Foolish Adults in the Room: The Prisoner's Dilemma and Politics

I often hear and read democrats proclaiming some version of "when they go low, we have to go high" or "we have to be the adults in the room" or some similar sentiment. The idea is that the divisiveness in the country can be healed if we reach across the aisle and be better then the Republicans have been.

When I was a freshman in college, I took an amazing course called Aggression, War, and Civilization, and lessons from that course still resonate. One important lesson came from a lab in which a partner and I performed 100 iterations of the Prisoner's Dilemma. If you don't know about the Prisoner's Dilemma, read about it here.

So, from a game theoretical perspective, the correct long-term strategy is for both sides to play nice. If we both stay loyal to each other, that provides the best long-term outcomes because it is a stable state.

But here's the thing, if one partner turns on the other and never is met with a fight, then the new stable state is one in which one partner prospers while (and because) the other suffers. 

This second state is where I think the US political system is right now. 

Harvard Political Review's Gordon Kamer laid it out nicely in Hyper-Partisanship and the Prisoner’s Dilemma. As he says:

Bipartisanship is thus incorrect for any single politician to pursue without genuine concessions from other actors. Trust between politicians has eroded so that no one will logically cooperate in the prisoner’s dilemma, and political discourse worsens.

Here's one example: Obama was a nice guy who reached across the aisle. He was not a radical. Still, Mitch McConnell denied him the Supreme Court appointment he should have been able to make. The GOP has no reason to temper their odious behavior because they know the Dems will respond with bipartisanship and moderation. Our stable state involves the GOP's scorched earth approach being followed by Dems being kind, bipartisan moderates. 

Maybe the Dems need to wield control and really push through some bold ideas. We've tried it the moderate Dem and/or GOP way for a long, long time, and the result is growing wealth gap, fewer people getting proper healthcare, and a host of other issues summarized nicely in this NY Times article The U.S. Is Lagging Behind Many Rich Countries. These Charts Show Why.  

Dems cooperating while the GOP continues to play their nasty games is a long-term strategy that has been predictably bad for political discourse and the US.