Joho the Blog
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November 11, 2006
Aldon Hynes addresses an important question in his response to the so-true-it's-a-parody Washington Post op-ed by Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu:
And, frequently: Be afraid. (Then, of course, there are the weird Cruz Bustamante ads that touted him for California Insurance Commissioner because he lost weight, the subtext of which seems to have been "I am totally freaking nuts.") So, what was the subtext of the Deval PAtrick TV ads? (I hope his campaign keeps them up. And adds important metadata, such as when they ran.) Take the first one and the last one. Both are explicitly about hope. Neither says a single word about policy. All show a confident, likable man in a rush of admirers. The ads say that the election is not about issues. The ads show people how good it feels to place your trust in someone, as if you were a better person for doing so. The last one, shown when Patrick was virtually assured to victory, seems to me to be about governance: Once he's elected, we have a chance to end the alienation we citizens have felt; the Democratic party has been corrupt with complacency, and has been more for the party functionaries than for us. All of them seem to say: Feel good because you support this candidate. I'm not saying these are good subtexts, although I prefer trust and hope to "Shut up and cower," for trust and hope are both requirements for democracy to work. But "Trust me, I'm likable," and "We'll assume agreement on the issues," are not exactly where we want the democratic debate to go. On the other hand, the problem is probably more with campaigning through 30-second spots where there's only enough time for direct appeals to the lizard portion of the brain or to the heart. [Tags: politics marketing deval_patrick aldon_hynes zephyr_teachout tim_woo ] Posted
by D. Weinberger at November 11, 2006 01:27 PM
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Comments
David,
Hi!
Some random, somewhat related thoughts --
I've been thinking alot about how we should elect people, and on what basis -- and I'm increasingly thinking that the best way to develop competence at selecting representatives is by engaging ourselves in politics. If I'd never been to a soccer game, and never played soccer, I might well vote on a soccer coach based on likability -- but if I've actually had some experience, I'll be a better judge. I'm recently thinking that the representaive system can only work if built on a system of at least slightly engaged citizens -- such that we might be able to bring real competenece and judgment to bear when making decisions.
Posted by: Zephyr | November 13, 2006 01:09 PM
The target audience of the "We think you're stupid" ads may read their message as "Let us take care of government, so that you don't have to -- you have better things to do." Most citizens once expected to do most of the sewing, cooking, carpentry, mechanics, tax and policy analysis themselves. No longer, it seems. "Don't be like those freaks and hobbyists who worry about government -- leave it to the professionals!"
Posted by: johne | November 13, 2006 03:54 PM
David,
I haven't seen the spots to the recent Congress elections, though they might have interested me.
All I perceived from second order sources was, that it was a very brutal campaign.
My sorrow, about campaigning too brutal or at all hard and brutal, is, that people are angst driven in the end when they take their choice. And that is, what will be succeeded in the politics in the aftermath of elections. I think, that democracies all over the world have to learn, that making politics these days is a complex thing. But in driving angsts and competing by whatever unfair and personal means, there is a price to pay.
The price, that everybody pays for this, is, that the real political decisions are delayed. Not without victums and suffering in before. And the price that everybody pays in the end becomes higher and higher. But in the meantime, decisionmaking, that decisionmaking, that politicians are voted for, doesn't take place.
Democracies all over the world lose trust and standing by this second class entertainment.
In the end there are no real winners. And that's not the sense of politics, unless politicians just want to have the advantages of their mandats.
Posted by: Carsten Boettjer | November 14, 2006 01:22 AM