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Long after the grass has grown over Donald Rumsfeld’s grave and peace has returned to the Middle East, the former Secretary of Defence will, I believe, be remembered for two things: his involvement in the Iraq war and his courageous venture into the murky world of epistemology.
There are good reasons to regret the first of these offerings to the world but I think we should be grateful for his discourse on knowing and unknowing – about how “there are known knowns…. things we know we know… known unknowns… some things we do not know…. [but also] unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know…” Elliptical, gnomic, even nonsensical as it may seem, it sheds light on so many disparate situations, not least as the current race for the US Presidency.
Of the many things that divide Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, what we know about them is one of the biggest.
Few (no?) presidential candidates have been as politically known as Hillary Clinton. Ensconced in the upper ranks of American politics since she became First Lady of Arkansas 33 years ago, she has been on the front line for over 25 years, as First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State, and now presidential hopeful. Few have had their politics as exposed, picked over, analysed, lauded, and vilified as Hillary Clinton. She is truly known.
Tump, on the other hand, is politically unknown for the good reason that there is nothing to know about him. One of the few (only?) presidential candidates never to have held public office at any level, he has no political record to pick over and analyse. If past records are the best record of future performance, we cannot know what to expect from the Trump. He is unknown.
And yet, this is the point at which Rumsfeld’s philosophical genius bears down on us with its full explanatory potential. For if Hillary is a known, she is an unknown known, with millions of people being more than a little unsure what precisely she stands for beyond wanting to be in power. In the words of one of her many biographers, “during her time in the public eye, perhaps only Madonna has routinely reinvented herself and reintroduced to the American public more than Hillary Clinton.” Whereas one might claim that there are some areas on which we can be reasonably sure of her views (she has been a longstanding and unflinching pro-choice advocate, for example), it is true that she has had a habit of trimming her ideological sails to catch certain political winds. Every leading politician does that to some extent but 25 years under the hottest of spotlights have exposed Hillary more than most. She is an unknown known.
Mr Trump, on the other hand, is famed for his uncompromising willingness to tell it as it is, to speak his mind and to hell with the consequences. While his political record offers us no insight into his soul, his political rhetoric opens up a vista of radically lower taxes, a smaller state, a vibrant, Social Darwinian economy, international isolationism, and a unvarnished contempt for the other, especially the Mexican or Muslim other. One can only guess what this would look like in power, but we can’t say we haven’t been warned. In contrast to his presidential competitor, he is a known unknown.
None of that makes it any easier to decide whom to vote for (for those, unlike me, who have a vote) but then again, I do wonder about people who have not already made up their mind. If you are still wavering between Trump and Clinton now, I fear you may be a little confused in your politics. My guess is that the campaigning that is left is less about persuading people to cross the political floor, which is more like a canyon this time round, than about persuading people to get out and vote at all.
If they do, they will be faced with a choice between –well, there are plenty of available metaphors: the devil you know, the lesser of two evils – but they are too severe and cynical. Let us say, that are faced with a choice that, no matter which way you look at it, will not be decided by what they know.
Nick Spencer is Research Director at Theos. His most recent book is The Evolution of the West.
Image capture from YouTube, available under this Creative Commons license
