Memo to Democrats: emotion not policy

Last Modified: 11 Jul 2007
By: Felicity Spector

It's the psychology, stupid. The reason the Democrats aren't in the White House is nothing to do with policy - and everything to do with emotion.

That's according to the man being described as the party's 'great rumpled hope' - academic turned author-of-the-moment Drew Westen, whose new book 'The Political Brain' came out last week.

He must have delved deeper than any previous political researcher has ever gone - carrying out actual brain scans on groups of voters during the 2004 election to see exactly what makes 'em tick. And - perhaps it's not exactly brain surgery - but it turned out that talk of policies, details and facts were one great big switch off.

By contrast, people warmed to phrases that connected with them emotionally. From Michael Dukakis to Kerry and Gore, there's a long litany of Democrats who've failed miserably to connect - by banging on endlessly about statistics, empirical data, and choices based on reason.

And by failing to hit back at personal attacks, they might have had a warm glow of moral superiority, but they ceded the emotional ground to their opponents.

'The left has no brand, no counterbrand, no master narrative, no counternarrative. It has no shared terms or 'talking points' for its leaders to repeat until they are part of our political lexicon.'
Drew Westen

There's one passage that deserves citing in full: "The left has no brand, no counterbrand, no master narrative, no counternarrative. It has no shared terms or 'talking points' for its leaders to repeat until they are part of our political lexicon.

"Instead, every Democrat who runs for office, every Democrat who offers commentaries on television or radio, every Democrat who even talks with friends at the water cooler, has to reinvent what it means to be a Democrat, using his or her own words and concepts, as if the party had no history.

"If this is how Coke marketed itself, we would all be drinking Pepsi."

Ouch. In this election cycle, Westen argues that golden-boy Barack Obama is sliding in the polls because he's allowed his strategists to turn him into a policy wonk, in an effort, perhaps, to prove he's no inexperienced ingenue.

"Obama can be electrifying," Westen writes, "but he isn't using it."

Better to study the style of America's great communicator, Ronald Reagan - with his great delivery and the ads like Morning in America which tore at every heart string - than what he calls "the long list of Democrats who have drowned on the dispassionate river".

He says so far, John Edwards, with his grassroots support base and his tub-thumping left wing speeches, is the one who's getting it right.

So far, perhaps so obvious. But where Westen's appeal lies is that he believes he can change things around - and actually teach Democrats how to be winners.

So does all this herald the ultimate dumbing down? An election based on folksy homilies and the manipulation of voters' heart strings? Perhaps modern politics was ever thus. Here's Westen's advice: "Passion is what drives us" in the voting booth, yet "the words we use on the left are emotionally barren."

To stop losing winnable elections, he says, Democrats need to engage the parts of the brain that aren't activated by facts and figures. But there is some hope for anyone who despairs the inevitable descent into triviality - candidates don't need to abandon all reason, says Westen: just wedge it into an emotional context that makes them care.

OK, then. This hot new theory for Democrat strategists doesn't half remind me of that great wish-fulfillment fantasy of liberals everywhere - the West Wing's favourite, president Jed Bartlett. But with just over a year till the election - if it works, don't knock it. A little passion in politics can go a very, very long way.

This article originally appeared on the Newsroom Blog