A well-paid idiot
by David Atkins
Sometimes I think the best punishment for "centrist" political pundits would be to force them to ply their trade as campaign managers in the real world, without the ability to outspend their opponents. Force them to actually connect with real voters as they exist in the real world, with their salaries dependent on their electoral outcomes.
Consider this brilliance from David Brooks:
The campaign-as-warfare metaphor may seem sensible to those inside the hothouse. It may make sense if you think today’s swing voters hunger for more combat, more harshness and more attack.
But it’s probably bad sociology and terrible psychology, given the general disgust with conventional politics. If I were in the campaigns, I’d want to detach from the current rules of engagement and change the nature of the campaign. If I were Obama, I’d play to his personal popularity and run an “American Idol” campaign — likability, balance, safety and talent. If I were Romney, saddled with his personal diffidence, I’d run a plumber campaign — you may not love me, but here’s four things I can do for you.
These would be very different campaigns than the ones we are seeing so far: more positive psychology, less negative psychology. A few big messages about fundamental change, less obsession with the daily news cycle. More attention devoted to those turned off by politics, less to the hard-core denizens who are obsessed by it.
Please, please, please let me be lucky enough to someday run a campaign against this guy. Unfortunately, that won't happen. Brooks will continue to live a comfortable life well paid by the New York Times to dispense totally disconnected anodyne fantasies about voters without any danger of accountability or verification.
It shouldn't need saying, but the reason the negative campaigning works (beyond basic human nature that responds more actively to threats than to rewards) is that voters are angry. Most people both liberal and conservative feel in turmoil and realize that something is seriously out of joint with this new world order our betters have established for us. Racists, misogynists and the less educated will be easily led to believe that it's all the fault of gays, minorities and liberal professors taking what should be "theirs" and giving it to the "other." People with empathy, education and sense understand that the new global economy has shifted power dramatically into the hands of the ultra-wealthy, financial markets, and multinational corporations.
But voters on both sides of the aisle know that someone is to blame. The political battle of this generation is to properly identify who it is. That's why the partisan divide is going to get stronger, not weaker, and why the politics-as-war metaphor is going to be increasingly relevant over time, not less so.
The only sort of people comfortable enough with their lives not to need someone to blame for this awful mess are the likes of David Brooks. People like him just don't understand all the anger. After all, they're sitting pretty. Shouldn't everyone else feel the same way?
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