Humility

I have love-hate feelings towards New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat, who fills the role of a reasonable knowledgable and sophisticated liturgical Christian trying to stake out a moderately conservative position on most issues, as opposed to a liberal or hard right conservative position. Part of his charm is the humility he shows in the opening of a recent emailed newsletter:

This newsletter aspires to offer very little horse-race political writing, but the week of midterm elections is a necessary exception. I resisted making too many specific predictions about the 2022 midterms, but I’m sure readers could tell what I expected: My pre-election columns emphasized the problems afflicting the Democratic Party, rather than the struggles of the G.O.P., and when The Times asked columnists to forecast a single race, I gave Pennsylvania to Mehmet Oz. (Ha!) I didn’t expect a red tsunami, but once the polls tightened after Labor Day, I thought that taking the generic ballot and giving Republicans an extra couple of points while expecting them to win most of the close Senate races was a reasonable way to bet.

It wasn’t, and once again it’s clear that I’m not a superforecaster (Philip Tetlock’s term for pundits who are actually really good at predicting specific outcomes) but rather a more normal sort of overcorrector, always inclined to read a little too much into the last electoral outcome when it comes time to predict the next one.

Not taking yourself too seriously is usually, and in this case in particular, something to be commended.