CPAC broadcast tape this evening of Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain, speaking in Ottawa last month. Video is online here. Near the end, Westen was asked a question by someone who at least looked a lot like Mark Cameron, senior policy advisor and director of strategic initiatives in the Prime Minister’s Office.
CPAC broadcast tape this evening of Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain, speaking in Ottawa last month. Video is online here. Near the end, Westen was asked a question by someone who at least looked a lot like Mark Cameron, senior policy advisor and director of strategic initiatives in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Here’s how Westen describes his book.
In the last forty-five years, the American people have elected only three Democratic residents of the United States. Democrats—from the grassroots on up to the party leadership—are befuddled, confused, and angry. What led me to write this book was exactly what leads people to do everything they do, including vote: strong emotions. And that’s the central message of the book. Everything we know about mind, brain, and politics tells us that there are three things that determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven’t decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates’ policy positions. Democrats have insisted on starting at the bottom of this hierarchy, practicing “trickle up” politics—the theory that voting decisions trickle up from voters’ rational assessments of candidates’ policy positions. Trickle up politics turns out to be as valid as trickle down economics. The proof is in the White House, the Congress, and the federal judiciary. The antidote lies not in familiar prescriptions of moving to the center or the left but simply in moving the electorate. The way to win elections, particularly against a party that understands how to move people, is to understand the political brain—how it evolved, how it works, and how central emotion is to it.