Overton Defenestration

The Defenestration of Prague

There's been a lot of talk about Paul Ryan's budget. One thing I haven't seen though, is Ryan's budget discussed as a play for an expanded Overton Window, which is what I think it primarily is. For those unfamiliar with the concept, the idea of the Overton Window is that there is a generally acceptable range of positions that people are willing to debate on an issue. This is the Overton Window. If a player in the debate proposes something far outside of that window, then suddenly, more moderate proposals on that end of the window, or maybe even proposals previously outside the window, become debatable positions. The concept is similar to the negotiation strategy known as "anchoring," but in a political debate, rather than a two-party negotiation. The Bush Administration very successfully used this tactic all over the place, most notably with respect to torture, which went from never acceptable to suddenly being debatable to a large portion of the public, because some people were cheering for it outright.

Anyway, I think the Paul Ryan budget was just that. Everyone knew it was unrealistic, but when you're trying to be insane to move the Overton Window, realism is a vice. Everyone that's been paying an ounce of attention the last two years knew that Obama's position would be centrist, and yet still would be seen as the left side of the debate (despite the existence of the Progressive Caucus's budget, which is the only one of the three to actually have a firm plan to bring down the deficit, all while doing it with progressive policies, like cutting defense spending and taxing the rich). But because they had a set left tent-pole, the farther right their initial plan was, the better off the Republicans were going to be. This is negotiation 101, and I'm surprised I haven't seen that discussion anywhere.

The funny/scary thing is that right about the time I thought about this, the Republican Study Committee put out an even further right wing budget, which seemed explicitly intended to extend the Overton Window even further, to make Ryan's look reasonable. The Democrats made a valiant effort to toss the Republcans out their own Overton Window (hence my oh-so-clever title), when they got sneaky and almost caused the House to pass the RSC budget. It was because of that move, causing Republicans to have to vote against it en masse, that the RSC budget became a laughingstock and did not in fact increase the Overton Window any more than Ryan's budget. In order for the trick to work, the plan needs defenders, who are in turn given air time to sell it. Unfortunately, given the mainstream media's obsession with crediting Paul Ryan (and basically every other conservative) as being Serious, the first play worked like a charm.