The Old Cock and Thumb

I was having dinner with a friend last night when talk shifted to Mountain Accord. She doesn’t really follow the Accord closely but asked me if I thought “this whole tunnel nonsense” was really just the “old cock and thumb.” I gave her that look that says, “I don’t know what you are talking about but that doesn’t sound quite … normal?”.

Evidently on the season premiere of HBO’s Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ character (the President) uses a negotiating technique called the “Cock and Thumb” to try and get what she wants. She needs to cut the military budget so she proposes something so extreme it would castrate the military, knowing that when they finally settle, they’ll be glad that only their thumb was cut off.

I don’t know if that’s quite the reference I would have made, but it’s an interesting thought regarding the Mountain Accord. Ask for a multi-billion dollar tunnel through a mountain, connecting the Cottonwood Canyons to Park City, knowing that it’s never going to fly. Then come back after the public yells and screams, and say “how about we just do bus rapid transit over the road to connect Brighton to Park City.” I can hear people saying, “wow, that sounds a lot better than a tunnel. We should do that.” Then if we oppose that idea too, we come off as completely negative — like we are irrational and won’t agree to anything.

Even if that sounds a little outrageous, how about what’s already happened. Let’s say Mountain Accord had only proposed changes in the Cottonwood Canyons. There was no connection to Park City. Everything ended at Brighton. Nothing on this side of the mountain. Would Park City and Summit County have forked over hundreds of thousands of dollars to “have a seat at the table”? Probably not. Yet, by throwing in a tunnel and an irrational connection to Park City, the money flows. Even though we’ve made it clear that we don’t want a connection to the Little Cottonwoods Canyons and THERE WILL NEVER BE A TUNNEL OVER OUR DEAD BODIES, we are forced to stick with the process, and continue to pay … just in case. If that was the strategy, it’s positively brilliant.

I’m not sure that would still be considered a “cock and thumb,” but I’d guess this tactic is described by a saying as equally vulgar.