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August 10, 2007
My Commenters Are Smarter Than Me: Election Strategies Edition
DAS, commenting on the My Election Choices quotes, succinctly articulates what I've been trying to get at with my constant textual analyses of the Clinton/Obama spats:
A few of the candidates (I've not checked which ... but I suspect it's Romney, Clinton and Giuliani) were making quotes that were clearly designed to answer "why should a liberal vote for me, a Republican" or "why should a conservative vote for me, a Democrat" or "why should a conservative vote for me, a more moderate Republican" or even "why should a liberal vote for me, a moderate Democrat".
Right, and this is why it's not necessarily useful to listen to political rhetoric, particularly in a vacuum. A blind test of which statements you agree with may not get you any closer to a candidate who will govern well.
August 10, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Anyone else go on that site just to find themselves agreeing with Kucinich and Gravel more than anyone else? Also, Bill Richardson scored pretty high with me too, again proving that the man is a lot more appealing in the abstract than in the flesh.
Posted by: Philly | Aug 10, 2007 4:36:59 PM
There's also the question of audience here. I'm relatively informed on the issues, and I found that I spent a lot of time half-consciously trying to guess which candidate (or at least which party) made the statement in question. Conversely, I can't really conceive of someone who is ignorant enough of the candidates for this to be a necessary exercise *but* well-versed enough in the issues for it to be a useful one. It seems to me that, except in very academically-oriented subfields, the middle section of the "knowledge of political candidates" and "knowledge of thorny political issues" Venn diagram tends to be, uh, very big.
Posted by: Daniel Munz | Aug 10, 2007 4:42:21 PM
I don't know about getting closer to a candidate who will govern well... I could barely find a statement that was worth agreeing with, a reminder to me that much of this campaign season is about wading through tons and tons of crap looking for something, anything that cuts through the clutter and says something actually worth listening to. Finding out who said what thing I kinda sorta thought wasn't as bad as a lot of the other stuff (the LGBT section in particular is rife with especially useless stuff) only made me realize that I tune a lot of this nonsense out. The notion that they say what they think people want to hear (which I think is what your driving at), is only part of the problem; the other part is very little of this is really what we want to hear anyway. Which is why people like Gravel, Ron Paul and Kucinish have such weird, unsuccessful, yet crucial roles: it's what the guy who has nothing to lose says (remember the occasional sensible thing Carol Mosely Braun threw in last time?) that actually expresses what real people are thinking that really makes them dangerous, and necessary. Some of these politicians really can't re-tailor their message without hearing another politician say something in plain, understandable language. In the end, I think the "My Election Choices" may be one of the more useless approaches I've seen - if these are my choices, we need another election.
Posted by: weboy | Aug 10, 2007 4:48:49 PM
Yeah, this is a creative but astonishingly useless concept. One of the quotes is "Any of my appointments to the high court would necessarily reflect my thinking. I don't know how it could be otherwise." Well, gosh, what you think of that statement probably has a lot to do with who's saying it!
Other statements are assertions of fact rather than policy statements. "Our health care system is making our businesses non-competitive in the global economy. Costs have skyrocketed because the party paying for the health care – the employer – and the party using the health care – the employee – are not the same." So if you agree with that, you ought to support the candidate who said it? What if they said "the sky is blue"?
Another major problem is that all politicians try to co-opt the more successful messages of the other side. Republicans often try to borrow the more compassionate-sounding slogans of the Democrats on social issues. Conversely, Democrats often work "free market" into their proposals even as they describe something that would create new restrictions on the free market. So you have to be really good at picking apart the rhetoric to get what they're really saying.
On the other hand, you can learn a lot by looking at the overall results and seeing which sound bites appeal to the most people.
Posted by: Steve | Aug 10, 2007 6:23:04 PM
"Conversely, I can't really conceive of someone who is ignorant enough of the candidates for this to be a necessary exercise *but* well-versed enough in the issues for it to be a useful one."
I found it very useful (although "necessary" is a bit strong). Perhaps its greatest value is that it presents approximately equal doses of the various candidates, thereby eliminating the bias towards coverage of front-runners that occurs in blogs, newspapers and other media. More generally, I think it provides an excellent opportunity for people to lose some of their wrongheaded views about candidates they support -- see, as reference, two posts from this very blog:
http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/07/the-rationalizi.html
http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/07/voter-behaviors.html
Posted by: JBL | Aug 10, 2007 6:23:42 PM
Jesus. That was depressing. I found my choices to be unerringly accurate with no deviation whatsoever. Literally, candidates 1 through 9 in the exact order of personal preference. Which means I'm listening to waaay too much political rhetoric.
Posted by: Sangfroid826 | Aug 10, 2007 6:46:43 PM
Ezra's original point is valid, except inasmuch as you believe governing well requires enacting policies that you think are a good idea_. Then the rhetoric can be important.
I mean, it is sometimes valid to know why somebody should vote for a given candidate. If Clinton wants to ban flag-burning, invade Iran and threaten foreign leaders she dislikes, it is important to know that. Likewise, if Obama wants to attack Pakistan and enlarge the military, it is relevant.
Some voters actually care about positions, as opposed to, say, the vibes the candidates give off in informercials. Granted we remain a small minority, but we do exist.
Besides, hasn't the Clinton-Obama discussion proved a valuable point: the daylight between them on specific matters is actually far less significant than they've been generally claiming?
Posted by: faux facsimile | Aug 11, 2007 5:13:05 PM
