| August 13, 2008 | Wednesday | Sha'aban 10, 1429 |
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Good guys finish last
WHEN I was studying economics at university more years ago than I care to remember, we were taught that consumers made rational choices in the market place. Thus, everything else being equal (as it never is in the real world), they would buy the cheapest item. Consequently, they would respond to increases and decreases in price logically and automatically. Even then, I could observe that this simply did not happen in real life: brand loyalty, habit and peer group pressure led individuals to make irrational choices every day.
Apparently, what is true for economics is just as true for politics. Currently, I am reading The Political Brain by Drew Westen, a professor of psychology in the US. In this fascinating analysis of why people vote as they do, Westen deconstructs political ads in a number of American presidential campaigns, and shows which psychological levers are being pushed.
One of the points the author makes is that in the last 60 years, only one Democrat has been re-elected, while only one Republican has failed in the attempt. Clearly, this cannot be due to the quality of Republican candidates. To explain this huge imbalance, Westen suggests that the Republicans have mastered a simple truth the Democrats have still not grasped: people vote according to how they connect to the candidate, not according to the policies he or she might announce. In other words, we generally listen to our heart, not our head, when we decide on our choice.
One conclusion Westen arrives at is: “Today, Democrats and Republicans seem like two species, living in parallel universes, unable to speak the same language. We hear the same evidence and come to diametrically opposed conclusions, even in simple matters of fact…” And two reasons the Democrats have been doing so poorly in presidential campaigns are: “Democrats, and particularly Democratic strategists, tend to be intellectual. They like to read and think. They thrive on policy debates, arguments, statistics, and getting the facts right… A second reason is a mistaken belief that reason can provide both means and ends, when it can only provide the former…”
The notion that even in a highly literate society like the United States, reason does not reign supreme in choosing the most powerful elected individual on earth is a profoundly depressing one. Many elitists in Pakistan have moaned for years about our largely illiterate electorate, and how their lack of education resulted in poor electoral choices. But here is evidence that emotion, not education, is the basis on which most people choose who to vote for.
Ever since the Age of Enlightenment in Europe in the 18th century, thinking people had expected reason to replace religion in the public sphere. Indeed, this rational attitude underpinned both the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the American Declaration of Independence. But as events since then have proved, man remains an irrational being, repeatedly going against his own self-interest to satisfy primitive impulses of revenge, lust and greed. Numerous wars have been fought, and innumerable people killed, in the name of nationalism, religion and honour.
But as Westen shows, it is the part of the brain that processes emotion, rather than the cognitive (or rational) part, where most of our political decisions are made. So although Bush comes from a wealthy, privileged background, he was successful in portraying John Kerry as a rich elitist during the 2004 campaign. Four years earlier, he had pushed Al Gore into a similar corner, while himself coming across as ‘Joe Six-pack’, the archetypical Middle American.
The same thing seems to be happening to Barrack Obama, a candidate who has had a tougher childhood than most. Meanwhile, his opponent, John McCain, the son and grandson of admirals, and married to a multi-millionairess, is being packaged as a man of the people.
So in a way, what’s true of economics is true about politics: at the end of the day, they are both about marketing. Images, sound-bites and cleverly crafted ads influence us in deciding what we buy, and who we vote for. Over 50 years ago, Vance Packard, the famous American sociologist, wrote The Hidden Persuaders, a book that laid bare the techniques used by ad agencies to manipulate us. If they tapped into the hidden recesses of the human psyche then, think how much more sophisticated they are now.
But if all this is common knowledge, why is it that the Democrats fail to do what the Republicans have been doing for years with such success? Westen ascribes the real reason to a discomfort with emotion which leaves many Democrats “misattuned to some of the most important emotional signals in electoral politics, such as whether a candidate has charisma, what nonverbal signals is he or she sending, what emotions the candidate is or is not activating in the electorate, and when it is time to capture the moment with a positive or negative appeal…”
At the start of the 1988 campaign, the Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis, was leading George Bush Sr. by nearly 20 points in the opinion polls. The Republicans responded with a string of negative campaign ads in which Dukakis was portrayed as being soft on crime. In an early debate, he was asked by the moderator if he would favour the death penalty for a man who might rape and murder his wife. The reply sank Dukakis’s candidacy there and then:
“No, I don’t… I’ve opposed the death penalty all my life… I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime.”
To the millions of Americans who were watching, the Democrat came across as a cold, heartless man who was incapable of feeling rage against a man who might have caused his own wife such agony. And if he couldn’t feel for his wife, how could he empathise with strangers who voted for him?
Yet in his own mind, Dukakis was only re-stating his position on the death penalty, and morally, he felt he could not make an exception for the possible murderer and rapist of his wife.
But while morality and intellect might win you a school prize, they don’t win you elections.
