Politics in Football

Here's some drama to get me into sports. Patriots have the ball, 4th down, 2 yards to go on their own 28 yard line. They're currently up by 6 with a little over 2 minutes left. Should they punt or go for it? The answer depends on what you want:

Economist David Romer studied years worth of data and found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, teams seem to punt way too much. Going for a first down on fourth and short yardage in your end zone is likely to increase the chance your team wins

If you goal is victory, go for it. But is that the coach's goal?

Even though going for it increases his team’s chance of winning, a coach who cares about his reputation will want to do the wrong thing. He will punt, just because he doesn’t want to be the goat.

This story was particularly interesting because of it's parallel to politics. The goal of a elected officials isn't to create good policy, it's to get votes. This should make us at least skeptical, if not outright pessimistic, of politicians.