Racine, WI: I’ve been told that the Republican Party has conducted
more than 50 randomized experiments to test which methods and
messages most efficiently persuade people to vote. My organization,
CIRCLE, has also funded and collected such randomized
field tests, although we are a nonprofit organization, so we can
only test completely neutral, non-partisan messages ("Vote for
someone this fall").
Near Racine, WI: I’m at Frank Lloyd Wright’s beautiful Wingspread estate for a meeting of the Grant Makers’ Forum on Community and National Service. Yesterday, on my way here, I had a chance to visit the State Capitol in Madison, which I’d never seen before. The Capitol building was erected under then-Senator Robert (“Fighting Bob”) La Follette. I wanted to see it because I once spent most of a year studying his career. Some of the information I collected found its way into my New Progressive Era book, although I abandoned most of the historical detail. La Follette was a major figure, and a successful one insofar as he transformed his home state, passed major legislation in Washington, and drew millions of votes in two presidential campaigns. On the other hand, many of his favorite causes and greatest battles ended in defeat, and the Progressive movement faltered in the twenties. I believe that he faced several dilemmas that we still haven’t figured out how to solve:
I’m writing this on Sunday night, flying from New Orleans to Madison, WI, on a precisely northward path across Middle America. I was in New Orleans to give a keynote luncheon address at the International Conference on Civic Education Research. Nine days ago I gave a similar speech at the International Conference on Service-Learning Research in Salt Lake City. I keep thinking about the contrast of these venues. Salt Lake City in November is cold, dry, thousands of feet above sea level, rimmed by snowcapped peaks. It seems a place of stark contrasts, with no gradations between the city and the wilderness, the lake and the desert, the Mormons and the non-Mormons, the prosperous clean-cut business people and the few homeless men with their prophet beards and wild eyes. Large banks and hotels (Victorian or modernist) stand foursquare between straight wide avenues and barren lots. The huge moon and streetlights make the night as light as day. Almost everyone I saw was white.
My organization, CIRCLE, promotes a set of 19 "core
indicators of civic engagement" as a way of measuring
the level of engagement of any youthful group or community,
and also as a way of assessing the civic impact of a program, class,
or project. These 19 indicators were chosen after an elaborate national
research project managed by Scott Keeter, Cliff Zukin, Molly Andolina,
and Krista Jenkins, who talked to practitioners and young people in
focus groups and then conducted a national survey. Despite its empirical
rigor, their list of indicators provokes an interesting and important
controversy. I have heard the following views expressed:
In response to yesterday’s post about websites that will calculate
your ideology for you, Nels Lindahl
emailed me about a site called The
Political Compass. This is the most sophisticated and thoughtful
example of the genre, in my opinion. One of its great virtues is its
two-dimensional understanding of ideology, which is much better than
a simple left-right scale. I took the quiz and came out as a moderately
leftist social libertarian, similar to Nelson Mandela and the Dalai
Lama. I’m happy to accept that score.