STATING THE OBVIOUS

In declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel, Donald Trump said he was just acknowledging the obvious—everybody knew this was the case but nobody before him (he implied) had had the courage to say it out loud.

Now the place is erupting in violence—the obvious response of the Palestinians to Trump's words. The President implied we'd have to work through the violence on our way to a new path to peace in the region.

The thing is, stating the obvious is often not the most diplomatic way forward. It's often necessary to ignore the obvious to make any progress.

Sometimes "conventional wisdom" stands in the way. It this case, willful ignorance may be employed. Even actual ignorance will work—as when an entrepreneur forges ahead to success without realizing "everybody says" what he's trying to do is impossible.

Federal Express's hub technique was roundly criticized, but it seems to work.

And sometimes the "obvious" is simply wrong.

In a recent rally, aimed at buoying the campaign of Republican Roy Moore, President Trump attacked one of the candidate's accusers by noting she had modified the note Moore had written in her yearbook.

Trump implied that any change (she had added the date and other identifying information to the note) made the whole thing false—obviously faked. And discrediting one of Moore's accusers obviously discredits them all—otherwise why bother?

Similarly, as many of Moore's defenders have pointed out, it's been nearly 40 years since the alleged events took place. Why haven't any of these women come forward before? The obvious answer is that they're all lying now.

It's like finding a photograph of a little girl standing beside her father and smiling for the camera. This is obvious proof the man was not molesting her during this period.

When the Norfolk Four confessed to raping and murdering a young woman, clearly they were all guilty. So they were convicted. Jurors know it's impossible a man would confess to a crime he didn't commit. Obvious.

But the fact was, every confession had been coerced by the same detective—one after the other—when DNA failed to implicate each confessed rapist, one after the other.

President Trump frequently states there was no collusion with Russia involving him or his people during the 2016 campaign. What makes his position obvious is that there have been no charges of collusion brought by the FBI.

Sometimes the obvious takes a little time to develop.