Know your audience

Arthur Brooks made a great point in his Wall Street Journal opinion piece yesterday, Republicans and Their Faulty Moral Arithmetic.

Raging against government debt and tax rates that most Americans don’t pay gets conservatives nowhere, and it will always be an exercise in futility to compete with liberals on government spending and transfers.

Instead, the answer is to make improving the lives of vulnerable people the primary focus of authentically conservative policies. For example, the core problem with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly—it is that the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare imperils the social safety net for the neediest citizens. Education innovation and school choice are not needed to fight rapacious unions and bureaucrats—too often the most prominent focus of conservative education concerns—but because poor children and their parents deserve better schools.

That reminds me. I have made headway with liberal friends on the subject of school choice by doing exactly what Brooks suggests, making it about the kids and the parents who need the most help.

I pointed out that middle-income and wealthy folks already have school choice because they can afford to live in an area with a good public school district or pay to send their kids to private school. That may contribute to why these schools are successful.

I then asked why low-income parents shouldn’t be given more choice, too.

Several told me that changed their mind about school choice and they became supporters of it.

El Debato

These are my limited observations from tonight’s debate, from the 10 or so minutes I saw before I nodded off for a nap.

Have you ever seen one of those letters composed from words cut from magazines? You know how the words are all different fonts and sizes and choppy? That’s how President Obama sounded to me tonight. I often couldn’t tell if the two words he just said were connected to previous sentence, the next sentence or stand alone.

I liked the first part of Romney’s response to the question about this country losing jobs overseas. He should continue to hammer this message home. The answer isn’t trickle down government, it’s to make the U.S. a more attractive place to invest.

Most economists agree, incentives matter. We — through government — chase those jobs away by making it less attractive to invest in America.

I didn’t care much for the second part of Romney’s response. If China devalues its currency to make its products cheaper, we benefit at the expense of the Chinese citizens. They should be up-in-arms about that. Not us. They will be some day.

The moderator seemed fair.

President Obama seemed surprised and a little disappointed that one of the questioners, Kerry, was not female, and judging from Kerry’s body language, not prone to be wooed Obama’s machismo.

Also, the President didn’t answer Kerry’s question, which was When did the Libyan embassy request extra security and who turned down that request? President Obama started his answer at the time of the attack.

I wasn’t clear on what Romney’s answer was on the assault weapon ban question. But, I don’t really care, either. President Obama said enough repeating the wisdom/ that guns kill people. He also demonstrated his lack of understanding of the second amendment when he said something about people having guns to hunt and (I think he said, I was nodding off) fish.

Yes. The 2nd Amendment protects our right to hunt and fish (who fishes with a gun?)./

No. It does not. It protects our right to protect ourselves from an oppressive government and other things that might encroach on our safety. It is one check-and-balance on power in a document that is full of check-and-balances.

I think the President also said something about eliminating mentally unstable people, or not eliminating them…not sure. It was one of those choppy moments. But, I think even he wished that he could ‘walk that one back.’

After I woke from my nap after the debate and was cleaning the kitchen, I heard some post-debate poll results.

One question was which candidate will help the middle class the most. If I heard right, the results were 54% to 30-something% in favor of President Obama.

Wow. I guess this may show the distrust some folks have for a rich guy and the love they have for a guy saying he’s going to pick that guy’s pocket.

However, I’d caution the 54% that you may want to favor the guy who is talking about making our country more attractive for investment. That will do more to help the middle class than any nutshell game. That makes as much sense as a football coach saying he’s going to win games by putting the best team on the field.

In case that 54% needs a little help with that, that makes a lot of sense.

My limited vp debate observations

Straw man army

Much political debate nowadays is one side putting up a straw man fallacy while the other side tries to dismantle it — all of which takes away from productive discourse.

A straw man fallacy is usually an absurdly inaccurate representation your opponent’s position — so absurd that it’s easy to defeat, or knock down, like a ‘man made of straw’.

We begin using straw men right about the time we start talking.

“Mom! Brother called me a booger!”

“Brother, quit calling your sister a booger.”

“I didn’t. I told her she’s a selfish snot, because she will not share her toys with me.”

“Sis, we’ve discussed this. Share.”

Sis, won’t tell Mom what her brother actually said. She intuitively knows that her selfishness will not gain her much sympathy from Mom. Best leave that part out and turn make it seem her brother made an unprovoked malicious comment.

Using a straw seems to imply one of three things.

1. You know, like Sis, that your opponent’s position is stronger than you’d like it to be, so you carefully avoid the truth and construct the straw man.

2. You expect your target audience to be dumb and not recognize the straw man.

3. You’re dumb.

Most political ads are straw men. “My opponent wants to destroy something or the other! Don’t vote for him.”

These campaigners hope that you’re dumb and that the army of straw men they construct will sway your vote their way.

It must work to some degree. Straw men still exist. Unlike Mom, enough of us don’t call BS and request that the campaigners address the real positions.

Keep your eye out for straw men in this election season.

Questions for Political Candidates

These are questions I’d ask Presidential candidates if I were to moderate a debate:

1.  Do you know the oath of office for President?  If not, I’d recite it.

2,  What purpose do you believe the Constitution serves?

3.  How are changes to the Constitution made?  Article V: Amendment.

4.  What is your understanding of the role of the Office of the President, as it is defined in the Constitution?

I find it amazing that most folks cast their vote without giving these questions the faintest consideration.  And, yet we wonder why we get what we get.

I heard a local radio show host say it well recently.   He said something like (paraphrased from memory):

 We’ve come to expect that one candidate will tell us how he’s going to solve our problems.  Then the other candidate tells us how he’s going to solve our problems.  

What we don’t realize is that we should vote for the guy that tells us the truth — that it’s not the President’s job to solve our problems, it’s ours’.

Here’s more of my Questions for Politicians posts from the past.

Debate formats

They irritate me.

Debate formats do very little to expand the viewers’ knowledge of the participants’ actual ideas and why they think they are good.

It’s a circus.  Participants take pot shots at each other.  For example, Michelle Bachman’s characterization of Cain’s 9-9-9 plan (“Turn it upside down!”) was infantile.  I hope there was more substance than that.

Moderators ask obtuse, “gotcha” questions.  The candidates’ arguments are sound bites and slogans and they just don’t have much opportunity to present their cases (maybe that’s the way they like it).

Recently, I heard a radio show caller make a great point.  He observed that Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity videos on Youtube are better than debates.  They lay out a case without as much campaignspeak and the noise of the moderators and other participants.

He also pointed out that few candidates actually produce such videos.

His comment jogged my memory of Reagan’s radio addresses in the 1970s.  Those were effective because he was able to get his position and the reasoning for it out in the public.  By debate time, he had message tested much of it and he could articulate it well.

Besides, what’s the purpose of debates?  To sort out the best debaters?  How often do President’s debate?  Not often.  It’s like hiring the best trial lawyer as a CEO.  The skills do not necessarily transfer.

I like the caller’s idea.  I’d much rather see an ongoing series of Youtube videos between candidates that cuts the noise, allows them to build their cases in thoughtful manners, respond to critics and allow people to comment on them.

No argument from Hoffa

W.E Heasley makes a great observation on his blog, The Last Embassy.  He points out that in Jimmy Hoffa’s now infamous speech, no arguments were actually made.  From his post:

“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the tea party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war. . . . President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong” — Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa speaking at a rally for President Obama in Detroit on Sept. 5. (1)

In the above quote exactly what entails the “war on workers”? Exactly how does the tea party [a non existent political party] articulate a “war on workers”? The non-defined and example-less “war on workers” is going to be refuted by means of marching? Marching will “…take these son of bitches out…“? Hence we have an argument with no underlying the arguments.

I think it is very important that we train ourselves to recognize when nothing of substance is actually said.  This happens often.  We fall for the style of the speech or the meaningless platitudes that are uttered, but neglect to ask what exactly does that mean and why?