I first got wind of David Broder’s recent column in the Washington Post by reading this post from Mark Daniels at The Moderate Voice. In the column Mr. Broder points approvingly to the research of Democratic pollster Peter Hart which says that what the American electorate wants in a presidential candidate are transparency, authenticity, and unity. Rev. Daniels nods approvingly at the column; commenters to his post make the appropriate affirmative remarks and tug their forelocks.
To which I respond with all due respect to all of those involved: poppycock.
When somebody trades one thing for another we don’t generally say that they preferred the thing surrendered for the thing received—we say the reverse. They traded because they wanted the thing they got more under the circumstances. For decades, maybe generations, possibly since the beginning of the Republic voters have been voting for partisan advantage. In recent decades as the Republican Party has become more and more socially conservative and the Democratic Party left-leaning this has been ideological advantage as well as partisan advantage. I’m not prepared (nor interested) in debating whether this trend is the Democrats’ response to the rising power of the religious right in the Republican Party or the Republicans’ response to the increasing influence of interest group politics in the Democratic Party. I don’t care who started it. That it is so is manifestly true.
I conclude from this behavior that people like to win. And that they like the advantages that victory brings along with it. I can’t conclude from this behavior that people prefer transparency, authenticity, and unity to their side winning—quite the reverse. That people don’t like their side after they’ve surrendered transparency, authenticity, and unity is just grousing. As a friend of mine’s mother puts it, you slept in your bed now make it.
Look at little more closely at Americans’ voting behavior. Something between one half and one third of the electorate don’t bother to vote at all and moreover, a minority of registered voters vote in primaries, the elections that really decide who’ll be on the ballot. There are all sorts of ways to interpret this behavior including that they’re satisfied with the way things are, they don’t give a damn what the results are, or that they’ve despaired at the process. The objective reality is that they prefer the outcome as it turns out without them to whatever it would have been with their participation. To believe otherwise is to believe that people select the less preferred alternative to the more preferred. Neither Jesus of Nazareth nor Satan are on the ballot. We don’t have the choice between ultimate good and ultimate evil only between lesser evils or lesser goods if you’d prefer.
But I think there’s something else at work, too.
If there’s one thing that Americans know it’s that the path to success lies in giving the expected answer to any question. For their entire lives they’ve given the expected answer to their parents, their playmates, their teachers, their spouses, their children, and their bosses. Should we be surprised that they give the answer that they think is expected to pollsters? Or that the winning presidential candidates are those who throughout their careers have been giving the expected answer at every rung of the ladder of success.? This is not the fabric from which authenticity is made. It is the stuff from which answers of the “We need a policy which is hard but soft; unyielding yet flexible; decisive but not premature” and other similar meaningless inane Rorschach tests are made. The answers that alienate noone and everyone. This is not the stuff of which unity or transparency is made.
But it does handily explain why Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney lead in the polls. If authenticity were the highest value, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich would decisively lead the polls. They’re definitely authentic. Authentic what I’m not so sure.
You can believe that the preference polls and wrong and Mr. Hart’s work is right. You can believe that the preference polls are right and Mr. Hart’s work is wrong. You can believe that both the candidate preference polls and Mr. Hart’s work are right and the people are stupid or insane or both.
Or you can believe as I do that voters mostly want their side to win and that transparency, authenticity, and unity are significantly lower values. But that they do like to kvetch.
How can this be changed? First, get out there and vote, particularly in primary elections. Second, don’t vote strategically, i.e. for the most electable candidate whatever that means. Vote your heart.
Could part of the dissonance you identify be the result of a severe lack of choice in candidates?
My take on that, Andy, is that the foreseeable consequence of the process is a lack of candidates.
Actually, I think that it goes way deeper than that. There are, I think, two different takes on what it means to be free. The Founders’ conception, which is shared by maybe a third (probably less) of our society is that to be free is to be able to do whatever one wills, so long as one does not infringe the rights of others: liberty, happiness and security in that order. Another conception, likely shared by the overwhelming majority of Americans, given their behavior and pronouncements, is that promulgated by FDR with the Four Freedoms (of speech, of worship, from want, from fear): security, happiness and liberty, in that order.
The former group are willing to bear the costs and insecurities of being responsible for themselves, while the latter want to be troubled as little as possible while going about entertaining themselves. For the former group, it would be anathema to, say, give control of health care to the government. For the latter group, some would be fine to give control of health care to the government, as it would save them the trouble of providing it on their own (and that is a higher value to them than the inevitably-lower quality of care provided is a detriment), and others would oppose giving government control of health care on what amounts to partisan grounds. Essentially, the former group are somewhat idealistic, while the latter group are entirely practical.
But here’s the rub: we’ve all been brought up by schooling and culture to regard ourselves in the first group, so that we see ourselves as free and responsible, even while we are casually giving the government the power to be our master in many, many spheres. We talk like free people, even if we’re not. So when asked what they want in a candidate, most would answer as if they are in the former group. But when it comes to voting, they vote as they truly desire; that is, they vote for the candidate who promises them everything in the blandest and least offensive possible terms and, above all, with no effort on their part. They are seeking candidates who offer them security and happiness. Transparency, authenticity and unity simply don’t enter into it, and where they are brought up as reasons for choosing the candidate the person voted for, they are generally rationalizations.