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On optimism: The Tories have seized what may be the most precious commodity in British politics (Bagehot, Oct 11th 2007, The Economist)

The Tories have become the country's optimists.

David Cameron, their leader, said he was one in his optimistically unscripted conference speech in Blackpool. “I am by nature an optimist,” he proclaimed. He went some way towards proving it with an optimistically high estimation of the electorate's maturity. In the face of retrograde Labour efforts to portray his party as a cabal of moronic toffs, Mr Cameron confessed his posh background and expensive education. He talked idealistically if vaguely about re-enfranchising non-voters, rather than simply co-opting the floating ones.

The most important aspect of Mr Cameron's avowed optimism, however, was his emphasis on a related abstract noun: aspiration. The Tory proposals to cut the taxes paid by first-time homebuyers, and to raise to £1m ($2m) the threshold at which inheritance tax is levied, were of piddling significance in fiscal terms. The inheritance-tax idea—which seems to have been popular enough to derail the election for which Gordon Brown was preparing—would benefit only a small proportion of families, as Labour energetically pointed out before proposing a version of it. But that is precisely what is optimistic about it.

A widespread view of Britons has it that, compared with ambitious Americans—who generally elect the presidential candidate offering the rosiest view of them and their future—they are timid and melancholic. The strategic intuition behind the Tory tax ideas is that this caricature is mistaken, or at least mistaken enough for Mr Cameron to win an election by challenging it.

Meanwhile, the GOP candidates are competing to see who can be most pessimistic about their own Party, even though the more optimistic (and, not coincidentally, less "bright") candidate has won every open American presidential election of the modern era.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 11, 2007 4:50 PM