From Dependent Arisings:
Where are we today in the realm of presidential politics? After a long, overdrawn nomination process, we finally have not one, but two, "Black Swan" candidates. According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the eponymous book, a Black Swan is "large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations." In other words, we didn't--and couldn't--have possibly conceived that McCain, the erstwhile frontrunner-cum-longshot-cum-heir apparent would simultaneously benefit from Mike Huckabee's precipitous rise and fall (due as much to anathema from the social conservative establishment as National Review types), Fred Thompson's splitting Huckabee's social conservative vote in South Carolina, and Mitt Romney's grating unctuousness raising the ire of everyone in the party other than National Review types. And lest I forget to mention, in toto, Rudy Guiliani's campaign strategy?
No, the circular firing squad couldn't have been predicted. Nor the nominee--by sheer luck the Republicans have nominated the one candidate who possesses even the mere chance of retaining the White House. Again, this was not by design. John McCain is despised by significant portions of the Republican base--they know he almost left the party in 2000 to caucus with Democrats in the Senate, and they know he called Jerry Falwell an "agent of intolerance" in 2000, only to go groveling back to the Reverend in 2007, looking for his official imprimatur.
The Republican nomination process, while by all accounts quite messy and unpredictable, has been largely overshadowed by the unforeseeable rise of a one-term African-American Senator who managed to vanquish a quasi-incumbent, a candidate whose spouse was no less than a popular former President.
Obama's victory is quite unbelievable in itself, but becomes more so when we stop and consider the socially and media-constructed air of invincibility around Senator Clinton's candidacy, as well as the reason's for Senator Obama's imminent political demise (too young, too inexperienced, too, well, black).
This speak to the value of political prognostication in general--what we can and cannot know, and how we tend to way overvalue what we do know, and largely underdetermine what we don't. It is a lesson for politics in particular and the realm of human action in general. We go to sleep at night expecting, to paraphrase the philosopher David Hume, that "the sun will rise tomorrow." We wake up and expect our lives to continue in a similar trajectory as the previous day. But we can't know it will. And while this fact is somewhat disconcerting, I use this admittedly extreme example for contrast: is it really that extreme that a young black senator from Illinois could be elected the next President of the United States? I think not. Lest we get too caught up in the daily vicissitudes of politics, we would be advised to remember that the confounding thing about a Black Swan is that you can't see it coming until its already past.