Applying Reverse Engineering to Politics

A company losing out to a competitor supplying a superior product frequently engages in reverse engineering -- taking apart and analyzing the better product in order to explain and understand how and why it beats its own stuff.

A similar process can be used to determine the reasons behind apparently inexplicable political decisions, assuming that the decisions actually have a rational basis.

For example, this not so humble blogger has long believed, with no supporting evidence whatsoever, that the first President Bush actually may have had a good reason for selecting Dan Quayle as his vice president. What could explain that decision? Well, let's assume that Mr. Bush was concerned that irrefutable evidence existed and might come to light of his having been involved in Iran Contra or some other event then generally considered to be unsavory or scandalous. Were that so, he might well have concluded that having Mr. Quayle as his vice president guaranteed that he never would have to fear being impeached. No prior transgressions by him would have motivated Congress to replace him with Mr. Quayle as president.

Evidence supporting another long held personal hypothesis about an apparently irrational political decision now is emerging -- the decision of President Bill Clinton to retain Janet Reno as his attorney general during Clinton's second term as president. Why did he keep her on when there clearly was no love lost between the two of them. I have long speculated that Ms. Reno was retained as head of the Department of Justice because she had and could make public evidence that Billy Jeff or Ms. Hillary had issued the orders that led federal agents to gas and incinerate more than 75 men, women, and children near Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993. Dick Morris, who was working with President Clinton during Clinton's campaign for reelection, now has reported that Mr. Clinton told him, in effect, that this blogger's hypothesis -- which was reached solely through the above-described reverse engineering process and previously unsupported by any real evidence -- actually was and is correct. According to Morris, Clinton told him that he had to retain Ms. Reno as attorney general,  because she had threatened to expose Clinton's responsibility for the atrocity if he did not do so.