Unintended Consequences

Thomas Nides, former deputy secretary of state under Clinton, offers a perfect summation of the creed (h/t Doug Henwood):

Hillary Clinton understands we always need to change — but change that doesn’t cause unintended consequences for the average American.

Off the top of my head, here’s a brief list of changes that caused unintended consequences for the average American (whoever that might be):

The election of Abraham Lincoln.
The passage of Social Security.
The entrance of women into factories during World War II.
Brown v. Board of Ed.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Asking an unknown state senator from Illinois to deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Party convention.



Politics is the field of unintended consequences (“Events, dear boy, events.”) Don’t like unintended consequences? Don’t do politics.

Update (11:30 am)


On Facebook, Timothy Burke added this:

Don’t do change, either. Fear of unintended consequences at this level is high-modernist control freakery. There are unintended consequences to being too afraid of unintended consequences.