Alan S. Oser

There's a presidential election next month, but my lips are buttoned. I will not predict the outcome, even though I know what it will be.

I learned the wisdom of silence at a dinner party four years ago. The election was a month away then too and I was asked how it would turn out. I answered that I didn't know. Actually, I did know, but I held my tongue.

Experience teaches that accurate predictions gain no friends for the predictor, whereas inaccurate predictions, while also gaining no friends, dishearten the predictor, and induce a sense of embarrassment and a temporary loss of self-confidence.

How wise I was! I was wrong about the election outcome, true. But no one knew that. I reinterpreted my silence at the dinner party as a sign of intelligent doubt, and experienced no loss of self-esteem.

Nowadays, in retirement, I spend much time washing dishes. While washing, I listen to sports talk on the radio. Sometimes it’s nonstop predictions. “The Lions will beat the Bears," one man says, starting a verbal brawl with his talk partner, who differs. This proceeds witlessly until the first man proclaims, “The Beavers will hire Fuzzy Wilbursham as their coach.” I don’t care. “Next year Booferman won’t be back because he’ll put the Chipmunks over the salary cap,” he adds.

Election coverage is much the same. From day to day the issue seems to be “Who’s ahead?” while in fact the election is not actually a “race” and the candidates are not actually “running.” They are standing still. Everyone else is predicting. Why?

I have a theory about this. Imagining the uncertain future arouses a certain excitement, while the past is boring and the present is hopeless. Imagining the future is also unsettling, and sometimes titillating. It is an absorbing waste of time, leading to outspoken and probably inaccurate predictions that needlessly upset others whose hopes would be shattered if these predictions were to come true, and therefore stand ready to advance equally outspoken and inaccurate predictions of their own.

The truth is that the future does not like to be predicted. It prefers to trick us. It is a fortunate thing for us that it does, because there can hardly be a worse fate than to know the future with accuracy.

These observations put me in mind of some decisions I have made in the past based on my private prediction of what would happen if I did, or did not, make that decision. I cannot deny, after all, that in personal matters it is necessary to evaluate possible consequences (i.e., to make a prediction) in order to make any decision at all.

There was the time in 1973, for example, when my wife and I bought our second house. We bought it without having sold our first house – a big mistake, everyone told us. We predicted that it would soon find a buyer. In fact, it found a buyer a full six months after we had closed on the new house. I never regretted those six harrowing months, however, because if we had decided against buying the new house out of fear that we could not sell the old house promptly, we would have spent the rest of our years in regret.

At least I think that’s what would have happened. Maybe not. Another thing about the future is that it affords no opportunity to examine the consequences of taking the untaken path. In public life, this reality weakens the position of those who deride the unfavorable consequences of others’ decisions. The “I told you so's" of the world should remember that we are ignorant of how matters might have turned out if different actions had been taken.

But back to 1973. At the time of the house purchase, we had almost backed out from fear that after a few years we would be the only white family left in our neighborhood. Racial change in the cities was under way full blast in the 1970’s. In our area, house values were suffering. The new arrivals were generally of lower income than the new departers. But once again, the future surprised us. Blacks moved in, and so did whites. Asians and Hispanics too. The neighborhood is now a racial hodge-podge, and our house is worth 15 times more than we paid for it.

Experience has taught me modesty about my ability to predict the future in matters that directly concern me. We do not forget our own bad choices. But I feel complete confidence in predicting the consequences of decisions that others have to make. If you ask me whether X will be happy marrying Y, I do not hesitate to say yes or no. I also know whether X should buy a certain stock, or vacation in a certain country, or accept a certain job. I am less certain about what clothes to put on in the morning.

In presidential politics I have an almost perfect record of predictive error, beginning with Nixon vs. Kennedy in 1960. Since I am fairly dependably wrong, I have occasionally considered trying to outwit the future by voting for the candidate I hoped would lose. But this subterfuge would not work either. The future cannot be outwitted.

I don’t do well in predicting the fate of my children either. The irresistible urge to do this begins early in a child’s life and persists through adolescence. The tendency with children is to predict outstanding achievement. My own children have done fairly well, but not by doing what I had predicted they would do, even though all my predictions were periodically recalculated throughout their adolescence.

I do not complain about this. My faith in their virtue proved justified and required no prediction. I hold the same faith in my grandchildren. I no longer attempt to predict what they will do with their lives.

Public affairs are another matter. Consider an article about the future in the December 2004 issue of The Economist, an admirable news magazine. On a glossy blue cover the headline reads, “The World in 2005.” Inside, Daniel Franklin, the editor, gives his predictions, and also his candid assessment of how well the magazine did a year earlier in predicting what would happen in 2004.

Not so well, it seems, in picking election winners. The Economist was wrong about Indonesia, wrong about Taiwan, wrong about Spain. It predicted a 4 percent decline in Turkey’s economy, but the Turkish economy grew by 9 percent. But you can’t be wrong all the time. The magazine correctly predicted the winners in Greece and Panama.

At least The Economist has the grace to hedge its predictions with words of caution – "perhaps," "probably," "possibly" – and it notes that it has an obligation to “point to risks of things that may or may not happen.”

When forced to reveal my own expectations in public, I use the same words of caution. It makes me sound wise, or at least not unwise. But privately I am ever the optimist, and cannot escape a certain dumb conviction that I will eventually be proved right. I never expect the worst. This is the right frame of mind for the healthy man. The past can be dreadful, the present a disgrace. But there must always be hope for the future.