David Brooks worries about peoples’ need to believe that all-knowing technocrats are keeping us safe from terror:

Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in — technology, technocracy, centralized government control — have failed them in this instance.

In a mature nation, President Obama could go on TV and say, “Listen, we’re doing the best we can, but some terrorists are bound to get through.” But this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways. The original line out of the White House was that the system worked. Don’t worry, little Johnny.

I see this belief as an example of rational irrationality, a concept from Bryan Caplan that people have preferences over beliefs, and when those preferences come at no cost, they will believe the things they like to believe. It’s obviously comforting to believe that the government has things under control and they are, or at least are capable of, keeping us completely safe, and so people would like to believe that.

Of course a sense of false safety could be costly since a better appreciation of the risks might lead to actions to mitigate that risk, and so the belief the government is actually keeping us safe would not be rationally irrational. But believing that the government could keep us safe but are failing to do so because of incompetence, ideology, or some other curable failure, does not have costs if the actual risk level is still known. Thus a belief in the that the government could keep us safe from terrorism but are failing to do so is a natural example of rational irrationality; we should not be surprised that it is widespread.

Caplan’s remedies for voter irrationality do not offer a single clean-cut solution to this problem, but rather two potential and contradictory policies the government could take to mitigate risks despite voters’ rational irrationality.

The first possible policy would be for politicians to use their political “wiggle room” to deviate from voter preferences towards better policies that popular opinion would actually be against. This would mean Obama acting like he is using his full technocratic, centralized, prowess to stop the terrorists, but on the margin doing what he can to mitigate risks using decentralized risk mitigation policies (I have no idea what these policies would be.. terrorism futures markets?).

The other Caplanesque solution would be for Obama to challenge the public’s misperceptions about the government’s ability to mitigate terrorism risks. This is the advice Brian gives to experts;

“When experts and those who heed them address a broader audience — in the media, in their writings, or in a classroom — they need to focus on the questions where experts and the public disagree, and clearly explain why the experts are right and the public is wrong.”

If Obama came out and loudly declared that the government cannot keep us safe from terrorism, and that much of what they have been doing is in fact “security theater”, it would be politically expensive, and would probably reduce Obama’s security policy “wiggle room”. I can see the headline on the front page of The National Review right now: “Obama Says Terrorism Is Your Responsibility: How The White House And The ACLU Are Putting America At Risk”.

Thus the two possible Caplanesque solutions work against each other. So which should Obama choose? This is a general struggle I have had understanding exactly what “The Myth of The Rational Voter“ says that politicians should be doing. Should they say one thing and do another, maximizing their “wiggle room” and using it to mitigate voter irrationality? Or should they challenge the voters’ rationally irrational beliefs, likely reducing their “wiggle room”? To the extent that either are done by politicians, I see the former as more common, although Obama seems more able and comfortable taking the latter route than most politicians. It seems David Brooks would prefer the latter.

P.S. Also note that almost everything I’ve written here could be altered slightly to apply to financial system risk.