The Dangerous & Misleading Problem With Our Elections by Oliver DeMille

Published: Fri, 12/16/11

"Empowering Ordinary Citizens to Make an Extraordinary Difference"

The Dangerous & Misleading Problem With Our Elections

By Oliver DeMille

OUR POPULAR CULTURE is given to extremes--everything from extreme sports to extreme makeovers.

If this trend were limited to our entertainment, it might be just fine.

Unfortunately, it is found even in our elections, where the stakes couldn't be higher.

The American founding generation was known for how strongly its members took sides and promoted their views, but also for its openness in listening to other views, learning from contrary perspectives, and changing its mind when the ideas of opponents made sense.

In our time, this wisdom is practically nonexistent.

We may not admit it, but we seem to want extreme politics.

We want our candidate to blast the flaws, weaknesses, and misguided views of the opponent.

The more extreme and angry the language, the more we support a candidate. We want a fight, and we want our candidate to bloody the opponent.

Voters claim to want respectful and civil discourse, but the majority votes for the outspoken, loud, and aggressive.

The Effectiveness of Attack Politics

When President Obama is moderate, measured, and judicious, conservatives say he lacks leadership, while liberals call him ineffective, uncommitted, and disappointing.

When he pushes back, takes strong positions, and goes on the attack, conservatives call him a terrible leader and a dangerous opponent, while progressives flock to support his "revitalized" presidency.

The majority responds to aggression, not to wisdom or civility.

Likewise, the liberal media once routinely praised Senator John McCain for his "fair, balanced, and moderate" approach to the issues--until he became the Republican candidate for president and the media turned on him as an "extreme conservative."

At the same time, conservatives supported his Senatorial leadership but then angrily labeled him "a liberal in conservative clothing" during his presidential bid.

Mitt Romney failed to capture widespread conservative support mainly because he seemed to lack passion, anger, and edginess. The charge of flip-flopping is really a frustration with Romney's modulated tone.

Both Obama and Gingrich have a long record of switched sides on numerous issues--more, in fact, than Romney. But they know how to go on the attack, and this quickly dissipates any sense of them being wishy-washy.

Even when Romney goes on the attack, his words sound like they are being dictated from a teleprompter--not shouted from his angry gut.

Aggressive and angry candidates generally have more success than those who are mild and soft-spoken. In the following chart, the more aggressive candidate from each election era is marked in bold:

Election	More Aggressive/Strident	More Mild/Gentlemanly
1980	Reagan	Mondale
1984	Reagan	Mondale
1988	Bush	Dukakis
1992	Clinton	Bush
1996	Clinton	Dole
2000	Bush	Gore
2004	Bush	Kerry
2008	Obama	McCain

Note that in recent elections the more vocally aggressive person has always been the winning candidate.

Looking ahead to the 2012 election, this trend provides several interesting scenarios (some of which won't happen but are still instructive):

2012?	Obama	Romney
	Gingrich	Obama
	Christie	Obama
	Trump	Obama
	Obama	Paul
	Bachman	Obama

The practical problem for candidates is this: To win their party nomination they need to appeal to their base by strongly attacking the other party's candidate, and then to win in the general election they must appeal to independents by not being too extreme.

Thus candidates such as Mondale, Dukakis, Dole, or Kerry get the nomination but not the support of independents.

An interesting twist on all this is the technique of attacking someone other than the opposing candidate.

This allows candidates to tell independents they're taking the high road and simultaneously show their base that they are sufficiently angry on the attack.

Reagan, Clinton, Obama and others have used this by positioning themselves as Washington outsiders with Washington as the enemy and changing the culture in Washington as the great mandate.

Gingrich has recently put a new spin on this by shrewdly turning his anger against the media--something that clearly resonates with his conservative base and even many independents.

Obama has attempted to do the same thing by turning his anger against Wall Street and the rich.

Mirroring domestic politics, voters connect more with candidates who talk tough and take a hawkish stance toward potential national enemies like China and Iran.

Those who argue for moderation toward nations such as China or Pakistan--e.g. Gore, Kerry, Huntsman, Paul, or Santorum--tend to lose support to those promising more belligerent positions.

Aggressive "Leadership"

Our societal conception of leadership idealizes aggressiveness, killer instinct, and strength as much or even more than virtue, wisdom, and integrity--from our high school football fields to our Ivy League lacrosse teams and from our corporate boardrooms and reality television programs to our prom queen elections and even the U.S. Capitol building.

The old Greek proverb that "God loves the good but blesses the bold" is a good description of how our modern voters seem to think.

Is the Anger Warranted?

All of this obscures the problems of a nation literally on the brink in far too many ways.

Unemployment remains painfully high, and even small decreases in the unemployment rate are the result of more people giving up their search for work rather than more real jobs in the economy.

Consider these sobering realities:

Of those who have lost and then found new jobs since the Great Recession, only 7% have found a job that pays as much as the one they lost.
When those not seeking jobs or only finding part-time work are included in the statistics, our real unemployment rate is nearly 20% (see further commentary and details here).
An astounding 44% of Americans receive food stamps or some other form of government food assistance.
Since 2008, the average U.S. household has seen its net worth decrease 9.9%. In contrast, during the same time period the increase of net worth for those serving in Congress is a positive 24%.
In 2008, 9% of Americans and 16% of Chinese struggled "to pay for food." By 2011, 19% of Americans and 6% of Chinese struggle to pay for food.

Things are worse than the numbers reflect, and currently they are not getting better.

No wonder many voters are deeply frustrated and genuinely angry with numerous government policies that hurt the economy, and while they don't really want violence, they don't feel understood or supported by moderate words, restrained plans, or relaxed rhetoric.

They want angry words, their candidates to win, and those they blame for all our problems to lose and lose painfully.

"Sound and Well-Informed Judgment" Trumps Anger

Madison foresaw such challenges when he called elections "peaceful revolutions"--not actually violent, but passionate and extreme like all true revolutions.

The founders knew that in elections passions run deep, and they knew that lasting freedom depends on the wisdom of the people.

As he wrote in Federalist Paper 1:

"[W]e, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance...furnish[es] a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy."

And even those who are right, Madison continues, aren't always motivated for the right reasons:

"Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives...are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question...[In every major national discussion] a torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposing parties, we shall be led to conclude that that they will [promote the justness of their argument and] increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declarations and the bitterness of their invectives."

The only lasting solution, Madison says, is for the citizens to calmly and closely examine the details and apply their "sound and well-informed judgment."

To help reduce the negative influences of too much emotion in politics, the framers filtered the direct vote for presidents through the Electoral College and the election of Senators through state legislatures.

Still, they knew that the key to successful democratic society is effective elections by the people, and the key to effective elections is a wise, informed and virtuous people.

The Critically-Needed Reversal in Focus

So, we have a problem.

The two biggest facets of this problem are:

1: In our current system we tend to almost universally see the presidential election as the most important in the nation, the congressional elections as more important than state elections, and state elections as more important than local. In the same vein, we tend to see government programs as more important than private enterprises and philanthropic programs, and institutions as more important than families.

2: We tend to think that the solution to our problems is better, wiser, more civil, prudent and noble candidates rather than better, wiser, more civil, prudent and noble voters.

In the founding era, it was the opposite. They saw families and private entities as more important than government institutions and the local and state as more important than the national level.

They also felt that the future of our nation depended not on better candidates but on better voters.

We may or may not need better candidates, but more importantly we need to be much better spouses, parents, neighbors, leaders and voluntary servants in our communities, churches, charities and families.

We do have an election problem, because we have a leadership problem--on all levels.

The most effective way to overcome this challenge is to become greater leaders in our homes and communities.

Excellent leaders are more likely to use wisdom in elections, and less prone to being swayed by angry and aggressive rhetoric.

As long as we put our faith in aggressive candidates on the attack, we are going to keep being disappointed with the results of each election.

The 2012 election will be no different.

The Solution: Better Voters

This isn't to say that milder, less aggressive, or more civil candidates have the answers--not at all.

The solution to our modern American election problem is simple:Better voters.

Voters are the hope of our future, specifically voters who are more calmly and consistently involved in politics on a daily basis both during and between elections, more locally focused, less emotional and wiser, less swayed by the media and the experts, more principle-centered, and more deeply studied in the principles and details of freedom.

If becoming a nation of such voters is too much to ask, then the future of freedom will be short.

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Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America's Destiny.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.