The Politician's Syllogism

I was put in mind of this by a post about hotel management deciding to search hotel rooms daily during DEFCON.

Something that isn't discussed in the Wikipedia article is that there are times when, from a leadership perspective, it is in fact better to do something, even something useless and performative, than to be seen doing nothing in response to a perceived problem.

A number of upper management and government decisions make much more sense if you consider that perceived inaction can be costlier to leadership than unproductive or counterproductive expenditure of resources.