Psychological analysis of Campaign '08

ILLUSTRATED: "Successful candidates are those who set the emotional agenda of the electorate." -Drew Westen

More brilliant analysis from psychologist Drew Westen. This links to other articles by Westen.

The maxim should begin the first strategy meeting of a new campaign.

[Campaigns] are won by candidates who can convince voters, through their words, intonation, body language, and actions that they share their values, that they understand people like them, and that they can inspire the nation or save it from dangers. Policies and plans should be indicators or examples of what candidates care about, which tell voters whether they share their values and would approach the nation's problems in sensible ways.

As stated earlier on this blog, issues should be chosen to reinforce a latent value system. Put yourself on the side of the electorate and the opponent on the other side.

elections are won and lost not primarily on "the issues" but on the values and emotions of the electorate--most importantly, on the "gut feelings" that summarize much of what voters think and feel about a candidate or party. Candidates who win the hearts and minds of the voters are those who can weave together emotionally compelling stories about who they are and who their opponents are and can make people feel what they feel.

On what makes a dangerous Republican.

From the first time I watched Huckabee, he made me nervous, because I disliked most of what he said but I liked him anyway

On Hillary's Clinton's fall after 2007 and resurrection.

Although both tough and agile in her debate performances from the start, she failed to recognize, until her voice cracked in New Hampshire and signaled to voters that there was a person hiding inside that pantsuit, that what she needed more than anything was not another plan for another issue but a story of who she was and what she stood for--and a way to make a dent in the central story the right had branded her with since the early 1990s.

Negative narratives and stories must be nipped in the bud.

Unfortunately, the lore in Democratic campaign circles is that it's best not to address these kinds of attacks directly for fear of fanning the flames. As I argued in the book, however, for reasons that are as much neurological as political, a candidate should never allow the public to form negative associations toward him for any length of time, and certainly not a year, because the more ingrained the associations, the harder to eliminate the feelings they elicit, even when voters no longer consciously believe the original story.

Campaigns must be positive, but also contrast against the opponent.

Successful campaigns are campaigns that both inspire and raise concerns about the opposition. And as I argue in this book, that's exactly what they should do, because an election is a choice, not a referendum, and because positive and negative emotions both drive voting behavior, but in psychologically and neurologically distinct ways.

Campaign communication is ultimately thematic. The specifics should be chosen to tell a greater story.

But if there's a central message in the primary campaigns of 2008, it's that whatever accounts for who became or becomes the nominee on either side has little to do with "the issues." John McCain could certainly speak with more authority on military issues as a veteran than Mitt Romney, but their policy positions were virtually identical. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were about as similar as two candidates could be in their voting records in the Senate. Yet in the Wisconsin primaries, for example, voters who reported in exit polls that the most important issue to them was health care--Hillary Clinton's signature issue--broke for Obama, just as militantly anti-immigrant Republicans routinely voted for McCain.

Issues--the economy, the Iraq War, energy, immigration, health care, whatever they may be--play a major role in elections. But as every presidential election since the advent of modern polling has shown, successful candidates are the ones whose personal stories, principles, ways of talking about their values and concerns for the nation, and personalities capture the imagination of the public (or create enough doubt about their opponent to win despite a less than compelling story of their own, as in the Bush victory of 2004).