The Ignorant American Voter

JohnE of Maine

To JohnE of Maine: You mean John McCain is counting on everyone of the stupid voters as he reads his cue cards as well as his avoidance of calling himself a republican or connecting him with BUSH---these last 8 years have just troubled me--yes the middle of America has stupid voters! I think people should not be allowed to vote unless they know what policies each politician holds and what is important to them. If there is incongruencies, the vote is discounted. I'm sick of hearing because he/she is more attractive or not an elitist that the politician gets the vote...agh! Why is it so hard for people (not all) to think. This country has become so lazy--let's see other than lack of critical thinking we are now seeing an increase in the obesity rates...

Well, Rick Shenkman (“5 Myths About Those Civic-minded, Deeply Informed Voters”) this Rush Limbaugh listener is “better educated and more knowledgeable about politics and social issues” than you. Unlike you, I know the nuclear age was ushered in during the 1950’s with the advent of the thermonuclear device commonly referred to as the hydrogen bomb, a fusion device. Since then many nations have tested fusion bombs.

The weapon righteously detonated by the United States in 1945 was the atomic bomb, a fission device. Pop culturalists incorrectly lump fusion and fission devices. Therefore the correct answer to the question of which country has used a nuclear device in war is “None” and you, sir, have made a very elementary error.

misinformation

"They are susceptible to manipulation and being conned, and once we admit that, we have to figure out how we can have a country of smarter voters."

What is wrong with this statement? Why are the American voters being manipulated and conned? It seems that the American voter is rarely given the truth. This seems to be more the fault of the media and the political machine than the ignorance of voters. Why are we given misinformation?

Term Limits

How about term limits. That would surely get these good for nothing politicans out of office after 2 terms.

Smarter voters

" . . . we have to figure out how we can have a country of smarter voters." One way is for candidates to stop spinning their message and start telling the truth. One of the problems with that approach is that the truth is complicated and nuanced and takes time to explain while Americans seem capable only of handling 30 second sound bites.

American lies

"First, everyone in the world believed the Iraqis had WMDs. "

I had to jump on this, as a student I worked in the weekends in a hotel around 2002-2003 and was amazed by the sheer stupidity and ignorance of all American Businessmen staying there, when I was overhearing their conversations and speaking about how Iraq had WMD's and ties to Al Qaeda. Actually we were joking with British and German customers at how ignorant and out of touch they were.

Coming from Europe I can assert that NO ONE ever believed there were WMD in Iraq, every credible information from Inspectors or middle east experts said that Saddam had WMD AGES ago, but not anymore, and that no proof whatsoever asserted he had still WMD. In Brittain the report asserting that evidence was never taken serious, and many proofs showing the contrary were reported in the British press, contrary to the cleaned-up partiotic-only reporting in US media.

Whenever European media reported about how the White House came up with their phony child drawings about Saddam super secret WMD program, it would be followed by a disgrunted CIA expert or UN inspector, claiming the evidence seemed fake and highly dubious, and that he only evidence they had found , showed the contrary: Saddam had no WMD.

So all over the world EXCEPT in USA everyone was well aware the WMD were a bogus reason, and the only reason to invade Iraq was the Oil.

You can spin falsheoods about your USA history, but don't try to make the rest of the world partisan in your ignorance and disdain for facts.

Mr Shenkman unfortunately uses conventional thinking

The more compelling question is how our country continues to move forward when so many have minimal knowledge of what we think people should know. In fact, people rely on a mix of shortcut sources to assess politics, economics, parenting, health, etc. rather than learn the facts themselves. These sources, whether family members, friends, media members, columnist, whoever are constantly tested based on personal experience. If a trusted friend says the country is moving into recession and suddenly the person loses his job due to layoffs, his friend will become a more credible source.

And things constantly change: One minute the Iraq war is an outlet for 9/11 patriotism, when Americans incur casualties it becomes an anti war politcal tool, then when victory is on the horizon a lesson in persistence and discipline. But always assessed based on the feelings we feel at the time.

How wrong is this? Let me count the ways...

I haven't read Dr Shenkman's book, but this interview makes him look like whiny. If I read this correctly, America worked better when party machines and unions drove people to the polls and made them vote the way Dr Shenkman wants them to. Also, he suggests that Americans should vote strictly on self-interest. Neither statement really proves his belief that America is collapsing.

I'm certainly no defender of contemporary public education, but he presents no evidence to show that modern Americans are less knowledgeable than previous generations. In fact, his solution to give college students more government "education" misses the vast majority of Americans who will not go to college. A better solution would be to actually teach fact-based civics in junior and high schools. That, along with education in critical reading, would build a citizenry who could separate truth from opinion.

He makes two errors about the Iraq invasion. First, everyone in the world believed the Iraqis had WMDs. Were we the victims of an incredible disinformation campaign? Perhaps, but so was everyone outside Iraq. If we were wrong, it wasn't because American voters were stupid. Second, he seems to think US policy should be put up to a vote to the rest of the world. France and Russia were making fortunes selling weapons to Iraq, counter to all the UN resolutions. Why should the US care what they, or Zimbabwe, think about how we manage our foreign policy?

Finally, Dr Shenkman ignores a wonderful aspect of this entire issue. The electoral process is self-selecting. The people woefully ignorant of the political process are probably the same ones who can't or won't vote. The people who are knowledgeable are probably also the ones who actually vote. In this case, more is not necessarily better.

Not Quite the Whole Story

It was an interesting coincidence that the day I finished reading a new book a publisher had sent me gratis, I picked up this week’s copy of USNWR and found an article summarizing that book’s argument with an interview from the author. Such serendipity demands affirmation, and so I comment.

I found Mr. Shenkman’s book engaging, quite succinct and convincing in its general parameters. He documents well the failures in our society reflected in the public’s selected awareness of politics. These include the failures of an educational system to teach, and students to learn, fundamental civics and how our republic functions. One must assume this also includes the history of our civic institutions and a wide range of current events beyond Lindsey and Britney.

A second factor he cites is the role of the media in all this – both print media and television. We may be able to correct the educational deficiencies, but we’ll have to learn how best to manage the effects of media technology and entertainment because it’s not going back in Pandora’s box. Media is entertainment is drama is simple conflict. If news people want to be taken for something of greater consequence they must learn to distinguish between reporting the facts and interpreting events. The first is reportage, the second is commentary.

However, I do believe Mr. Shenkman’s story then begins to veer off track. First off, his example of the public’s knowledge of the Iraq war as a sign of stupidity is fatuous. I daresay none of us know very well what is going on in the Middle East beyond what we see on TV and read in the headline news. Our foreign policy is run by a small cadre of Washington elites that include the Department of State, the DoD, the military corps, and the presidency and cabinet, with oversight by both houses of Congress. Even well educated political professionals must evaluate this information against their pre-ordained mental frameworks.

What Mr. Shenkman attributes to stupidity on WMDs is in fact a loss of confidence and trust in the media and the political establishment. Because both parties have politicized Iraq, the public has decided to believe what confirms prior beliefs and disbelieve whatever contradicts those priors. So, anti-war groups refuse to believe reports from General Petraeus or the administration and hawks refuse to give credence to reports from the NY Times, Washington Democrats or the Iraq Survey Group. This loss of trust is not stupidity; for the average voter it’s a lesson well learned.

Mr. Shenkman should be castigating a news media that has politicized reporting and misinformed to the point where everybody chooses to believe whatever they want. The tarnished reputation of the NY Times is the most serious casualty here. Next, Mr. Shenkman should train his sights on the educational establishment that has elevated political correctness over truth and self-criticism. We have let ourselves become defined by our racial, ethnic and sexual identities and this has poisoned our politics. The major political parties have been front and center on this and the Democrats can shoulder much of the blame by stitching together a coalition based on race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. This has yielded the red vs. blue subculture nonsense that now defines our politics. If we vote our immutable identities, how can we possibly compromise?

There is no indication in the current election that the voters are ready to discard this self-defeating calculus. In fact, Democratic primary voters divided themselves up, with the eager prompting of both Clinton and Obama, into divided camps of red v. blue conflict with nary a Republican operative in sight. It was working class whites, woemn and Hispanics against blacks, academic and urban elites. In this sense, we voters are stupid to allow our identities to cast our votes. This is the change we demand, one that Senator Obama is not promising.

My last quibble is with Mr. Shenkman’s idea that to correct our politics we must strengthen labor unions. Huh? In an information economy that is becoming highly entrepreneurial and fluid, it makes absolutely no sense to focus on peak labor organizations. I can only think this is nostalgia for a New Deal past talking. Both manufacturing’s share of national employment and union participation rates are approaching low teens as a percentage of the labor force. Why would we focus our national attention on such a rapidly shrinking share of the population?

Unions have a positive role, but in developed countries this role should be focused on securing equity participation for its members, not restricting the supply of labor to increase bargaining power. Let organization drives and the empowerment of labor versus capital migrate to developing countries, but foreign worker unionization can hardly be a high priority for smart American voters.

I found it unfortunate that Mr. Shenkman’s argument is a bit tainted by a left liberal bias because it will diminish serious consideration by those who disagree. This does not mean I believe Mr. Shenkman is a rank partisan or that he is trying to slip a liberal screed by us. I take Mr. Shenkman at his word concerning objective intent, but we should recognize that those of us who live in professional, academic and urban enclaves tend to view the world through a narrow self-referential prism. Toleration, diversity, negotiation, privacy, civil rights, government regulation, etc. all appear inherent to our chosen lifestyle preferences and we view those ideals as the American norm. Thus, they appear eminently reasonable and centrist, certainly not biased. With this mindset liberals appear mainstream, conservatives appear out-of-sync, and the NY Times appears as the epitome of right reason.

However, US electoral politics have been divided up according to rural, suburban and urban interests and the parties have targeted their appeals to these different segments. I would recommend a book by Bill Bishop titled The Big Sort that explains how this political geography has happened. It is important for any serious student of American politics to understand the grassroots details of American voting patterns and the complexion of political tradition and not rely on the NY Times or Fox News to interpret it.

Instead of liberal-conservative, Democrat-Republican, red-blue, I prefer to classify the dominant political ideology in America as what I would call “tolerant traditionalism.” It’s a less charged conceptualization that captures the vast crossover territory between the two extremes and thus becomes more useful to understanding our varied political preferences.

Another caveat is that opinion polls and sampling never reveal a truth as accurate as what people do, rather than say. Voting is hard data, polling is soft data; when they disagree the hard data wins. As a political scientist and economist I deal mostly with hard data and discuss my findings at my website and blog:

www.redstatebluestatemovie.com

www.purplenationblog.com

Finding the truth

I spend way too much time researching information on the internet rather than depending upon sound bites from the media. Often I feel I have somewhat of a feel for the truth, yet often I feel like I am playing that old TV game "Who Do You Trust?" Most people do not have the kind of time I have spent seeking dependable information in the last couple of years. If I am concerned with the veracity of sources, how can most voting Americans figure it out?