Politics and Popularity Contests

Romney: Politics as Popularity Contests


Presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney, has been receiving harsh criticism from his party's base all week long.  They don't like that he supports so many liberal cultural stances, but the biggest thing he has been blasted for is his view of climate change.  He believes that the world is getting warmer and that humans are responsible in some way.  He hasn't even had the chance to explain what policies might come out of this view and his own party is tearing him down, which proves that a majority of politics involves selling yourself to one extreme or the other.  People like you when you are agreeable with them and dislike you if you are not, minus any real discussion.


In School They Taught Me...

At The George Washington University of Political Management they taught me that in candidate elections, you can almost always count on 40 percent of the population voting on one side and 40 percent on the other, with 20 percent in the middle.  These people in the middle decide the outcome of elections and they are called the swing voters.  Election campaign tactics are made up of two main parts:

1. Energize your base.  If you're a Republican, it means you've got to say what they want to hear.  The Democrats do the same.  These messages are predetermined to promote as much bias and separation form the other side as possible.  Election campaigns are designed to make Americans hate the other political party.  The same marketing and branding techniques used in the corporate marketing world are applied in politics, where people become the brands.  HOPE, the O logo, Change We Can Believe In, Yes, We Can!
2. Win the swing votes to get a minimum 51 percent of the vote.  Strategists get together to create different message for swing voters.  Here's where it gets tricky because you have to maintain your base, while appealing to a broader audience.  Let's just say the amount of money pumped into research, targeting and marketing to specific groups of swing voters is astronomical.This is the typical approach to a fairly even Presidential race.   

The Sad Thing About It Is, It Works. 

Campaigns wouldn't pay for it if it didn't work.  It works because this is what the public demands in terms of making political decisions, like who is going to be the next President of the United States (arguably one of the most powerful position in the world).  How do we change this?  Unfortunately, it's cultural and cultures tend to change very slowly.  Campaigns will only switch to serious discussion of the issues at hand and policy details in a democratic society when people demand it.  Perhaps in another generation or two we will have something more balanced, with accessible, accurate and concise information.

Or we could just have Presidential candidates break-dance-fight, kick box, and then grapple to see who scores the most points judged by a panel composed of a celebrities.

But as of today, we've got the same old boring politics with little substance.

Dude...I would TOTALLY pay to see the Presidential candidates battle...