“Framing” Redux Redux

In “Framing” Redux, I criticized Emory Prof. Drew Westen, the latest guru trying to improve the way Democrats “frame” issues.

Now he’s at it again, this time in the Washington Post, instructing Democrats to abandon pesky facts and reason emphasize passion and “heart.” The pitch for passion over reason is the same here as it’s been in Westen’s other advice pieces for the Democrats:

The philosopher David Hume had it right: Reason is the slave to the passions, not the other way around. Recognizing the primacy of passion in everything we do has profound implications for politics. Reason is the middle manager in decision making, not the CEO. Policies are nothing but the frontmen for values. You listen to the middleman’s “pitch,” but you go straight to the top when it’s time to choose. You go, in other words, to your emotions….

At its best this way of thinking — or rather, of feeling — is a usually harmless romanticism. At its worst, and not uncommonly, lies the darker version of romanticism that resembles — to many scholars, is the essence of — fascism. One such scholar was the great British philosopher, Isaiah Berlin. According to this review (critical review, by the way) of his collection of essays, The Roots of Romanticism (Princeton, 1999), Berlin argued that Romanticism’s emphasis on passion over reason represented “a rupture with the Enlightenment’s commitment to reason and objectivity.”

Throughout the lectures, Berlin argues that Romanticism brought about a revolution of values and thought that was no less important than the Industrial Revolution of England, the political one in France, and the socio-economic one in Russia. He ends the lectures by arguing, moreover, that the consequences of Romanticism were existentialism and fascism.

….

According to Berlin, the term ‘romantic’ became an adjective for a person who rejected science and welcomed passion as a guide for life….

I, of course, don’t mean to suggest that Westen, or any of the politicians who follow his advice, are fascists. His advice, after all, when stripped of the psychological jargon, is nothing more than the newest version of importing the values and sensibility of Madison Avenue into politics. American politics has survived the ministrations of passionate ad men before, and it will surely survive Westen as well.

To see why, take a look at how he begins today’s Washington Post sermon:

Dems, You Gotta Have Heart

By Drew Westen

Sunday, July 29, 2007; B01

To understand why Democrats have had such a hard time winning the White House, consider two scenes from last week’s CNN/YouTube debate. First, Sen. Chris Dodd offered a highly precise response to a question about energy: “The 50-mile-per-gallon standard is something I’ve advocated by 2017.” Then former senator John Edwards told a moving story about a man who couldn’t speak for 50 years because of a severe cleft palate: “For five decades, James Lowe lived in the richest nation on the planet not able to talk because he couldn’t afford the procedure that would’ve allowed him to talk.”

Which appeal was more compelling? Which one grabbed you in the gut?

Well, neither, but since I’m just a hard-hearted SOB more interested in what politicians propose than with the passion of their presentation, that’s neither here nor there. I simply don’t find Westen’s argument, or any of the path to power lies through “framing” arguments, persuasive.

Here’s another example:

Why is it almost always unwise to “refuse to dignify” a political attack? Because of the way our brains function. Our brains are nothing but vast networks of interconnected neurons, which join thoughts, images, sounds, memories and emotions. Why did Clinton have to disavow the label of “liberal” in last week’s debate, even though she explained the term’s noble derivation? Because conservatives understand how to make associations stick, and they have so thoroughly contaminated the neural networks in American minds that define what it means to be a liberal that even Jefferson couldn’t win an election today if he called himself one — which he did, liberally.

Insofar as “liberal” has become a dirty word, it is not because those shrewd, wily conservatives have “contaminated the neural networks” of uninformed, gullible voters but because those voters have become disenchanted with what liberals have proudly wrought in the name of liberalism.

Or another:

If the other side is trashing you and you say nothing or back down, you cede to your adversaries the neural networks that constitute public opinion. People vote largely with their passions, and if you jam their emotional radar, you prevent them from making emotionally informed decisions….

In other words, the Swift Boat attacks on Kerry presumably prevented them from what they would have done if they had been free to make “emotionally informed decisions.”

Rubbish. If the Swift Boat attacks had been unpersuasive, i.e., if they had not been supported by enough evidence to persuade many people, they would have had no effect, or even have backfired. Or if Kerry had been a better candidate with more to offer, enough voters would have ignored those attacks or reduced the importance they gave to them for him to win.

But I could be wrong and Westen could be right, in which case he’ll have a prominent position in the Edwards administration.