(cross posted at Daily Kos)
You heard me right. There is no correlation between being smarter than your opponent and actually, you know, winning the election. It is emotions -- not intellect -- that play a crucial role in shaping our values and beliefs.
If you've worked in sales and/or marketing you "get it." And if you sneer at people who do, you're going to lose elections. It's a paradox, I'll admit: intellectually (as backed up by science) we know now that if a message is purely rational, it isn't going to be successful in changing the way people vote. If anything, emotions veto rationality.
Listen to Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation:
A dispassionate mind that makes decisions by weighing the evidence and reasoning to the most valid conclusions bears no relation to how the mind and brain actually work.
If you saw
Hardball the other night you know what I'm talking about. Chris Matthews had on Ann Coulter.
Elizabeth Edwards called in and asked (very politely) that Coulter stop with the insults and trash talk already. It was excruciating. It was like watching a responsible adult having a conversation with a bag of worms. The most revealing moment? When someone in the audience (a shill?) shouted, "Why isn't John Edwards making this call?"
Bingo -- point made: Edwards is a sissy hiding behind his wife's skirt. Fair? Of course not. Effective? Unfortunately, very much so.
Here's another example. Remember this moment from the 2000 campaign?
George W. Bush berated Al Gore during the 2000 presidential debates for alleged funny business in his fund-raising...
Bush said, “You know, going to a Buddhist temple and then claiming it wasn’t a fund-raiser isn’t my view of responsibility.”
It was a direct attack on the honor of a fellow Southerner, and Gore wasn’t taking it. “You have attacked my honor and integrity,” the vice president shot back. “I think it’s time to teach you a few old-fashioned lessons about character. When I enlisted to fight in the Vietnam War, you were talkin’ real tough about Vietnam. But when you got the call, you called your daddy and begged him to pull some strings so you wouldn’t have to go to war. So instead of defending your country with honor, you put some poor Texas millworker’s kid on the front line in your place to get shot at. Where I come from, we call that a coward...”
You don't remember it because Gore never -- unfortunately -- actually said it.
I guess the good news is that Westen has been approached by several unnamed Dem candidates this time around. Honestly, though, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with any Dem who could swing their stick in the way Westen suggests...
...on abortion, for example:
“My opponent puts the rights of rapists above the rights of their victims, guaranteeing every rapist the right to choose the mother of his child. . . My opponent believes that if a 16-year-old girl is molested by her father and becomes pregnant, she should be forced by the government to have his child, and if she doesn’t want to she should be forced by the government to go to the man who raped her and ask for his consent.”
...or gun control:
“My opponent thinks you shouldn’t have to show a photo ID or get a background check to buy a handgun. He thinks anyone who wants an AK-47 should be able to buy one, no questions asked. What’s the point of fighting terrorists abroad if we’re going to arm them over here?”
Quick -- which Dem candidate(s) can talk like this? Now think about which Republican candidate(s) can do it. I'll bet you there are more Republicans on your list than Democrats.
Yes, yes -- I know what you're thinking: this is the difference between Democrats and Republicans. We have a conscience, they don't; we are intellectually more able to find, and explain, the subtle nuances in the issues, they cannot; we're tolerent, they're not; blah blah blah. This is all very true, but it's not relevant, nor even remotely helpful.
Fact is, neuroscientific research (using brain-imaging devices) confirms what we already know (and feel!): that when voters evaluate candidates in a campaign context, it is the "emotion circuits" (not the rational frontal lobes) that are responding most intensely.
Can people rise above that? Perhaps. Can the right candidate make that happen? Not sure. Do we have any proof that it has ever happened before? Sadly, no. In fact, if history has shown us anything it is that all the winning presidential candidates from the last 70 years had an instinctive grasp of Westen's thesis -- especially as compared to their opponents.
This should not be discouraging news. We've got candidates who can do this. But we cannot be complacent or whine about "lowering our standards." We canNOT afford to ignore this advice. Because if we do, we may be watching President-elect Fred Thompson being sworn in on January 20, 2009.
| del.icio.us 
This week, Time Magazine delivers a 
From his lust for 
Fred Thompson
Excellent, outstanding piece by Newsweek's 
Forty years ago, 
That was then, this is now. 
But if he really wants that kind of debate then let the record show that America has already sustained nearly 50 thousand casualties in the various wars and terrorist attacks that have occured on Republican President Bush's watch.
