Political vaporware
Just as mathematicians, in solving certain problems, had to invent imaginary numbers, in political calculus one can move beyond political capital and political risk to more rarefied heights with political vaporware.
Political vaporware
A proposal or trial balloon of possible legislative or programmatic change.
It may have nothing behind it, but is intriguing for what it promises and thus has political impact simply by its introduction and persistence.
The term comes from computers which had hardware,
software,
and vaporware.
Loading provisions into the authorization bill
I first heard ‘vaporware’ in the context of Microsoft, which had a deadly knack for announcing forthcoming new products that, if introduced, would usurp market share from a plucky struggling upstart. Netscape Navigator succumbed to the vaporware version of Internet Explorer, which was announced (and announced to be free!) long before it was ever shipped.
“There’s nothing in the box!”
Vaporware applies in many contexts, including:
Physics. Cold fusion. Enough said.
Entertainment. Most movie trailers are vaporware, created long before the movie will be released, much less shot, but used to occupy key launch slots (like Memorial Day or July 4th weekend).
Financial. The most famous example was Michael Milken’s Drexel Burnham “highly confident” letter. Originally known as the ‘air fund’ because it was nothing more than hot air, this was a letter that stated, “Drexel Burnham is highly confident it can raise the necessary funding.” Armed with this letter, 1980s raiders like Victor Posner, Carl Icahn, T. Boone Pickens, and Ron Perelman were able to greenmail large corporations.
Geopolitical. During the Cold War’s height, the Soviets were so paranoid about US technological breakthroughs that they automatically assumed any innovation we mused about already existed and was secretly deployed. The Soviets, in other words, credit-enhanced
SDI tuning fork
Sociology. Urban legends (like the Choking Doberman or the Albino Alligator) are vaporware-become-tradition. They work because they tap Jungian imperatives.
Political. At inception, every piece of legislation an Administration proposes is vaporware.
In politics, vaporware has many benefits:
- It takes no R&D since the idea can be thrown out with no research, no development, indeed no logic or internal consistency.
- It costs no political capital because it is merely being mused about, not pushed.
- It has the perfection of imagination. Since it has no tangible expression, vaporware can be everyone’s fantasy, the expression of Aristotelian perfection.
- It forces political responses (which effect will be the subject of a subsequent post).
- It provides zero-cost test-marketing if stakeholders (as they usually and uncritically do) respond by accepting the vaporware regardless of its inherent implausibility.
I can still remember HUD’s introduction of Mark Up to Market (MUM), which was announced as vaporware long before HUD had any idea how it would work or indeed whether HUD had statutory authority to implement it. (To this day, I’m unsure HUD had that authority, or for §236 IRP decoupling for that matter, but this is no longer relevant since both are now well-established preservation tools.)
I remember being struck at the time that MUM changed owner decision-making even though HUD had nothing but an idea.
Have we put enough hot air into it?
Time and again I have seen people who should know better treat vaporware as either already on the shelves or utterly unthinkable, and time and again I have seen the political landscape shift because of a timely introduction of seductive if absurd vaporware.
And yes, there’ll be a payoff to this post — tune in tomorrow!
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
– A Midsummer Night’s Dream, III, 2
