Tomorrow Usually Looks Like Today

On timelines and choices. Plus a Spago spotting.

Sunrise over the Earth's horizon, as seen from the Space Shuttle Columbia during NASA's STS-3 mission, March 1982. (Space Frontiers/Getty Images)

1. The Future

Last night I ended TNB by asking a counterfactual: Imagine a timeline in which Bill Clinton resigned the presidency in shame in 1998.

• There is no third impeachment in American history and impeachment remains a viable constitutional mechanism.

• Expectations and norms for presidential character remain intact.

• As an incumbent president, Al Gore probably beats George W. Bush comfortably, meaning that there is no 2000 post-election legal fight.

• America is therefore less divided on 9/11. With a Democratic president running the response to the attacks there is probably a more bipartisan approach to the war on terror, because the political incentives of the Democratic president would be largely aligned with the hawkish foreign policy instincts of Republicans.

• There is likely no war in Iraq, removing yet another major cause of division and ennui in American politics.

From there, the divergence between the time lines becomes so great that it’s hard to even make guesses. But I’ll make one anyway: I suspect the emergence of an aspiring authoritarian in American politics a decade later becomes less likely.

I’d like you to tell me your own stories on what that timeline looks like in the comments.

But the point of this exercise is illustrative, not predictive. What I want to hammer home is how contingent history can be. Sometimes history is moved by giant dialectic forces—technology, economics, and demographics. But sometimes it hinges on discrete choices made by specific individuals.

This contingency exists because most of the time, the future looks like the present.