August 30, 2004

Our recent discussions

Well, someone else is making our same cry for a more detailed debate. Herbert focuses on the Republicans, although the blame for dumbed down politics is shared by both parties. However, I think that Herbert has some good points (if we small 'd' democratize the argument).
You don't want to bore the readers or viewers or voters with anything too complicated. A well-rehearsed comment or two will suffice, followed by the jokes on Leno and Letterman, and then it's on to the "real world" of Paris and Kobe and whatever.
and:
Serious voters who would like to hear a discussion (from the leaders of both parties) about why we are in Iraq and when and how we might get out of there will be disappointed. So will voters interested in exploring ideas about the leadership role of the United States in the post-9/11 world, which is at least as important as the role thrust upon the U.S. in the aftermath of World War II.
and most relevant to the on and off discussion we've been having here, he decries the notion, put forth in the 1968 campaign:
"'Voters are basically lazy, basically uninterested in making an effort to understand what we're talking about.'"
As someone who has devoted a decent amount of time to the study of mass politics, I think about this perspective, which I have heard implicity and explicitly from scholarly discussions and theories (though none really state it quite so baldly). And I have said here that I don't think that most voters really want the detailed analysis that we (and I include Morris, et al) are asking for. However I still hold back from believing that people are inherently lazy and unconcerned by nature. Perhaps I should be more pessimistic on a Monday morning. Posted by binky at August 30, 2004 09:12 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics


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