Monthly Archives: February 2004

Jay Rosen on Dean

Jay Rosen is one of my very favorite media critics and theorists of democracy. Still, I’m slightly surprised by his retrospective enthusiasm for the Dean campaign. Those who were closely involved with the campaign feel they lived through something important and noble, and their feelings can be contagious. Nevertheless, I don’t buy that the “distributed” methods pioneered by Joe Trippi will do anything to improve our democracy.

Jay writes: “The miracle is that an alternative to campaigns-as-usual had finally become visible with the Internet’s semi-maturation as political tool. … This alternative had proven itself in the one way that counts on everyone’s scorecard: raising money. That Dean had raised it in small amounts, in distributed fashion, aided by a social movement which began to gather online and kept gathering, along with the blogs and the spirit of active participation– all of that motion meant something.”

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the commons and youth development

I’m writing a paper (for a conference organized by Lin Ostrom) that connects my two main preoccupations: the Internet as a commons, and youth civic development. Actually, I believe this link is very important. A “commons” is a public asset. It requires voluntary contributions, and it can be ruined by pollution or exploitation. Therefore, it depends on people who display trust, reciprocity, long time-horizons, optimism about the possibilities of voluntary collective action, and personal commitment. People have to be raised this way; they aren’t born “civic” (i.e., with a deep feeling of belonging and responsibility for some common good).

Lots of evidence shows that people develop durable attitudes toward the public sphere during adolescence. They either come to see themselves as efficacious, obligated, critical members of a community, or they do not. Their identity, once formed in adolescence, is hard to shake. This theory derives from Karl Mannheim, but it has considerable recent empirical support. In the 1920s, Mannheim argued that we are forced to develop a stance toward the public world of news, issues, and governments when we first encounter these things, usually in our teens. Our stance can be one of contempt or neglect, or it can be some kind of engagement, whether critical or conservative. Most of us never have a compelling reason to reassess this stance, so it remains in place throughout adulthood. That is why generations have enduring political and social characters, formed in their early years.

Unfortunately, there is reason to suspect that young Americans are less likely to develop civic identities and values today than in the past. For instance, most of the decline in social trust since 1970 is a result of young Americans becoming highly distrustful of fellow citizens. This is bad news for any effort to develop a commons–whether a small-scale resource like a community garden or a vast social form like the Internet. There are (of course) some young people with habits and norms that are friendly to the commons, but not nearly enough.

On the bright side, we know how to develop civic identities. Adolescents need to feel that they are assets, rather than potential problems; that they matter to a group. It also helps to have direct experience with civic or public work. This is the impetus behind much service-learning. It is also what we are trying to accomplish at Maryland by helping young people to create free public goods for display on a community website.

gay marriage

I’m very taken by the idea that the government should stop recognizing “marriage” at all. It should be up to religious denominations, families, and civil society to debate who can marry. Government should simply recognize certain contracts between pairs of adults that govern such matters as joint property, inheritance, adoption, and insurance. Those who oppose gay “marriage” can argue their position within their denominations and communities, and those in favor can develop appropriate rituals and ceremonies. But the government should not discriminate in recognizing contract rights, because of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Some critics are saying that this approach is a slippery slope. If discriminating against gay couples is unconstitutional, why may the government forbid bigamy and polygamy? My answer would be: people may live in polygamous families if they really want to (although I’m against it, morally). And they may say that they’re “married.” However, the government may legally create a type of contract that can only be signed by two consenting adults.

a windshield tour

Today, I rode with two colleagues up and down the streets of Hyattsville, Mount Rainier, and Riverdale, Maryland–communities northeast of the District of Columbia. We are planning a high school course for later this spring, in which students will make maps to show features of the local geography that might contribute to healthy or unhealthy living. This is a fairly complex and ambitious project, now involving six graduate students or colleagues from the university, one high school teacher, and a colleague from the Orton Foundation in Vermont. Today we were simply trying to decide what precise areas we should map. The landscape is largely suburban, with strip malls, big highways, and used car lots. There are also patches of older housing on urban grids, and some large apartment complexes. Although the topography is suburban (and sprawl is an issue), the population is stereotypically urban: most people are African American or Latino, with a low-to-moderate income level, and there is a sprinkling of mostly White graduate students and artists. Although I suspect that even most residents would not describe the setting as attractive, there is great cultural diversity. Planning to make maps of an area forces you to recognize the complexity and the wealth of human assets that it contains.

political consultants

A Washington Post article suggests that perhaps Howard Dean’s former campaign manager, Joe Trippi, decided to spend huge amounts of money on television because he is a partner in the firm that places ads for Dean’s campaign, and it captures a percentage of every advertising dollar. In contrast, money spent on door-to-door canvassing, events, phone banks, and mass mail does not enrich Trippi personally.

Trippi denies a conflict of interest and emphasizes that all his decisions were vetted by others. I don’t much care whether he’s guilty or innocent as an individual. I’m more interested in the general problem of consultants’ conflict of interest . There is a lot of evidence that door-to-door campaigning wins votes, but hardly any evidence for the effectiveness of TV advertising. Canvassing is also more likely to increase overall turnout, which is good for democracy. Since candidates could win by putting money into canvassing, one would expect them to do so. But not if their consultants advise them to spend on broadcasting–which enriches them personally.

Consultants reply as follows (I quote from the Post): “Although some disreputable practitioners may pad bills, other forces work against such behavior. Because ad strategists tend to make more money the longer a candidate stays in a race, it is self-defeating to spend wildly early on, they say. Moreover, winning is the best calling card of all: A successful campaign tends to burnish a media consultant’s reputation and put the consultant in demand for the next election cycle.”

The pressure to win has some influence on consultants, but it is only one factor among many. Besides, the reelection rate in Congress is at least 83%, so most consultants work for candidates who are bound to stay in the race until the end, and then win. Yet they choose to spend their money on advertisements rather than campaign techniques that would strengthen democracy.