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We will field a survey immediately after the election that will assess, among other things, whether people voted knowledgeably and in synch with their own values and beliefs. We will ask them their top policy issue, followed by a policy preference about that issue, followed by some questions about the candidates’ stances on that issue. We want to know whether voters can pick an issue, know where the candidates stand on it, and voted for the one who shared their opinions.
We are having one heck of time choosing or writing questions that fairly and validly assess citizens’ knowledge of the candidates’ policy stances. On practically every issue, both candidates say inconsistent or fuzzy things or deny reasonably neutral characterizations of their positions. For example, is Romney in favor of Medicare vouchers? He says he isn’t. Even if one disagrees, it seems wrong to assess voters’ knowledge by asking them which candidate advocates Medicare vouchers. The fact that the candidate in question denies it is a pretty good excuse for not being sure.
Speaking emphatically for myself alone and not for the CIRCLE team–I think this is a lousy presidential campaign. The incumbent can’t say: “Vote for me so that I can veto Republican efforts to undo some of the unpopular but beneficial things I achieved in my first four years, but I will not be able to do much else.” And the Republican cannot say, “Vote for me so I can cut upper-income tax rates and raise the national debt even though I said I would reduce it.” So they spew a lot of Malarkey, and even if you worked for 15 years in a graduate school of public policy (as I did), you cannot write survey questions that reasonably assess their positions.
Lest I be accused of false-equivalence, I didn’t say that they spew equal quantities of malarkey and buncombe. I think the Romney campaign is substantially worse. But if you think the president is being straightforward, try writing survey questions that assess citizens’ understanding of his positions.
I think this campaign has brought into particularly sharp relief how campaigns and the electoral process work to distract the public from the actually significant questions and issues. E.g. we are facing critical questions about our involvement in the Middle East, including the possibility of war with Iran, our relationship with Israel, and our position toward Arab popular movements. Yet the campaign and debates instead channeled intense media and public attention to the question of whether Obama said “terror” or “terrorism” in the Rose Garden the day after the Libya embassy attack. In that sense campaigns are not just a sideshow but an important mechanism working to actually prevent public deliberation.
Part of what is going on here is that the two parties are operating within a pretty broad agreed-upon consensus and don’t wish to debate anything in that consensus. And then, as you point out, in areas they disagree on within that consensus none of the choices are particularly good so they don’t want to publicly discuss those either. The Republicans are the more radical party in that they have a significant component that wants to break the consensus in certain areas, but no smart Republican wants to discuss that too much either as it would be unpopular. This is the source of Romney’s strategic ‘dishonesty’ — he had to play ball with the tea party to get the nomination but has no interest in actually running on those positions. This may actually be a good thing to the degree that it reflects his own personal disagreement with tea party economics or his own understanding that certain numbers don’t add up, although it prevents a public assessment of Republican ideology that will be influential within his administration whether he believes in it or not.
Thanks for reading! I suppose Romney’s real position is not exactly what I said in the post. It’s more like this: “If elected, I will pursue a Keyesian economic stimulus policy much like Obama’s, but I can’t say that because my party has denounced his policy as anti-American and socialistic, and also because mine will be moderately different from his in unpopular ways–tilted even more toward upper-income tax cuts and defense spending, and less toward things like education spending.”