the Colts' offense.

Depending on how you crunched the numbers, the decision to go for it was either the right call or the wrong call by a margin of about 7% (in terms of the expected value of winning). It was a wash, statistically, and yet everybody, from the fans to the press, couldn't stop telling Bill Belichick how much of an idiot he was.

Decision making is hard. Very hard. With no benefit of hindsight and a future of limitless uncertainty, pulling the trigger on anything substantial takes guts. And it's something most humans don't have the stomach for. That's why when confronted with a decision that requires a lot of thought, most humans choose the default option. And there is always a default option.

For example, becoming an organ donor is an opt-in choice for Americans when acquiring or renewing their driver's license at the DMV. Approximately 1 out of 3 drivers has the words "Organ Donor" laminated somewhere on their driver's license. It's over 9 out of 10 in Austria, where it is an opt-out decision.

Are Austrians more altruistic than Americans? Doubtful. But when it comes to making a decision, most people just go blank. They choose the path of least resistance. Essentially, they're sheep. And, as Gordon Gekko would say...



But in case you truly do believe that the Austrians are somehow significantly more humane than us, Illinois is opt-out and their donor rate is 60%, significantly higher than the overall American average of 38%. (Source) You can't very well say that people in Illinois are significantly different than the average American (however nebulous that term may be).

I wrote this short today partly inspired by an op-ed by John Yoo that appeared in the Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

John Yoo was a Justice Department lawyer from 2001 to 2003. Immediately after 9/11 occurred, CIA officials asked Justice to expound on the legality of certain interrogation techniques (colloquially known as "torture" to certain elements of American politics). In previous decades, CIA officials have used their best judgment and some of them have been litigated to no end by overzealous Justice lawyers from succeeding administrations. The CIA was covering their ass this time, so to speak.

Yoo, along with Jay Bybee, drafted a memorandum to the CIA detailing what would be considered legal and what would not be. This memorandum was in favor of techniques such as sleep/sensory deprivation, playing loud music in front of captives for hours, and (you guessed it) waterboarding. The CIA followed their legal counsel in the years to come while the Bush Administration prosecuted the War on Terror.

Yoo and Bybee enjoyed effective prosecutorial immunity in the waning days of the Bush Presidency, when the Democratic Congress salivated at the thought of prosecuting these two lawyers for trumped up charges as an appeal to a radical wing within the Democratic Party.

However, after Barack Obama was elected President, the Justice Department began an investigation on these two men, looking for evidence of legal wrongdoing. This was, as many political hands would admit privately, a witch hunt looking for Bush-era officials to throw to the dogs as a form of retribution for losing the midterms and the Presidency.



Less than a week ago, a senior Justice official, David Margolis, cleared Yoo and Bybee of any legal wrongdoing, overruling an earlier Justice report saying otherwise. Although Margolis expressed concern over their legal judgment, he ultimately found that they had been guilty of no crimes.

Say what you will about their ethics and morals. But for those with short memories, try and remember the weeks and months immediately following the eleventh of September, 2001. Activity on the Hill was feverish and panicked. Upon initial briefing of the interrogation techniques that had been okayed by Yoo and Bybee, the vast majority of members of Congress were in explicit approval. A few even pushed for harsher methods of interrogation, fearing that the current procedure was too soft. Keep in mind that almost as many Democrats were included in these briefings.

Congress was all too willing to hold Yoo and Bybee's feet to the fire, but they should have been pointing fingers amongst themselves as well if they wanted to be logically consistent. And when you consider things such as the Patriot Act (drafted by government bureaucrats and approved by Congress) and its widespread unpopularity, you have to remember it was only unpopular after a few years had passed, when the spectacle of 9/11 had begun fading from popular memory.

The next time you think "what were they thinking?", try and remember that all people try to make the best possible decisions out of any given circumstance. The best course of action may not necessarily be a good one. And when it comes to extraordinary decisions, they are almost always made in extraordinary times.

President Bush once said, in no small irony (though it was greeted with derision by the press and many people), "I am the decider." Perhaps he had realized just how tough making decisions was.