Congress: House of Games

I thought David Mamet's movie "House of Games" (1987) was intriguing. Anything Mamet does involves some sort of con, either literally or figuratively. In "House of Games," the con is literal and begins with a poker game that sets the tone for the rest of the movie. The stakes get higher and higher but no one leaves. It's not that the best hand necessarily wins; you could have a bad hand but if you play your cards right, you could win it all. In poker, it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. It's called a "tell," a small giveaway look or gesture that poker players use to read the minds of their opponents.

In an op-ed in today's LA Times, Mamet uses poker as an analogy and the Democrats are patsies. In poker, the only way to win is to take the initiative. The Democrats need to take the initiative or be rolled over again:

ONE NEEDS TO know but three words to play poker: call, raise or fold.

Fold means keep the money, I'm out of the hand; call means to match your opponents' bet. That leaves raise, which is the only way to win at poker. The raiser puts his opponent on the defensive, seizing the initiative. Initiative is only important if one wants to win.

[...]

In poker, one must have courage: the courage to bet, to back one's convictions, one's intuitions, one's understanding. There can be no victory without courage. The successful player must be willing to wager on likelihoods. Should he wait for absolutely risk-free certainty, he will win nothing, regardless of the cards he is dealt.

[...]

The Democrats, similarly, in their quest for a strategy that would alienate no voters, have given away the store, and they have given away the country.

Mamet says Democrats watched as Al Gore frittered away the 2000 election; they watched as Bush declared a phony war; they voted for a phony war because they didn't want to be seen as weak; then they ran a candidate who refused to stand up against accusations of not being patriotic.

The Republicans became more bold when they learned to recognize the Democrats' "tell"--their absolute reluctance to take the initiative.

Here's how Kerry should have handled the Swift Boat accusations, according to Mamet:

Control of the initiative is control of the battle. In the alley, at the poker table or in politics. One must raise. The American public chose Bush over Kerry in 2004. How, the undecided electorate rightly wondered, could one believe that Kerry would stand up for America when he could not stand up to Bush? A possible response to the Swift boat veterans would have been: "I served. He didn't. I didn't bring up the subject, but, if all George Bush has to show for his time in the Guard is a scrap of paper with some doodling on it, I say the man was a deserter."

This would have been a raise. Here the initiative has been seized, and the opponent must now fume and bluster and scream unfair. In combat, in politics, in poker, there is no certainty; there is only likelihood, and the likelihood is that aggression will prevail.

You can sit at the poker table all night, never bet, and still go home broke because you anted away your stake. Similarly, the Democrats are anteing away their time--they risk defeat by being bold but by remaining passive, they ensure it.