I guess this new book is a must-read

Bill Clinton marked up this book (The Political Brain) last week, then gave the result to Hillary.  Not only that, but every other Democrat in the Senate has received a copy.  Because the author's consulting firm advises Democratic leaders and candidates, I bet lots of Republicans are reading it, too—for the same reason Patton read Rommel's book.  (Not sure if Libertarians care about the book's message that emotion matters and logic doesn't—because their track record suggests to me they'd rather be right than elected.) 

Anyway, not wanting to cede an advantage to the politicians, I ordered it from Amazon immediately after I read the review in The Week.  Here's an excerpt from that review: 

Late last month, every Democrat in the U.S. Senate received a copy of Drew Westen's new book.  By the following weekend, former President Bill Clinton had marked up a copy for his wife, Hillary.  "To say I think it's a very important book is an understatement," he announced.

The book's fundamental message is that voters base their decisions on the following, in this order: (1) feelings about the parties; (2) feelings about the candidates; and—if they haven't made up their mind after those two—(3) feelings about the candidates' policy positions.   

Feelings, feelings, feelings.  Even the third priority is feelings (and trust, or lack of trust) about somebody else's presumed analysis of policy options. 

Okay, I'll read the book too, even though my personal preference is understanding science, technology, and economics—where feelings seldom contribute to (and frequently get in the way of) the scientific method for seeking truth.  As Nobel laureate Richard P. Feynman famously said:

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. 

Technology is the offspring of science, and yes, I do prefer both of those to politics.  But science, I guess, includes "political science"—which Dr. Feynman must have been excluding when he said that, because political science is all about public relations.  So if I'm going to understand the so-called science of how politicians get themselves elected and reelected, I guess this book is a must-read. 

Wish me luck.

Comments

[Scott B]

Steve:
To read that piece of trash, you're going to need a lot of luck. Politics is about power and how to attain and retain it. It is salesmanship, spin, and BS. Unfortunately, politics trumps science AND economics and the Clintons are politicians first and last. Neither one understands the first thing about science and economics but the personality cult around them insulates them from the consequences of their ignorance.
Keep up your posts. They make for very informative reading.

Scott B.

[Bob]

How are you feeling today, Steve? ;>)

While you had a career in capital budgeting, your colleagues in marketing and sales knew all about how emotion moves products. One would be hard pressed to name an activity that is not the result of satisfying or allying a human emotion. Most of what we do is to increase pleasure or avoid pain.

In terms of politicians, all of them, I usually go with the one that will cause the least pain.

Maybe there should be a "Draft Mr. Spock" campaign.

[Grodge]

If the Clintons are as cynical and coniving as the Repubs imply, then I would think Bill just floated this meme out there as a diversion...

Hmmmm, I wonder what book he and Hillary are REALLY reading?

Omigosh, we better find out!

[Mike H]

Yeah, this is unfortunate, our emotions are greatly stifling our potential. It's even worse when people see it as a good thing or an unavoidable thing, but lets start looking at something more optimistic. Namely, the good GDP number. I assume Steve will bring out his update of that shortly.

[Mike]

Emotions are important, and, I think, they are often unfairly underrated. I'll even go further out on the limb and suggest we might be safer with an electorate that decides on its gut rather than with it's head. As we all know, some of the greatest disasters in history have been caused by the unintended results of technocratic good intentions.

An emotionally-driven electorate is undisciplined, and typically changes its mind every few years. This means that running the country is a lot like herding cats, and it's hard to focus on any big plans and actually see them to completion. Thank goodness! May the heavens protect us from any disciplined government that can follow through on its glorious and carefully engineered plans.

Our populist, illogical system has worked pretty darn well for an awfully long time. This may be one of those fields in which logic is overrated.

[Mike H]

Mike:
Being logical doesn't mean implementing a well executed government controlled central plan. It means trusting the data backed results that say there is an optimal amount of tax revenues as a percent of GDP, and there are some things the government can do with that income to nudge the economy in the right direction, all to maximize growth.

It would be far more efficient to agree on a simpler revenue-neutral tax code and a few things the government could do that the private sector can't handle than to have to worry about 4-8 years down the road when rules can change drastically because the electorate changes how it feels from time to time. If anything, seeing this logic through would reduce the chances of what you are worried about.

[Grodge]

But what if your "feeling" about party and candidate is based on rational observations. And what if your "feeling" is that one candidate is more rational and relies less on "feeling"?

It was Bush after all who proudly called himself a "gut player" and Clinton who is famous for being more cerebral and pulling "all-nighters" to understand a problem.

Republicans have 3 of 10 candidates who do not understand evolutionary science and the party goes to great lengths to appeal to the "people of faith", whatever that means.

So, I guess my "feeling" is that the Democratic party relies less on "feelings" when it comes to governing on important issues. But my "feeling" is informed on real life experience.

I'll have to read the book.

[Fat Man]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/arts/10west.html
"Counseling Democrats to Go for the Gut" by Patricia Cohen in NYTimes on July 10, 2007:

Nearly every campaign season there is someone with “the big idea” ... This year, among Democrats, one such contender is Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University ... Dr. Westen takes the unlikely position that the Democratic Party should, for the most part, forget about issues, policies, even facts, and instead focus on feelings. ...

Writing of the 2000 presidential debate, Dr. Westen says that instead of saying he was “not going to respond in kind” to Mr. Bush’s attacks on his credibility and character, Vice President Gore should have said that he was going to teach his opponent “a few old-fashioned lessons about character,” mentioning Mr. Bush’s drunk-driving incidents, business practices and Vietnam-era Air National Guard service, using the words “coward,” “drunk,” “crooked” and “disgrace.”

Writing that imaginary speech and others like it must have had Dr. Westen’s amygdala flashing like a pinball jackpot. Ultimately what led Dr. Westen to write about others’ political passion was his own. “I couldn’t stand where the country was going,” he said. ...

====================

Basically this is more of the same Democrat stuff: "The Republicans have embraced the dark side and taken control of Kansas with their evil Rovian mind rays. We must fight back using the tools of our superior science."

Balderdash.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36777-2003Aug8.html
George Will wrote: "Professors have reasons for their beliefs. Other people, particularly conservatives, have social and psychological explanations for their beliefs."

[JorgXMcKie]

Emotions (or 'feelings') are frequently amalgamations of the outcomes of previous decisions. They are shortcuts, more for avoiding bad decisions (the ones we made in the past that 'hurt' us) than choosing good ones.

I would never advise my students or anyone to try to make only 'logical' decisions with no recourse to emotion. Very few, if any, humans are intellectually equipped to make good, logic-driven only decisions because we simple can't contain and manipulate all the necessary data. So, we have to take shortcuts. Emotion helps us choose and sort other shortcuts in addition to being a shortcut itself.

And apparently all the Dem candidates believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming despite there being on elaborate computer models as 'proof'. That is way more emotional than logical.

Gore's real problem is/was that he appears to be like Mr. Spock (i.e. without emotion) while in actuality being grossly driven by emotion. The disjunct makes him hard to trust for some of us.

[Aaron]

Isn't this issue already covered by the “miracle of aggregation” in that the uninformed voters cancel each other out to leave a result based more on informed choice?

I'd be interested to see an analysis of this book with The Myth of the Rational Voter.
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9340166

By the way the reviews of this book are very interesting. Many of the comments claim that the Democrats already have the most rational policies and that they have only been losing due to "emotional" voters who vote GOP despite it being "irrational." I seriously doubt that.

[Jason]

The frightening thing isn't so much that the populace use emotion to help make decisions - it's that politicians are studying ways to turn that to their benefit (which isn't anything new). Sure, it's what marketers have been doing for years, but usually word gets out if a product isn't all that we hoped for, and we have recourse for false advertising. If a politican is elected, there aren't as many protections.

I'm already disappointed in how information about candidates is controlled. I've heard a candidate say something, then see it taken out of context some three weeks later. It's extremely difficult to make a logical, "scientific" decision on a candidate when we're only hearing or reading what they or someone else wants us to notice.