Democrats & Liberals: Archives

I saw Bowling for Columbine almost two weeks ago with my girlfriend. I am a midwestern / Wisconsin sort of conservative; she’s a southern liberal (which is to say that we aren’t nearly as far apart in philosophy as simple conservative and liberal labels would suggest). However, I tend to trust Republican messengers; she trusts Democratic ones.

Few of us are professional policy makers. Therefore, we must balance the time required to investigate a claim fully versus the costs of accepting a proposition that is misleading. I would argue that evaluating the quality of a messenger, whether or not the messenger shares your concerns, etc., is therefore a valid exercise, and even among rational-thinking, super-intelligent members of society, sometimes following messengers without complete indepedent research is a valid strategy for existence.

With respect to our politicians specifically, I believe that pundits tend to over-play the importance of “positions” when selecting good candidates. Perhaps coincidentally, the electorate does NOT pay close attention to the specific messages. It pays attention (to the extent that it pays attention at all) to temperament, political associations and a host of undefinable characteristics associated with leadership, trust, believability, ability to manage and motivate, etc.

I would argue this is fortuitous because we don’t actually know how a specific position will play out in the ensuing 4 or 8 years. But we do know that whomever we elect must be able to motivate. She must be able to cut to the core of complicated issues quickly, and she must have great self-confidence to execute her beliefs in the face of vehement opposition. Therefore, we know that the messenger is important; we don’t know to what extent the message is likewise critical. Viewed in this manner, the very ability to craft a message that sells is an important skill upon which politicians *should* be judged.

I’ll wrap this up by returning to my girlfriend and I. Our messenger/message theme and conflicts have been terribly interesting. We’ve had to sort through what’s important to our belief structures in some interesting ways that would never have happened if we had superficially agreed on policy proposals. It turns out, we share much in terms of the value of community, the value of freedom, etc. But we do disagree on the “how” and we also frequently disagree on what is spin versus what is — as you call it — “fact”. We trust different messengers and this leads us to different conclusions regarding what is fact (or, perhaps more accurately, what is a relevant fact).

I would therefore suggest that the American people of all suasions are likely doing a better job than either of us would like to admit. It is primarily because we have different points of view and different messengers touting different messages that it appears to each of us on ends of the spectrum that the American people are ignoring “my” facts.

(P.S. I didn’t mind the movie, much like your wife. In fact, I somewhat enjoyed it. I am mildly aggravated about the accuracy of the movie, the juxtaposition of “facts” that leave the viewer with impressions that I do not believe are supportable by those same “facts” (some of this borders on real misuse of data, IMO), etc. But I found it pretty funny at times, and it is always good to see other perspectives as long as they aren’t incoherently dogmatic. And on that score, I appreciated his presentation. All in all, it was enjoyable with seldom trite and mostly thought-provoking snapshots that illustrated various facets of a terribly complicated and amorphous topic.) Sorry for the length of this post.

Not in the television age. Can you imagine FDR being voted into office today? Can you imagine the attack ads? The thinly veiled insinuations? “Do we really want a CRIPPLE running our country in a time of imminent war?” There is no way on Earth he would have won in 1940.

If you’re running for Washington, D.C., now you have to be cut out for Hollywood. In preparation for this, our current Senator, Norm Coleman, actually wore braces for 2 years to close the gap in his front teeth, while the Mayor of St. Paul. It’s disgusting how fascinated politics has become with appearances, as opposed to content. Contrary to the old adate, we’re judging our books by their covers all of the time.

A reference to this can kind of be seen in Albert Brooks’s column in the NYT the other day. His reasoning for the success of GW and the failure of Gore in the 2000 election was that people felt Gore was talking down to them, and GW was a guy who would hang out in the barbershop with them. It is almost as though we forget what politicians are in office to do. They aren’t there to be our best friends, they are there to run our country. A “salt of the earth” approchabilty and good looks have absolutely nothing to do with that.

I don’t think the average American has access to what I would term the message.

We have relied on the Fourth Estate to give us the material we need to fulfill our informed democratic participation. But it turns out this particular Estate has been inherited by PT Barnum.

The Fairness Doctrine’s repeal is at the heart of this.

The Schwarzennegger debacle is an example of the kind of malignant symptoms we will start seeing more of, where one of the most highly noticed candidates ever anywhere has weeks-old broken campaign promises, serial sex crimes and even a porno career, not to mention current, easily proven untruthful denials about all the above, simply ignored by the mainstream media in favor of the feelgood hoopla of the moment.

Here is an excellent commentary by an attorney on how Reagan’s destruction of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine has led us to this current crisis in our public discourse.

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2002/06/30/1f.ed.col.monks.0630.html

Good post, but I think you are engaging in a bit of wishful thinking. Since you don’t like what it popular, you assume people must be deluded.

I think the American public has heard the message of President Bush, Govenor Schwarzenegger, and Republicans in general and they like it. Lower taxes and less government regulation were messages that Schwarzenegger got across quite well and that resonated with Califronia voters. Ditto with Bush.

Of course from the Dem/Liberal perspective it is hard to accept that the country has turned away from your message, so the tendency is to blame the process (news media, Bush’s lies, etc) or impugn the intelligence of the American voter.
With Democrats focused on undermining US troops in Iraq, supporting partial birth abortion and keeping “under God” out of the Pledge, I suspect voters will continue to prefer the Republican message.

Andymac

Most people tend to vote — and do other politics — based on sentiment first, then maybe ideology or economics. Moore may put people off personally but he is a good moviemaker who knows how to create a favorable sentiment for his ideas on film.

AndyMac, the message that Bush is putting forward seems little different from the one Reagan put forward. Not four years after Reagan left office, Clinton was elected, and even two years after the so-called Republican revolution, he was re-elected.

How clearly is that message of yours getting out? Now’s not the time to get a big head about your political gains, because right now, your problem are mounting, and your party is showing very little willingness to sacrifice agendas for necessities.

And people are not stupid. They intuit things given enough time and experience. They understand that executive pay has nothing to with performance nowadays. They understand that if they choose to work their hardest, and produce the most they can, they will not be rewarded, and that loyalty to the company will not be repaid by continued employment and respectful treatment.

People are not stupid. They know that the law should be laid down on corporate America. Maybe the Stock Markets and the numbers are recovering, but let me ask one question: do you think any politician in their right mind is going to talk about privatizing social security now?

What people are is tired, and feeling powerless. Whatever panaceas your people try to offer, whatever propaganda you put out, people will experience the real consequences of those rules and those systems.

God help you if you continue to convince yourself that nobody can really, honestly complain.

This is a classic example of a state of mind I find all too prevelant in politics. It goes like this: “People don’t agree with me about X, so they must not think about X.” It is thinly veiled in this discussion of message or messenger, but that’s all it ammounts to.

k

Come on folks lets look at the big picture. Bush was voted in by electorial votes. For perhaps 6 months afterward the country was in an uproar about miscounts in Jeb Bush’s Florida. Also lets not forget the arguments about an outdated electorial vote. What happened with updating that part of our voting process. As far as a messenger, who has been in Iraq longer, the Bush’s or companies like Halliburton? Perhaps the canidates should were t-shirts with the logos of the companies that are backing them, then instead of listening to the gibber gabber of the individual running, we can just vote on the mission statements of the companies that we feel are better qualified to run the country.