This is a special post for quick takes by Martin Sustrik. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
This is related to an idea I keep stressing here, which is that people rarely have consistent meta-level principles. Instead, they’ll endorse the meta-level principle that supports their object-level beliefs at any given moment. The example I keep giving is how when the federal government was anti-gay, conservatives talked about the pressing need for federal intervention and liberals insisted on states’ rights; when the federal government became pro-gay, liberals talked about the pressing need for federal intervention and conservatives insisted on states’ rights.
--- https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/20/writing-advice/
One encounters that kind of thing all the time, e.g. people trying to change the constitution to cause particular object-level changes.
But on the other hand, it feels like a useful political tool: Whoever is willing to sacrifice their object-level goals can achieve their meta-level goals instead. And given that meta-level changes are likely to have more profound long-term impact, it may be worth it.
Elaborating the above example, if you are anti-gay, but pro-state all you have to do is to wait until pro-gay people support strengthening the states at the expense of the federal government. At that point you can join forces with them and give more power to the states. I'll hurt your object anti-gay agenda, but you achieve your meta-level agenda which will keep paying off in 20 or 50 years when the gay issue is probably no longer salient enough to care.
If you reframe this as instrumental vs terminal goals, it's obviously true. If you don't care about the constitution per se, but only as a means to power and to enabling your policies, and your timeframe is much longer than your opposition, then it's trivially useful to seek power now and use it over the long term.
But it's not at all clear that these conditions hold for any humans in the real world. We don't really have values or goals that are all that well-defined, and we like to think we're more long-term-oriented than our opposition, but we're mostly fooling ourselves.
I don't think this works very well. If you wait until a major party sides with your meta, you could be waiting a long time. (EG, when will 321 voting become a talking point on either side of a presidential election?) And, if you get what you were waiting for, you're definitely not pulling sideways. That is: you'll have a tough battle to fight, because there will be a big opposition.