David Brooks on Voting
My grandma forwarded me an editorial in the New York Times by David Brooks that outlines all the irrational ways we decide who we are going to vote for.
Writes Brooks:
People in my line of work try to answer certain questions. Why did Hillary surge after misting up in New Hampshire? Why have primary victories produced no momentum for the victors? Why did John McCain win among Republicans who oppose the Iraq war in both New Hampshire and Michigan, but lose among voters who support it?
The truth is that many of the theories we come up with are bogus. They are based on the assumption that voters make cold, rational decisions about who to vote for and can tell us why they decided as they did. This is false.
In reality, we voters — all of us — make emotional, intuitive decisions about who we prefer, and then come up with post-hoc rationalizations to explain the choices that were already made beneath conscious awareness.
Brooks and others go on to posit that hairstyles and smiles speak more to our subconscious which makes our political decision, while we use our reason to rationalize this choice. Certainly advertisers and political consultants live on the edge of this thinking, and exploit our intuition to further their candidate or product. We believe there is only one way to combat this “assault on reason” (to borrow a term from Al Gore) and that is education. Know your candidates and you can never be exploited.
I think I know the reason. It is because perception becomes our reality. And the media are manipulating our perception.
[Another National Survey Finds Americans Know National Media Biased (from: http://www.lifenews.com/nat3637.html).
Poll finds Americans say the media too often side with the pro-abortion or liberal position on sensitive political topics. Percentage who said they trust the content: Fox News Channel 27%, CNN 14.6%, NBC News 10.9%, ABC News 7%, Local news channels 6.9%, CBS News 6.8%, CNBS 6%, MSNBC 4%, PBS 3%. Only 19.6% percent of those surveyed could say they believe all or most news media reporting. By a 45 to 16% margin, Americans see media journalists and broadcasters as liberal compared to seeing them as having conservative views. Those percentages were much higher -- at a 4 to 1 breakdown -- among Americans talking about the perceived liberal views of NPR and the New York Times. 87.6% of Americans say the media is trying to influence public policy.]
As proof, one has only to look at the Presidential Campaign of Alan Keyes. It is a disgrace that the media are doing everything they can to distract away from, belittle, misrepresent and ignore him. Even when he shows up in the audience of a debate to which he is uninvited, the media avoid letting their cameras land on him.
I believe it’s because they know Alan Keyes can win. If they didn’t think he could win, they would merely use him to boost their ratings. I believe they are afraid of him. I think he is just too darn conservative. So they need to influence public perception. And when it comes to the media, perception is reality. That’s how the other Republican candidates are able to get away with redefining conservatism. And that’s just the kind of conservative the media can live with.
Contrary to what the media convey, Alan Keyes’ campaign is alive and well, and gaining momentum. This election is far from over, and the field is still wide open. With more Americans than ever using the Internet, it is possible to break through the media bias.
Unfortunately, sites like this one which rely on the media for decisions on whom to include in their candidate information, are not always a good source for ALL of the truth. For information about Alan Keyes, you will have to go to the campaign website yourself: http://www.alankeyes.com
Just want to say I took your quiz today and thought it was right on, but more importantly I thought the information was extremely informative. It’s a fantastic tool, and I forwarded the Web site to about 6 or 7 friends. Thank you.
Thanks for this effort. I was pleased that the results of your site compared favorably with that of http://www.dehp.net/candidate/, which gives me greater confidence in both sites.
Way to remove emotion and intuition, and introduce objectivity! I have also informed several of my acquaintances.
ALL? That’s simply not true.
Many, perhaps most. But not all.
Thanks for creating a website that allows us to get back in touch with our reason, logic and common sense. I bristle at the idea that we are sheep that would vote for someone because they have “star power” or “a cool factor” or “an X-factor” or because they are a certain race or gender. We are not idiots and I think the media underestimate us. A good candidate does need to be able to speak coherently and convincingly. We need to see that they are knowledgeable about the issues and that they have a clear and inspired vision for the future, for change and that they know how they will lead us toward those goals. Leadership and management skills are key. Experience counts for something as well. Unfortunately in America, many haven’t been exposed to the idea that wisdom and restraint, patience and hard work are probably more important in the long run than just having ideas and talking about them.
An excellent post. Your grandmother is to be commended for challenging you (and probably many others) to do some actual research into who they are voting for. Regardless of your party affiliation, people shouldn’t base the decision about who they vote into office on whether a person is black, white, male or female, or any other vague or unrelated criteria like crying, likability or good looks. Look at the person’s record and ethical/moral values, and their voting record. That will tell you much more about a person.
You write, “Know your candidates and you can never be exploited.”
What makes you so sure that voting based on emotional cues is exploitation? We can’t foresee the policy issues that will come up in the next four years. For example, nobody in 2000 expected Bush’s president to be defined by terrorism.
While I agree that it’s crucial to understand what a candidate actually stands for (that’s why I’m visiting your site), it’s foolish to imply that emotions should have no role.
We need to make a judgment about how similar a person is to ourselves so that we have some feel for whether they would act the way we would in new, unexpected situations. Those judgments aren’t flawless, but neither are policy judgments.