Candidates Should Treat Voters Like Grown-Ups
When we’ve lost faith in the ability of voters to engage in political debates, then what we’ve really lost faith in is free government.
Source: Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS
We’re a year out from a Presidential election, and at least for those of us working policy and politics, that means it’s debate season. This cycle, we’re all huddling around our TVs and social media feeds to follow the Republican Primary debates, gnawing on popcorn and potato chips -- and perhaps sipping some Coors Light -- as Senators, governors, and entrepreneurs duke it out on stage for the world to see.
What continues to strike me the more I watch these spectacles is the complete lack of sophistication the debaters put on display. You can tell that they have canned responses to most every question that comes their way, and when they’re thrown a curveball, they find a way to turn a question about entitlement reform into their best lines on enforcing immigration law.
They’re coached to hammer in certain words, and not others, because their consultants have told them that saying “careers” rather than “jobs” does better with focus groups. It’s all scripted, and they don’t deviate from the script even when Chris Christie asks them to.
At times, however, some authenticity breaks through. You can see it when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis talks about his leadership of the state of Florida. You can see it when former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley wonks out about healthcare policy. You can see it when South Carolina Senator Tim Scott discusses his work in Congress. But these moments are aberrations from a general trend.
Candidates increasingly treat voters like rats in a vast pharmaceutical trial, testing “messages” and buzzwords to see which chunks of the population they can sway to their side, not through the power of persuasion, but through clever manipulation. Some of the practices employed are mind-boggling. Beyond the use of focus groups, many consultants today will track a sample of voters’ reactions to speeches and debates in live time, seeing which phrases and issues win out, and which fall short.
If you ask many political data gurus and consultants about these methodologies, they’ll shrug and say something like, “The voters are dumb.” Of course, they’re not talking about themselves and their fellow enlightened consultants, but about the vast majority of the American public that they seek to exploit.
Now, if these methodologies were used to help inform candidates and consultants who sought to understand how particular voters might be persuaded to one side of an argument, that would be all well and fine. Unfortunately, it increasingly feels like candidates and consultants are pulling a fast one on voters, not attempting any sort of persuasion, but rather convincing people that candidates believe what they don’t. It’s classic pandering, oiled and greased by the levers of modern technology.
When we’ve lost faith in the ability of voters -- of our fellow citizens; our friends, family, and neighbors -- to engage in political debates, then what we’ve really lost faith in is free government. We’re slowly ceding our belief in the ability of citizens to engage in rational discourse, and to reach informed decisions on issues of public import. This spells disaster for anyone who holds out hope for the promise of a free society, governed by free people.
In 1959, Harry Jaffa stridently reintroduced the Lincoln-Douglas debates to the world, arguing against the academic consensus that these debates were mostly simple sophistry. Far from engaging in base casuistry, Jaffa laid out how both Lincoln and Douglas constructed full-throated arguments on issues including natural rights, democratic sovereignty, and civic equality. One need only read a collection of Lincoln’s speeches and correspondences to be convinced of his genuine interest in persuading his fellow countrymen.
Our politics today is largely stripped bare of this sort of moral argument. Modern “brain trusts” give way to pollsters and conniving political consultants who coach candidates on everything they ought to say, guided more by focus groups and the latest and “greatest” innovations in polling technology than by any sort of conviction. We confuse the useful with the good.
Our time is not entirely destitute. One successful example of moral persuasion in recent years was then-candidate Glenn Youngkin’s focus on the issue of parental rights and school choice. Contrary to popular belief, polling showed that education was a low-priority issue for voters. “The polls kept telling us that education was the seventh or eighth or ninth most important issue,” he recounted.
Nonetheless, he believed that it mattered, and that it was an issue worth campaigning on. Defying internal polling, Youngkin went on to champion education -- an issue Democrats had dominated for decades -- and won, accelerating a nationwide conservative education reform movement. Rather than simply following the polls and pollsters, Youngkin made an argument, and voters were persuaded by it.
A healthier politics does not preclude smart politicking. Lincoln -- an American statesman, if there ever was one -- rose to national prominence and led the nation through the Civil War only because he was also an adept politician. Scanning through his letters and contracts, one is struck by his attention to detail: he penned a contract in May of 1859 with Theodore Canisius, an acquaintance in Springfield, Illinois, that authorized the creation of a Republican newspaper which would be published in the German language.
Understanding that he had to win over German immigrants -- a group already favorable to him because of their general opposition to slavery, but concerned about nativist sentiments expressed by some of his base -- Lincoln paid such close attention to political detail that he personally financed a German-speaking newspaper that would appeal to this important voting bloc. If that isn’t smart politicking, I don’t know what is.
If we still believe that men and women are capable of self governance, we ought to take voters seriously. We should treat them like adults who are capable of being persuaded, and of engaging seriously with moral arguments.
Candidates who take the long bet on America -- on the capability of Americans to govern themselves, and to take issues seriously -- shouldn’t be surprised when their bet pays off. As famed investor Warren Buffet wrote to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders in 2020: “Never bet against America.” I’ll add an addendum: never bet against Americans.
Great points. I would love to see more long-form political debates. I'm not sure if better forums would lead to more authentic candidates, but at least they wouldn't be forced to speak in soundbites all night, trying to land rhetorical haymakers instead of making strong arguments. Cable TV assumes a short attention span, but I think voters deserve (and many would tune in to watch) more substantive debates. Political operations might assume voters are dumb, but if voters never hear authentic and substantive arguments, the only options are lame scripts or cheap demagoguery.