Four things I think I know about politics

By R.K. Barry

There are four things about politics that I have learned over the years. There may be more, but these are the ones I am thinking about today.

None of them are original, but they are all, I believe, important. I am also reasonably sure they are obvious to anyone who cares to pay attention.

The first one I believe comes from legendary Democratic strategist James Carville and it concerns the relative lack of interest most people have in politics. It's about political messaging and it goes like this: "When you want voters to know something about your position on an issue or about your platform, you first have to tell them what that thing is and then tell them again and finally tell them you told them. About the moment when you are absolutely sick and tired of saying the same thing over and over and over again, some people will start to listen."

The second is the sad observation that no matter how stupid or untenable a statement, someone, probably many people, will believe and repeat it. They may believe the idiotic statement because they are predisposed to believe it or it might be that they think, foolishly, that anything that has been picked up by the media might have some truth to it. And, what's more, most people like to have something to say at the water cooler or wherever it is they converse with other human beings. Most of us do like to think that we are somewhat well-informed or at least not clueless. I can't say how many times I have heard someone opine that despite what most people believe about "x," they have also heard that "y" could be true. Think here about climate change, birtherism, Obama's religion. Put it out there and someone will repeat it. I'm not counselling dishonestly, only what can happen.

The third thing is that political campaigns matter because that's when a lot of people who are generally only vaguely interested in politics, if at all, start to pay attention. As for point #1, during campaigns all your telling and re-telling may finally start to stick with people. And as for point #2, by the time things get serious there is a lot of bad information that has already become part of the landscape for all sorts of nefarious or just ignorant reasons.

So here is my fourth point, which may only be a corollary of points above but it's this: those of us concerned about the truth should never weary of saying the same things over and over again -- the same things that may have become tiresome and obvious to us -- because there will come a time when people start to pay attention and you don't want the purveyors of bullshit to have a leg up when things get real.

More than anything, politics is a battle of attrition. Let's just make sure that our truth outlasts their lies.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

A survey on the role of emotions in politics

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Please do me a favour -- and, more importantly, a favour for academic research.

I was contacted recently by a team of researchers at Appalachian State University in North Carolina that is currently studying the role of emotions in politics. They're conducting a survey that they hope will help them with their research. I can't take the survey myself, as I'm not a U.S. resident, but they tell me it only takes a couple of minutes. Their work looks extremely interesting and I'm eager to help them out (not least because they're fans of The Reaction and reached out to me and readers of this blog for our feedback). I'll post on the results of their research when they're done.

Please take a few minutes to do it. Here's the link to the survey:

http://www.appstate.edu/~hartmantk/survey.html

Thanks.

Here's hoping Speaker Boehner learns to speak the truth

By R.K. Barry 

A CNN / Opinion Research poll conducted between December 17 and 19 indicated that 56% of Americans hold either a positive view of Obama's health-care reform or are of the opinion that it is not liberal enough. More specifically, 43% like it as it is and 13% would probably have liked to see a public option. That leaves 37% who are opposed because the reform package is too liberal and 7% who have no opinion.

Let's be clear here. Of those expressing an opinion, 56% reject the Republican critique of "Obamacare" and only 37% side with the GOP.

Given those numbers,  it is rather difficult to understand what Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) was talking about when he said of health-care reform that "we just need to repeal it as the American people have spoken out and said."

I'm sure if I spent just a bit of time doing some Google searches I could find a dozen more Republicans saying that their midterm gains were in large part about Americans rejecting health-care reform. I know recently-installed House Speaker John Boehner has been saying similar things. You will forgive me if I don't dig up all the relevant quotes. It hardly seems necessary. 

John McCain recently railed against the repeal of "don't-ask-don't-tell" as an affront to the electorate despite the fact that polls put support for gays serving openly in the military at upwards of 80%. Same idea. Say the opposite of what is demonstrably true and a lot of people will believe the lie and repeat it either because they want to believe what is untrue or because they are too lazy to do a bit of research.

We're not talking about differences of opinion about things that cannot be shown empirically but about things that are, by modern and generally-recognizable standards of truth, considered to be matters of fact. And before you take issue with polling as a source of gathering information of citizens preferences, I assure you that it has become pretty darn accurate over time.

But just think about the idiotic ideas that have fairly recently been in circulation amongst far too many Americans: Obama is a Muslim; he was not born in America; he is a socialist; he hates America; climate change is an elaborate hoax; and almost any piece of weirdness that comes out of Glenn Beck's mouth. And then there are the claims by various Republicans that Americans reject health-care reform or gays serving openly in the military.

Conservative politics in America seems to be far too much about just saying shit, no matter how absurd, just to see who is either stupid enough or lazy enough to accept it as truth.

I once read something, which I admit may not be true but struck me as plausible and at least suggestive. It was a claim that the KGB, the intelligence agency of the former Soviet Union, would work through its networks to put clearly untrue information in circulation that would support its interests simply because a certain subset of the population will always accept as plausible anything they hear and repeat it.

In my experience, it is not uncommon to hear someone offer an opinion contrary to all facts with the commnt that they had heard it somewhere, though they could not tell you where or what proof was provided.

For the longest time, the suggestion that tobacco did not cause cancer was in this camp, though thankfully that is now a part of the past.

As I say, just put it out there and some people will believe it and repeat it. Too much of politics is done this way, which, when bending the truth, seems to be about the maxim "go big or go home."

What I would say to the Eric Cantors and John Boehners of the world is that they should go ahead and work for the legislative agenda of their choice or the choice of those they think got them elected. But please do try to keep the bullshit to a minimum about the extent to which you are speaking for "the American people."

Although if you want to attack health-care reform, which seems to be pretty popular, and fight for tax cuts for the super rich, which seem to be pretty unpopular, that's fine with me. See you in 2012.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

No labels? No thank you

By R.K. Barry 

When I find myself agreeing with conservative pundit George Will, it might be time to walk away from the computer. What can I say? But we do seem to agree about one thing and that is that this new group of moderate conservatives, calling themselves "No Labels," who have come together to give us all a good tongue-lashing for our hyper-partisanship, is a goofy bunch. 

Here is the mission statement for the group:

No Labels is a 501(c)(4) social welfare advocacy organization created to provide a voice for America's vital center, where ideas are judged on their merits, a position which is underrepresented in our current politics. No Labels provides a forum and community for Americans of all political backgrounds interested in seeing the nation move not left, not right, but forward. No Labels encourages all public officials to prioritize the national interest over party interest, and to cease acting on behalf of narrow, if vocal, special interests on the far right or left. 

Here is what Mr. Will has to say about them: 

People have different political sensibilities; they cluster and the clusters are called parties. They have distinctive understandings of the meaning and relative importance of liberty, equality and other matters. Politics is given weight, and motion is imparted to democracy, by intensely interested factions composed of people who are partisans of various causes. 

Yup, there it is. I agree with George Will. That, all on its own, may be proof that left and right can work together. (Just kidding.) But Will's point is that these people have no understanding of what politics is and that the kind of agreement that they think exists at the vital centre of American life, isn't there – and that is not a bad thing. Political partisanship is what makes democracy work.

To add a bit more clarity, I draw your attention to a comment made by MSNBC political commentator Joe Scarborough, one of the principles of No Labels, who offers this:

We govern in the middle. We always have. With apologies to Arthur Schlesinger, there’s not a pendulum swing ideologically in America. America stays in the middle, and we saw it. When you go too far left, they slap you back and when Republicans go too far right, they slap you back as well, into the center. 

What Scarborough seems to be suggesting is that there is a true and identifiable "general will" of the American people that is politically centrist and that Democrats and Republicans would do well to focus their energies on keeping it happy. He also seems to suggest that this general will has a clear idea of what public policies it would support and those it would reject and politicians need only work together, as good technocrats, to give effect to its interests.

George Will, as a trained political philosopher, probably has a pretty good idea that Joe Scarborough is full of crap. Hence Will's comment that people have very different ideas about the meaning of some extremely important ideas like liberty, equality, justice, fairness, morality, etc., etc. Politics is, as he says, all about "intensely interested factions composed of people who are partisans of various causes."

If Scarborough and his "No Label" friends only mean to say that we should try harder to understand each other to see if we can reach a working and reasonable accommodation about things where absolute agreement is unlikely, then okay, fine. I don't think we need a new 501(c) (4) social welfare advocacy organization for that, but fine. Knock yourself out.

But if he thinks that those on the right and left are simply conspiring to thwart the clear will of the people for the sake of narrow partisan and illegitimate interests, he and his friends are not serious people.

Speaking only for myself, I am on the left and will never stop trying to convince people, through legal and generally civil means, that wealth and power is concentrated in America to an extent that makes real democracy difficult; that equality is impossible if the rules of the game are rigged; that liberty is empty if we don't share the resources needed to make our desires effective; and that justice has far too much to do with how much money you have in your pocket. 

This also means that I have a lot invested in challenging the status quo. And I doubt that the "No Labelers" would consider a challenge to the status quo, at least in any meaningful way, acceptable. My guess is that the status quo is what they mean by the "vital center," and making the machine function in a more amicable way is about as ambitious as they intend to get. 

What they also mean is that the vital center should be defined by the values that the "No Labelers" hold. It wouldn't be the first time that the particular values of those holding power in society were represented as the universal values of everybody. Whenever I hear someone trying to tell us what the American people, taken as a whole, believe, I know it's time to run for cover.

This is the oldest trick in the political play book. Everybody else is biased in their political views and values, but the views that I and my friends hold define the good itself. No thank you.

At a minimum, labels are, as Will notes, a shorthand for how people feel about some pretty important issues, for which there may be little basis for agreement. The "No Labels" movement, and every other "beyond left and right" movement wants to gloss over this important fact.

To repeat, politics is not a technical exercise among like minds to implement in policy the values that we obviously share. There is no such agreement. There is no "general will." Politics is the fight over whose values will prevail. Labels are simply a useful shorthand for telling us who our potential allies and opponents are. If we stopped using the ones currently in vogue, we would need to invent others to replace them.

Again, if this is all about the fact that we should have more respect for good process, that's fine. But please stop saying that moving beyond left and right is necessarily the same as moving forward. It isn't. It's just an argument for de-clawing political opposition and for embracing business as usual.

I'll bet partisans on the left and right can agree at least about that much. 

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)