New Orleans 31, Indianapolis 17

Subliminal Messages In Political Campaigns (The Political Brain Part 2)

The art of persuasion isn't always this pretty.

Evidence clearly supports that subliminal messages can affect our feelings and behaviors despite the popular belief that such a thing is little more than hocus-pocus. Neuroscience research, for example, shows that images presented subliminally (i.e., so quickly that the person cannot report seeing it) can lead to activation of the emotional processing center of the brain, known as the amygdala. This suggests that we have “an emotion system that is constantly processing emotionally relevant information faster than we can consciously register it” (Westen, 58). Consequently, subliminal messages can serve as vehicles from which information can be transmitted to our unconscious mind, which can then influence our behavior. Most of us have come to expect, for example, that this type of manipulation is often used in product advertisements. However, if political campaigns blatantly made use of subliminal messaging that would certainly raise some serious ethical concerns. Unfortunately, ethics and politics do not often go hand and hand.

The boldest example of the apparently intentional use of subliminal messaging in a political campaign was witnessed in an ad run in 2000 by the Republican National Committee to elect George W. Bush. “The ad was ostensibly about Al Gore’s prescription drug plan for seniors, but toward the end of the ad, whose theme was ‘The Gore prescription plan: Bureaucrats decide,’ the word RATS appeared in large, bold letters for a fraction of a second while the narrator uttered the phrase, “Bureaucrats decide” (58). In response to the charge of intentional subliminal messaging, the Bush campaign chalked the message up to a possible error in ad production; they further downplayed the charges by essentially stating that such subliminal appeals do not work. Psychologists Drew Westen and Joel Weinberger (2007) were skeptical of this claim and thus decided to investigate whether or not the subliminally displayed RATS could affect perceptions of an anonymous candidate in research subjects. They found that subjects who received the RATS prime before viewing a photo of an anonymous candidate had significantly more negative perceptions (ratings) of the candidate than those who did not receive the prime. In light of this evidence, it is certainly hard to believe that the creators of this campaign ad were naïve to the subliminal message's power to manipulate the unconscious minds of voters.

The aforementioned example clearly exemplifies the use of a highly unethical political marketing strategy. Most appeals to subliminal messaging used in political campaigns, however, are not nearly as blatant as this. The subtle art of persuasion does indeed wear many hats. Generally, effective campaign ads involve communicating explicit (conscious) messages in addition to implicit (unconscious) ones. One of the best examples of the use of both types of communication was displayed in the infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988 presidential race, which was “run by a political action committee with close ties to then-Vice President George H Bush” (Westen, 63). The ad subsequently made headlines because of the racist undertones that oozed throughout it. Check it out:



As Westen (65) points out, this ad conveyed both an explicit and implicit message; the explicit message that “Dukakis is soft on crime” and the implicit message that “Dukakis lets scary black men endanger your safety.” Conservatives would surely argue that Westen’s claim that the ad conveys implicit racism is a bunch of bologna, and they would likely further point out that such charges are endemic to the pussyfooting philosophies espoused by “bleeding-heart liberals.” Once again, however, conservatives would be wrong. Research shows that even the subliminal presentation of black faces to whites activates the amygdala, and that implicit racial appeals are more effective than explicit ones because they don’t raise people’s conscious attitude towards racism (65). That’s the funny thing about implicit racism: it’s not fully conscious. This is how, for example, a white Rush Limbaugh fan that sort of gets along with the inoffensive Negro at work can allow himself to feel justified in taking offense to the very concept of implicit racism; again, he is not consciously identified with being a racist!

The Willie Horton ad clearly demonstrates a powerful example of how white people in particular can easily be influenced by implicit racism, especially when they are made to be frightened of dangerous, mean-looking, Negro rapists. The fairly obvious racial undertones in this ad make it clear why it was not officially endorsed by Bush's campaign team. The official Bush ad aired the following day:



The symbolism and implicit fear induced in this ad was executed perfectly, playing beautifully to the emotional center of the viewer’s brain. It also appears that the timing of this ad was strategically planned; airing only one day after the Horton ad had sparked massive media attention, which included testimonies from some of Horton's victims. Again, the carefully orchestrated implicit messages that were laid out in the “Horton” and “Revolving Door” ads are what made them so effective. A similar ad campaign designed to deliver only the explicit message that Dukakis was soft on crime would not have been nearly as effective. Indeed, survey data showed that “anxiety about a possible Dukakis presidency skyrocketed” in the months following the airing of these ads (67).

For shits and giggles, let’s now analyze two recent campaign attack-ads that appear to be much more focused on communicating explicitly negative messages about the opponents, and thus are likely much less effective than the aforementioned examples. These ads are both from the recent Martha Coakley Vs. Scott Brown race for the U.S. senate. The first one is not an actual campaign ad, but instead one created by a lunatic, presumably a born-again Christian fan of former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. The second one is an actual campaign ad from Martha Coakley’s camp.





Although the amateur ad was clearly ludicrous and made by a total ignoramus, both ads may be equally ineffective in that they only appeal to those who already favor the candidate and thus already agree with the ad's message. In other words, the most important votes to win an election i.e., the swing votes, will largely be unaffected by such ads. As I already commented on in a previous post, Martha Coakley was virtually impotent when it came to appealing to the amygdalas (emotions) of the swing voters in Massachusetts. Scott Brown was clearly more skilled in this arena, as witnessed by his more effective weaving together of an emotionally-laden narrative about his campaign, one which more effectively resonated with swing voters.

Subliminal or implicit messages are clearly important to successful political campaigns, whether they are blatantly used in secret as in George W. Bush’s 2000 attack ad, or used more subtly as witnessed in his father’s effective 1988 campaign ads. As Drew Westen makes clear in his book, it seems that the Republicans on average are more skilled at using these techniques than Democrats. An analysis of the political brain thus proves that Democrats need to approach their campaigns with more emotional intelligence.

References

Westen, Drew. The Political Brain: The Role Of Emotion In Deciding The Fate Of The Nation. Public Affairs: New York, 2007.

Weinberger, J., &Westen, D. (2007). RATS, we should have used Clinton. Manuscript under revision.

Republicans Eye Wall Street's Cash

Eric Cantor has convinced many teabaggers that he’s one of them while simultaneously soliciting GOP campaign donations from Wall Street.

Although I’m not sure how much press it will get, there was a pretty telling statement in today’s Wall Street Journal from House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R – Virginia). In an article about the Republican Party attempting to score big campaign contributions from giant financial institutions, Cantor is quoted as saying, “I sense a lot of dissatisfaction and a lot of buyer’s remorse on Wall Street,” referring to Wall Street’s decision to back primarily Democrats in the 2008 election cycle. Of course, those contributions may have had more to do with the fact that Wall Street was trying to curry some favor with the Democrats who were poised for sweeping victories, rather than a belief that Democrats would better serve their interests.

But now the momentum has shifted. Teabagging amnesiacs are loudly calling for a return to sanity in governance, by which they mean a return to Republican rule. The economy is still in rough shape and the Democrats are not looking good heading into November’s midterms. Meanwhile, the GOP is in the process of trying to co-opt the tea party movement by superficially playing the role of the everyman’s opposition to the “big government” Democrats, despite the fact that Republicans are mostly to blame for the vast increases in federal power and the national debt over the last decade. The same article notes than House Minority Leader John Boehner (R – Ohio) recently had drinks with JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon in an effort to woo him and his firm’s money to the GOP.

So what we have here is some clearly duplicitous conduct by the Republican Party leadership. One day they’re playing to the “populist” tea party folks who decry “big government” and Wall Street bailouts. The next day they’re cozying up to the same banking oligarchs that the teabaggers have it in for. Granted, the tea party people are fixated more on phantom socialism than anything else, but at least in theory they don’t want government and Wall Street fucking each other, even if they don’t know coitus when they see it.

Will the Republican Party be able to chase down campaign donations from the criminal banking syndicate in Lower Manhattan while at the same time credibly maintaining the guise of champion for the average Joe? Probably. By and large, Republicans are more adept at shaping the public political discourse than Democrats, even if they are more transparently full of shit than the Dems (who are also very full of shit). Although several congressional Republicans will face purity tests during the primaries in the form of teabagger-backed Republicans, the general elections will play out rather predictably. Here’s Noam Chomsky writing in 1996 about the 1994 midterm elections, to which the 2010 elections are already being compared:

The standard picture is that a “historic political realignment” took place in the congressional elections of 1994 that swept Newt Gingrich and his army into power in a landslide victory, a “triumph of conservatism” that reflects the continuing “drift to the right.” With their “overwhelming popular mandate,” the Gingrich army will fulfil the promises of the Contract with America. They will “get government off our backs” so that we can return to the happy days when the free market reigned and restore “family values,” ridding us of “the excesses of the welfare state” and the other residues of the failed “big government” policies of New Deal liberalism and the “Great Society.” By dismantling the “nanny state,” they will be able to “create jobs for Americans” and win security and freedom for the “middle class.” And they will take over and successfully lead the crusade to establish the American Dream of free market democracy, worldwide.

That’s the basic story. It has a familiar ring.

Does it ever. Chomsky continues,

When asked about the central components of the Contract [with America], large majorities opposed almost all, notably the central one: large cuts in social spending. Over 60 percent of the population wanted to see such spending increased at the time of the elections. Gingrich himself was highly unpopular, even more than Clinton, whose ratings are very low; and that distaste has only persisted as the program has been implemented.

As usual, this campaign season GOP candidates will step up the rhetoric against “big government” and “tax-and-spend liberals,” while avoiding substantive discussion of their own preferred economic policies for the reasons Chomsky noted above. We need only recall the attempt by Republicans to “reform” Social Security by dismantling/privatizing it in the wake of George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004. After a public uproar, the issue quickly went away. We can envision a similar backlash if Medicare is ever a target of Republican “reform” as well. While Republicans are sure to talk about wonderful sounding things like “job creation,” tax cuts,” and “getting government off our backs” (i.e., deregulation) on this year’s campaign trail, discussion of these issues will be rather cursory.

Of course, as I noted in my post about the hypocrisy of the teabaggers, they favor “big government” and “socialism” when it directly benefits them, especially if it’s in the form of Social Security and Medicare. I doubt they despise the nanny state so much as to forgo their own entitlements, even as they ridicule entitlements for others.

Barring a terrorist attack or some unforeseen scandal, the economy will be the big issue in November. However, that doesn’t mean the GOP cannot also run on their traditional bullshit issues of illegal immigration, abortion, gay marriage, and anything else that doesn’t really affect the majority of the population. In fact, it wouldn’t be an American political campaign season without this stuff playing some role in quite a few of the races.

I suspect that the Cantor remark about how disaffected Wall Street is with the Democrats will not hurt his party. Not only that, I predict that the Republican Party will successfully co-opt the tea party movement simply by telling them what they want to hear. It is to be expected that a few GOP incumbents will lose to more conservative primary challengers, but don’t expect anything earth-shattering to happen. The Republicans have been successfully manipulating their base for over a quarter of a century, and by now they have it down to a science. You’ll notice that even when conservatives are in power, they fail to deliver for the people who voted them in, always leaving them angry at the increasing acceptance of gays and abortion, for example. At the same time, once in power, Republicans strive to enact economic policies that are incredibly damaging to the middle class. And that’s how the GOP wants it. That way, they can always run on social issues and blame the sorry state of America on illegal immigrants and a perceived moral decline in the country. But if gay marriage and abortion were made forever illegal all of a sudden, a large chunk of the modern GOP’s raison d’être would subsequently disappear. So while it does Republicans well to speak out against these “immoral” practices, it does them no good to actually do something about them. That’s what scapegoats are for. The problem is, if you finally send that scapegoat out into the desert, there is nothing else on which to pile sins.

- Max

Curt Schilling Is A Giant Blowhard

Quick! Somebody sew that glove to his mouth!

As a Red Sox fan I have immense respect for Curt Schilling as a pitcher and what he did for the team between 2004 and 2007. His performance in Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS was legendary, whether that was real blood on his sock or not.

But Curt Schilling is also the biggest blowhard ever to come out of the sports world, which is saying a lot. Now retired, Schilling has a blog (which I won’t bother linking) where he pops off about everything from baseball to climate change to health care reform. He is unabashedly conservative. In 2004 Schilling campaigned for fellow born-again Christian George W. Bush. I think no further comment on that is necessary. Furthermore, the health of Major League ballplayers is the priority of their respective teams.

Do you think Curt Schilling ever had to worry about whether his insurance company/team would shell out the money necessary for any surgeries he needed? Of course not. I doubt he even had a co-pay. Schilling, like every other ballplayer, was an investment that needed to be protected. His employers took care of him using money from the working stiff fans who kept showing up at the ballpark forking over their hard earned dollars to watch men play a kid’s game. But in the real, non-fantasy world, people are viewed as expendable by employers and health insurers, and so they have to worry about things—very important things—like whether their bloodsucking HMOs are going to cover the cost of the treatments they need, whether they’re going to get modest raises at work this year, or whether they’ll still even have a job in a month. In the real world, “free agents” don’t have millions of dollars in accumulated salary to fall back on until they sign with another organization.

This is serious stuff. Over 30 million Americans don’t have health insurance. Tens of millions more are getting crushed by annual premium hikes in excess of 10%. In 2009 one in eight Americans used food stamps. People are still getting their homes foreclosed on, and too many people are still out of work.

But it’s all right because millionaire Curt Schilling is posting away on his blog telling us how we can get things back on track. And even though he supported George W. Bush who turned a surplus into a $5 trillion dollar deficit through corporate welfare and military wet dreams with the help of a Republican-controlled Congress, Schilling assures us that what we need is more Republicans. That’s why he endorsed Scott Brown for Senate, a man who said he’ll be “an independent voice” for Massachusetts. Color me skeptical, but I’ve seen this routine before.

The sad thing is that it didn’t have to be this way. Schilling had Major League stints in Baltimore, Houston, Philadelphia, and Arizona before ending up in Boston. He could’ve chosen to live in any one of those places after retirement, but he decided to stay here and grace the region with his pompous presence. Lucky us.

Schilling has written posts opposing the Democrats’ proposed health care reform legislation (as have I, but for completely different reasons). Something about costs. I’m not sure. The man isn’t worth quoting, but perhaps we should take a moment to ask, Where does Curt Schilling get off pontificating about health care reform? Excuse me, but this guy has lived most of his life in a fucking fantasyland where over the course of his career he’s been paid a grand total of at least $114 million to play baseball, which to remind you, is a game. This figure includes the $8 million he collected while he sat on his ass for the entire 2008 season and didn’t throw a single pitch. Eight million dollars for not working. Kind of like a welfare check subsidized by the Fenway fans. You’re welcome, Curt, you great conservative you.


~Max