On the Bleeding Edge

New Ideas - Matt Yglesias

I don't necessarily support John Edwards as a president but, as Yglesias points out, he does have a decent grasp of what we need to do to tackle poverty. But the bigger issue for me here is not Edward's ideas on poverty but the point that Yglesias makes on the different between new ideas and good ideas. While the newest, freshest ideas make for great campaign promises, they rarely prove workable. What Edwards has done here is take some ideas that have shown promise in the past, or have actually worked in the past, and built an anti-poverty platform around them. This is good planning and thought on the part of the Edwards campaign. There's nothing wrong with picking up on old ideas so long as the ideas work. Just the same, there isn't anything wrong with new ideas either, so long as they work as well. Good governance doesn't have to rely on being first among ideas but being the best among ideas.