Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Politics as Popularity Contest

Michael, I tend to agree with this. I don't know i...

2008-09-11T11:47:16.076-04:00

Michael, I tend to agree with this. I don't know if its lack of the relevant concept that's to blame, but whatever the cause, most folks don't seem to respond reasons. But does that mean they want to be manipulated?

Sorry, I thought that you asked if that was what I...

2008-09-09T23:25:09.249-04:00

Sorry, I thought that you asked if that was what I meant. I mean that they don't have a concept of "justified belief". They are looking for politicians who make them feel X and don't have a concept that this feeling might be inappropriate or implicitly "wrong".

Michael, I asked for a clarification or elucidatio...

2008-09-09T10:55:14.442-04:00

Michael, I asked for a clarification or elucidation of a claim and your reply is "yes"?

Colin: Yes.

2008-09-07T22:46:20.345-04:00

Colin: Yes.

Michael - I expect voters want to feel motivated o...

2008-09-07T16:17:50.196-04:00

Michael - I expect voters want to feel motivated or emotionally uplifted by a leader who will both promote good things and make them feel good about it. (I think Obama can do this at his best. But not, admittedly, when he starts harping on about the alleged evils of outsourcing, etc.)

But I very much doubt that voters want to be lied or insincerely pandered to. (Maybe some would like to be sincerely pandered to, but I wonder whether that's just due to a lazy assumption that their prior views are correct, and does not really reflect their fundamental preferences.) I'm also skeptical that their preference would allow being manipulated to bad ends. Nobody's pining for Hitler. Or if they really are indifferent to the normative quality of their politics then I think that's even more contemptible, though for a different reason.

'maybe Democracy with general suffrage OR the involuntary "education" of the general populace can survive but not both as the latter creates so much resentment as to undermine the former'

That's an interesting suggestion. I do think we should be looking at institutional changes that could improve the quality of democracy, and education reform is surely right up there.

Robin: no more partisan than the truth, I hope. Do...

2008-09-07T15:26:07.423-04:00

Robin: no more partisan than the truth, I hope. Do you think I made any objectionable claims?

You are pretty partisan here.

2008-09-07T15:08:17.653-04:00

You are pretty partisan here.

Michael, what do you mean when you say that voters...

2008-09-07T08:59:50.358-04:00

Michael, what do you mean when you say that voters want to be manipulated (not argued to) and consider this to be respectful of their preferences?

Richard, it seems to me that you are contemptuous ...

2008-09-07T01:29:27.534-04:00

Richard, it seems to me that you are contemptuous of voters because you consider manipulation to be contemptuous even though voters want to be manipulated. I don't consider argument aimed at you contemptuous even though you want to be argued to, but typical voters would see it as contemptuous to argue with them and as respectful to manipulate them (and the latter would be respectful of their preferences while the former would not).

Anyway, if the experience of high school makes voters more afraid of aloof valedictorians looking down on them than of bad policy then maybe Democracy with general suffrage OR the involuntary "education" of the general populace can survive but not both as the latter creates so much resentment as to undermine the former.

I'm not sure I agree with much of the argument in ...

2008-09-06T18:12:28.671-04:00

I'm not sure I agree with much of the argument in the post. We should want a regular Joe to be president; some of our best Presidents, Democrat and Republican, have been precisely that: regular Joes who got diverted into politics at some point. It makes perfect sense in a democracy to want to be governed by someone in some basic sense like oneself. It's reasonable for people to worry about the fact that McCain has so many houses he can't keep count and has never had to work a day in his life, for instance; it was similarly reasonable, in the past, for people to worry about any links between Kerry and Teresa Heinz's apparent cluelessness about people who did not have massive millions. People who worry about "liberal elites" don't think such people are really smarter (in any relevant way) than everyone else; they think that the "liberal elites" think themselves smarter but lack common sense and sympathy with the people they are governing, and are therefore extraordinarily dangerous if given power. And one has only to think of the Clintons to remember that Republicans don't have a monopoly on happy lying and manipulating.

I do agree, though, that there is a danger in 'politics as popularity contest'. In principle, the Electoral College was supposed to minimize the influence of the "low arts of popularity," as Hamilton called them, but the past two hundred years has seen the increasing marginalization of the Electoral College in our election process and the swift inflation of the importance of extraconstitutional party systems, so that our current system has no serious safeguards whatsoever against it -- which means that any election will inevitably become precisely a popularity contest.

I wonder whether Republicans (or those who would v...

2008-09-06T15:35:00.760-04:00

I wonder whether Republicans (or those who would vote for them) really do, in general, worry about "liberal elites" looking down upon them. This is part of one Republican narrative, but it strikes me as a much less influential narrative than others, e.g. Giulliani hit a chord when he charged the Democrats with being unwilling to even say the word "terrorism" let alone having the guts to confront it! The whole process is sickening and the more I watch the polls bounce just because McCain chose Palin as his running mate the more I realize that the election will not, in any significance measure, be decided by the issues. Why don't people care about policy? Maybe its just too boring or too difficult to get their heads around, or maybe they were never taught how to think critically about these issues. I don't know what the answer is, but I feel despondent.