Here, recounting the debate before the Bin Laden operation.
[The President] said, I have to make this decision what is your opinion. He started with the National Security adviser, the Secretary of State and he ended with me. Every single person in that room hedged their bet, except Leon Panetta. Leon said GO. Everyone else said 49, 51, this…
It got to me. Joe what do you think? I said “You know I didn’t know we have so many economists around the table. We owe the man a direct answer.
Me: First, is `economist’ a synonym to somebody who can’t give a direct answer ? I thought we have a better reputation. Second, the way I see it 49,51 is actually a direct answer and a bold prediction. It means that if they start making independent attempts to kill Bin Laden, and substantially less or substantially more than half of these attempts succeed then the president has all the reasons to give these guys the boot.
1 comment
January 29, 2012 at 8:27 pm
afinetheorem
The synonym by Biden is just referring to the famous Truman quote about wanting a one-handed economist because we’re always saying “On the one hand, X, but on the other hand, Y.”
And though there is one Bin Laden, we do have a nice infinitely repeated series on which to test these predictions: killing al-Qaeda’s number 3, which we seem to do every month!