honesty means having to say you’re wrong

President Bush said

in his January State of the Union Address that Iraq was trying to buy uranium

in Africa—an extraordinarily important charge that could justify a preemptive

war (on the assumption that Iraq would only need uranium for nuclear weapons).

According to today’s Washington

Post, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice "said Secretary

of State Colin L. Powell did not include the uranium allegation in the speech

he gave to the United Nations on Feb. 5, eight days after the president spoke.

She said that was because [the State Department] had questioned the matter."

This suggests to me that top Administration officials realized before Feb. 5 that

the State of the Union speech had included a dubious, but extremely significant,

assertion. Why then did they not issue a statement casting at least partial doubt

on the uranium story? Failure to withdraw a false claim of such enormous magnitude

seems to me deeply unethical. It was not nearly enough to refrain from repeating

the charge.

the place of ideology

I have been approached

by a publisher about the idea of writing a popular guide to politics for new voters,

in time for the 2004 campaign season. I don’t know if this idea will come to pass,

but it’s interesting.

Perhaps the "ideal citizen" would make an

independent and informed judgment about each issue and also each candidate, and

then vote accordingly. But none of us has the time or energy to do this. Instead,

we use shortcuts to make our voting choices. The most common shortcut, I believe,

is to choose a political identity for oneself: for example, "liberal"

or "conservative," or something somewhat more complicated, like "pro-choice

conservative" or "social liberal/fiscal conservative." We then

learn how to identify the candidates who fit this label, based on clues in their

rhetoric and a few issues that serve as proxies. If we are better-than-average

citizens, then we choose an ideology in a provisional way, trying to stay open-minded

and to understand the merits of alternative views. But we still use ideology as

a cue. CIRCLE surveys show that people

who cannot place themselves on an ideological scale or identify the differences

between Democrats and Republicans also do not vote.

Thus I may propose

to write a book that begins with a quiz, designed to identify the reader’s starting

ideology or political identity. If a reader chooses "don’t know" as

an answer to any question, he or she will be sent to pages in the book that introduce

the relevant issue. Once the reader has completed the quiz and identified a provisional

ideology, the rest of the book will help him or her to (a) think critically about

the pros and cons of this ideology and (b) learn how to identify candidates who

espouse it.

working with power

I’m reading all the back issues

of the Higher

Education Exchange, in order to write a mini-report for the editors about

their future strategy for the journal. One generally excellent article is Edward

Royce’s "The Practice of the Public Intellectual" (1999). In passing,

Royce makes a point that I consider very important. He writes: "public intellectuals

can work with those subject to power as well as against those who

exercise power." Working with ordinary people (or with especially

oppressed people) is an entirely different form of engagement from "speaking

truth to power." It requires more listening, more quiet work within institutions

and communities, more development of personal relationships and trust, more building

on local assets—and less dramatic rhetoric. Working against the powerful

is an important role for intellectuals to play. But working "with those

subject to power" seems equally valuable (and interesting).

new research on civic ed

I was in Boston today, for the International

Society for Political Psychology‘s annual conference. I went to give a presentation

on The Civic Mission of Schools.

While there, I heard interesting papers on civic education and on the effects

of public deliberation. I’ve summarized the latter papers on the DD-Net

blog. Regarding civic education:

  • Jon Miller of Northwestern

    University Medical School presented a very important study that has followed 3,000

    young Americans from 1987 to the present. Based on the data that his group has

    collected, they are able to show what factors predict political engagement in

    early adulthood. The courses taken in high school and students’ performance in

    these courses do not seem to matter at all. This finding is somewhat at odds with

    the Civic Mission of Schools, which claims that school-based civic education

    works, at least when done well.

    There’s a lot more to be said on this topic.

    For example, Miller’s work doesn’t distinguish between the kind of civic education

    that we would recommend and ordinary civic education. Furthermore, ordinary civic

    education does seem to increase students’ knowledge, which can itself be

    considered a good. Still, it should give us pause to note that there was no observed

    connection between taking a government/civics class in high school and voting

    later on.

  • Arthur "Skip" Lupia of Michigan is writing a very

    interesting book that applies insights from cognitive science to the question

    of civic education. There are obstacles to learning about civics that are hard-wired,

    he believes; and good teaching must address these obstacles. For example, when

    two equally respectable people say opposite things—which often happens in

    politics—we tend not to put either view into our long-term memories. I think

    it is undeniable that biological constraints are relevant. But I would have to

    be persuaded that the findings of cognitive science were very solid before I would

    want them to influence policy.

the Hatch/Wyden bill

The

Senate has passed a bill that would represent a very important experiment in

public deliberation. It is the Wyden-Hatch

bill, now section 620 of S. 1, the Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement

Act of 2003. If this provision survives the rest of the legislative process, it

will "provide for a nationwide public debate about improving the health care

system to provide every American with the ability to obtain quality, affordable

health care coverage; and …. provide for a vote by Congress on the recommendations

that result from the debate."

A large and diverse commission of stakeholders,

experts, and citizens would be appointed that would hold hearings; issue a public

"Health Report to the American People"; hold facilitated public deliberations

across the country (based on the Report); and then generate final recommendations.

The President would be required to comment formally on the results, and Congress

would have to hold formal hearings. The bill embodies the most advanced thinking

about how to organize public deliberations, and it would be a wonderful showcase.