A Recent Trend in American Politics
Warning: This post is about what I argue is a recent development in politics. I'm always skeptical when people argue that something new is appearing on the political scene. ("American politics are more fiercely partisan than ever before." Oh yeah? Are our politicians challenging one another to duels? Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr fought one.) Don't spare my argument that same skepticism.
Most conceptions of democracy make some strong assumptions about who people are. They're supposedly both disinterested--able to be persuaded by arguments for policies against their individual best interests--and interested--actively engaged and voting in every election. These assumptions lead to the median voter theory: in a pairwise election, the candidate who can capture the median voter will win. Politicians who bought into this theory tailored their platforms to the median voter.
But clearly the second assumption is too strong. People don't care enough to vote in every election. And others care, but they express their dissatisfaction with a candidate not by voting for the other party, but by not voting at all. George W. Bush and Karl Rove realized this fact in 2000 and capitalized. They centered Bush's campaign toward the GOP base--evangelical Christians--not the median voter. [Am I wrong about when this trend started?]
The fallout of this development is that politicians nowadays spend much time and effort striving to portray the descriptive status of their position as weak ("Conservatives are hijacking the country") in an effort to increase the urgency of their cause in the eyes of their base. Evangelical Christians are more likely to turn out on election day, for example, if they believe that liberal moral relativists are using the legislative process to shove gay marriage down the nation's throat.
But the descriptive status of a position is logically irrelevant to the normative merits of that position. Thus, this development leads to a lot of what I think is wasted talk. (Of course, it's not wasted from the perspective of politicians who enjoy the benefits of an energized base.)
A more problematic result of this development, I think, is that politicians are less willing to engage the arguments of the other side. When both parties were going for the median voter, they had to argue from within the same set of value preferences. So, for example, if gas prices were the most important issue to the median voter, each candidates had to explain why her policy proposals would lead to lower gas prices relative to the other's policy proposals. But now that politicians cater to their bases, they can refuse to engage their opponents on important issues. Gas prices? Let's talk about gay marriage instead. Fighting terror? Let's talk about government corruption instead.
I suppose you could argue that the glass is half full; nowadays, we have a robust public debate about which set of value preferences we should adopt. [Though I'm not entirely convinced that, in theory, we can have a meaningful debate about such different values; how the hell do you argue that equality is better than freedom? But see Noah Feldman, Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem--And What We Should Do about It (2005).] But this argument implicitly adopts the first assumption that most theories of democracy make: that people are persuadable. I think an enormous majority of people on both ends of the political spectrum are probably unpersuadable.
Thoughts? Comments?
Most conceptions of democracy make some strong assumptions about who people are. They're supposedly both disinterested--able to be persuaded by arguments for policies against their individual best interests--and interested--actively engaged and voting in every election. These assumptions lead to the median voter theory: in a pairwise election, the candidate who can capture the median voter will win. Politicians who bought into this theory tailored their platforms to the median voter.
But clearly the second assumption is too strong. People don't care enough to vote in every election. And others care, but they express their dissatisfaction with a candidate not by voting for the other party, but by not voting at all. George W. Bush and Karl Rove realized this fact in 2000 and capitalized. They centered Bush's campaign toward the GOP base--evangelical Christians--not the median voter. [Am I wrong about when this trend started?]
The fallout of this development is that politicians nowadays spend much time and effort striving to portray the descriptive status of their position as weak ("Conservatives are hijacking the country") in an effort to increase the urgency of their cause in the eyes of their base. Evangelical Christians are more likely to turn out on election day, for example, if they believe that liberal moral relativists are using the legislative process to shove gay marriage down the nation's throat.
But the descriptive status of a position is logically irrelevant to the normative merits of that position. Thus, this development leads to a lot of what I think is wasted talk. (Of course, it's not wasted from the perspective of politicians who enjoy the benefits of an energized base.)
A more problematic result of this development, I think, is that politicians are less willing to engage the arguments of the other side. When both parties were going for the median voter, they had to argue from within the same set of value preferences. So, for example, if gas prices were the most important issue to the median voter, each candidates had to explain why her policy proposals would lead to lower gas prices relative to the other's policy proposals. But now that politicians cater to their bases, they can refuse to engage their opponents on important issues. Gas prices? Let's talk about gay marriage instead. Fighting terror? Let's talk about government corruption instead.
I suppose you could argue that the glass is half full; nowadays, we have a robust public debate about which set of value preferences we should adopt. [Though I'm not entirely convinced that, in theory, we can have a meaningful debate about such different values; how the hell do you argue that equality is better than freedom? But see Noah Feldman, Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem--And What We Should Do about It (2005).] But this argument implicitly adopts the first assumption that most theories of democracy make: that people are persuadable. I think an enormous majority of people on both ends of the political spectrum are probably unpersuadable.
Thoughts? Comments?
posted by Garrett at 10:53 PM
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