THE TRAGIC VISION. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has been getting some play among the Loyal Opposition for telling the truth about health care reform. The Belmont Club is the work of a former student of Mr Reich.

Robert Reich was once my teacher and I knew there had to be more to it than that, and so I went to the source: UC Berkeley maintains an archive of webcasts and Reich’s speech is available there verbatim. The relevant portion of his remarks are between the 6:30 and 20:00 minute times. Indeed, upon listening to the speech there was more to it than that. Although Reich is liberal he is also incorrigibly intelligent and his remarks were framed as a speech by a hypothetical candidate, who for perverse reasons, could only tell the truth. His main point was that the truth was untellable. And although his politics are left of center, his hypothetical unspeakable speech slaughtered every sacred cow the Berkeley audience held dear. So not only did Reich say the words above, but he said many other things besides, which I’ve marked in blue in my new laundry list below. His other remarks I’ve amplified according [to] my understanding of his points.

Spend some time reading through the essay and the other points, which incorporate pretty much all of what we understand as National Affairs.

The student audience, which at first clapped enthusiastically as Reich started to tell his unspeakable “truths” stopped clapping by the end. Reich had uttered the fundamental heresy. You really can’t have something for nothing. Pulling in one direction meant giving way in another. He went on to say that America was hopelessly addicted to fantasy; that anyone who got up on stage and reeled off the points he had made was politically dead.

Although I may disagree with many of the public policy positions that Robert Reich takes, his point that the truth makes piss-poor politics seems valid. Things come down to choices: lower costs versus death panels; torture versus intelligence; equity versus growth. And politicians, ever eager to garner votes, never want to say this. They will always try to have it both ways. Even when politicians choose one road over the other, they take pains to suggest they are simultaneously proceeding down two paths. One can disagree with the choices Reich makes but he is right to say that choices are unavoidable.

Choices are unavoidable, but the alternatives are not fixed over the long term. Constraints are real, but the constraints change. The reason politicians survive is that human creativity often rides to their rescue. New knowledge, new resources and new worlds have turned many a hack into statesmen. But they are the beneficiaries, rather than the creators of productivity; what is irrational is to expect genuine creativity in a world dominated by politicians. The missing pairs of choices in Reich’s list are these: creativity versus certainty, risk versus return, bureaucracy versus innovation. We can live only if we take the risk. That is the most unsayable truth of all.

Shorter form, and any economist, left or right, who has advised a politician, will tell you the same story: offer the politician X and note that to do X will involve sacrificing some Y, and the politician will ask you to get both X and Y. (Common-room conversations with academicians not accustomed to optimizing under constraints often founder for the same reason.)