The wisdom of the double down

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/12/2022 (1364 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

My late grandmother, Sarah Kliman, enjoyed gambling. She was never a big bettor, but she did visit Las Vegas from time to time.

When I was 11 years old, she taught me the basics of blackjack, including when to double down; that is, to double your bet and take one additional card. The smartest time to do that, she ingrained in me, is when you are dealt two cards that add up to 10 or 11, and the odds of drawing a 10 or a face card to give you a winning score of 21 are decent.

Until fairly recently, that was the primary use of the term “double down.” Indeed, a random survey of the Free Press database going back to the 19th century shows the first use of the phrase in a February 1889 story about a mule “doubling down” to get through a small space (it isn’t entirely clear what that meant or what the mule did).

After that, the two words were linked most frequently in baseball reports, as in this recap from July 1984: the Montreal Expos’ Andre Dawson drilled “a double down the left field line.”

On April 16, 1997, the television show Law & Order aired an episode entitled “Double Down,” in which fictional lawyer Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) does some legal wheeling and dealing in his search for justice. And on Feb. 1, 2010, there was an episode of the show Castle entitled “The Double Down,” in which Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) makes a bet with his police partners about who can solve a case first.

And last, but certainly not least, in May 2010 KFC introduced its high fat and sodium Double Down sandwich, which had two pieces of fried chicken serving as the bun with bacon, melted cheese and sauce inbetween. This cholesterol-enhancing item was eventually discontinued, though it reappeared on the fast-food chain’s menu briefly last year.

Around the same time talk show host Stephen Colbert downed a Double Down sandwich on television to great acclaim, the term transitioned to its current, more common use: “strengthen one’s commitment to a particular strategy or course of action, typically one that is potentially risky — as in, “he decided to double down and escalate the war.”

During Barack Obama’s presidency, in particular, the phrase began appearing regularly in news reports, comment articles and editorials. In a New York Times column from September 2009, for example, pundit Bob Herbert, assessing Obama’s decision to continue the American military presence in Afghanistan, wrote that given the lack of public support for the war it did not bode well “if the president decides to double down on America’s military commitment.”

Similarly, in an op-ed piece from March 2012 by then-National Post columnist Michael Den Tandt, he pointed out that prime minister Stephen Harper and his government intended to “double down on fiscal austerity.”

More recently, as a Free Press report noted, U.S. President Joe Biden “urged world leaders to ‘double down’ on their resolve to fight global warming, saying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reinforces the need to phase out fossil fuels.”

There is however, another more negative aspect of doubling down. Among the vast majority of political leaders of whatever ideology, whether they represent democracies or authoritarian regimes, backtracking on a promise, decision or policy is regarded as about the worst thing you can do. Whether accurate or not, it is universally considered a sign of weakness and an egregious blunder that could cost you in an election.

Hence, we see a plethora of “double down” references, no matter how indefensible they might be. It is definitely a go-to defence mechanism for Manitoba politicians and officials, and, both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre are committed “double-downers.”

No one tops Donald Trump, however. As New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman shows in her Trump biography, Confidence Man, he is notoriously — and has been since the 1970s — the king of the double-down, taking it to a level rarely seen. As president, whether it was his posturing about the size of his inaugural crowd, his “very fine people” defence of right-wing marchers in Charlottesville, Va., or his absurd lie that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him, he is a pathological practitioner of the double-down.

In the past several years, Republicans in Washington, D.C., have had several opportunities to rid themselves of Trump. And yet, fearful of losing support of extremists who worship at the altar of Trump, they have continued to back the former president’s serial lying and crude behaviour, time and time again.

This illogical and dangerous strategy will no doubt go down as the most perverse “double-down” in modern U.S. history.

Except, that is, if Republicans select him as their party’s presidential nominee in 2024 and continue to double down on his outrageous, vindictive and narcissistic statements and actions.

And quite frankly, I’d be willing to place a double-down bet on that prediction.

Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context.