Is getting elected and being an effective politician correlated?

Some researchers have been looking into what people vote for in a politician and whether this gets us effective politicians. It would seem not:

We found that voters are not necessarily able to see what politicians are required to do in their day-to-day work and therefore have to rely on characteristics that might seem to matter for leadership, but may not actually be that important

The researchers go on to observe:

Voters increasingly choose politicians based on personality traits such as how warm, reliable, or decisive they appear to be, judged often by how they look or how tall they are.

This last point reminds me of Scott Adams observation that, all other things being equal, the tall candidate with good hair will win. Nevertheless:

...voters prefer candidates who are agreeable, but are won over less by people who look warm...

It seems that the politician who engages with the public by nodding, smiling and say "absolutely something should be done about that" is the same politician who, faced with the wiles of the professional bureaucrat, will smile, nod and say "absolutely, we'll do that".

We quite often pretend that we want politicians who think for themselves, challenge the assumptions of the bureaucracy, and provide leadership or direction. But when we get to the ballot box, we ignore all that and choose the one who says he's our friend. The problem with this is that we've likely chosen a candidate who wants to be everyone's friend making meaning that - and you'll see this all the time in councillors and MPs - he or she will spend their entire time crafting appealing platitudinous soundbites rather than doing the job. It's also a reminder that the 'good constituency MP' is perhaps less useful than the MP who spends more time doing questioning and challenging things in Parliament. Not that MPs should ignore their constituencies but rather than spending the five years of their term opening fetes, visiting businesses and kissing babies in Bigchester South might be agreeable to those constituents but doesn't make for an effective MP.

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On taking voters for granted...

Out in Ohio, in what was once Democrat heartland but ain't no more:

"Every 2 years, every 4 years, locally they'd come around and say, ‘oh, we'll fight for you and take care of you,’ and then they'd disappear. It was like an abusive relationship."

Eventually voters get fed up. And then something like Trump turns up and you lose them.

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"Tell 'em I lied". Why politicians aren't truthful.

It's usually attributed to Huey or Earl Long both, back in the day, Governor of Louisiana. Presented with the truth about a campaign pledge and after deciding to go back on this promise, the Governor says to his advisor, "tell 'em I lied". It sort of reinforces the public's opinion about what politicians will say to get elected - I'll fix that, stop this, build something, make something. Promises that, like April snow, vanish at the first ray of sunshine.

Seems there's a reason:

We know from public choice theory that lying is more rational for a politician than for individuals in other walks of life. A politician's lies are less likely to be noticed or remembered by the "rationally ignorant" voter. Rational ignorance means that the individual voter has little incentive to invest time and money in gathering and analyzing political information because he will not be able, with his single vote, to change the election result. The politician running for office also has an incentive to lie when deprecating his opponents' character. If he wins, there will be no way to know whether or not his opponents would have been as bad as he claimed. And since the politician has no property rights in his office, the discounted value of his political reputation over time is very low, giving him an incentive to trade long-term credibility for short-run victories.

This observation (from a super article by Pierre Lemieux) is compounded by two additional problems. The first is that the voter wants to be lied to, wants to believe that government can solve whatever problems that voter has in his or her life. And as politicians we are only to happy to indulge this delusion by saying "of course, do you want that in green or blue?". The second problem is that truth is, as anyone looking at 'fact check' websites will know, often a matter of degree or emphasis. There's a lot of shouting about 'post-truth' and 'fake news' but this anger is limited - it doesn't touch on things that aren't true but that the public really believes are true. Here's Tim Worstall:

Perhaps a red flashing cop light beside an article which contains any of the following lies?

The minimum wage does not cause job losses.

Corporations should pay more tax.

Global inequality is rising.

US child poverty is over 20%.

We have widespread poverty in the UK.

17% of UK families cannot afford enough food.

What? You think these things are true? You read angst-ridden articles about them in the Guardian? Us politicians lie because you think things like imports being bad and exports good, that 'dumping' steel or solar panels is bad for our economy, and that regulation supports markets.

If you want truth then the most grown up thing you can do as a voter is to assume that the government is not interested in making your life better, is not concerned about the things that you're concerned about, and has the primary function of sustaining its current size, structure and powers regardless of their actual value to society. And, that politicians lie because you want and expect them to lie.

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In which the left remind us they hold the electorate in contempt (if they vote the wrong way)

 

I've no time for UKIP at all. Not only are their policies confused, swaying from gung ho libertarianism to proposing frightening degrees of state control, but the Party's strategy is entirely defined by Nigel Farage's desire to damage the Conservative Party. I find UKIP's approach almost as opportunistic as the old Liberal Democrats - chap down the pub complains about the smoking ban and UKIP want to scrap it. And when he moves on to not liking gay people getting hitched UKIP bounce onto that bandwagon.

But it's not the bloke in the pub's fault that UKIP act as an echo chamber for his prejudices, he's just doing what he has always done - sounding off about the ills of the world. And some of what he says is right - the smoking ban killed thousands of pubs along with the jobs of people who worked in those pubs, the EU is an undemocratic and unaccountable nightmare we'd be better off without and there are too many jobsworths at the Council.

But disagreeing with that bloke isn't a justification for being rude about him, for treating him with contempt. Yet this - and the poster above reminds us - is exactly how the left think we should campaign against UKIP. By calling the people who vote for that party "thick". Now I know this is the default view that the typical Guardian reader has of the working class or lower middle class voter, perhaps it reflects a deep disappointment that some of those voters no longer dutifully vote Labour as they're supposed to do (this may reflect the fact that the Labour candidate they're given - middle class, university educated, full of fancy words - doesn't hold or respect those voters' values). But it displays an utterly appalling arrogance.

If the left really want to respond to UKIP (rather than hope enough damage is done to the Conservatives that Ed Miliband gets to be PM on the votes of a third of the electorate) then they need to start listening to what the bloke in the pub is saying. Responding to his concerns about immigration, trying to understand why he's bothered about gay marriage and discussing what's wrong with the EU. Calling him thick is to guarantee that he'll carry right on voting UKIP. Why on earth should he vote for someone who thinks he's an idiot and isn't prepared to listen to what he's saying?

These are ordinary voters who are worried about things they see around them. They aren't stupid, they're not thick and they deserve our respect. If the left can't do that it deserves to be wiped out.

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Less policy, more poetry please.

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"Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies in a box on Beasley Street"

John Cooper Clarke is a great poet. I don't share his politics but I appreciate the poetry of his passion, an almost anger captured by the quote above. And, unlike too much modern poetry, Clarke's is accessible and appealing beyond the usual pretentious circles of the literary world. It's a reminder that, like a great song, a poem cuts right to the very core of something. It communicates.

So I was struck by Clarke's comments about today's politics:

 

I suppose if I had to I would vote Labour but only out of blind class hatred, nothing else. That's what keeps these bastards coming back. To be honest, the only one whose language I even remotely understand is Nige [Farage]. Shoot me down in flames. Everyone else: they talk about nothing that seems to matter. It's beyond satire. And even satire has become PR, you know, since someone told politicians they will get more votes if they join in with the piss-taking themselves.

This comment from Clarke isn't an endorsement of UKIP but rather a recognition that most of our political leaderships fail to break through to the audience, to get them to pay attention, to really listen. Take a few minutes and read the tweets of politicians - with just a couple of exceptions these are boring, banal and entirely forgettable. All wrapped up in caveats, conditions and the avoidance of confrontation, today's political communication mostly fails to communicate. Or rather it communicates the message that we are patronising, out-of-touch and unable to hold a conversation with a voter.

One thing Nigel Farage seems to understand is that it's perfectly fine to attack your opponents - there's no chance of getting 100% support so spending time trying not to alienate people who will never vote for you is a thoroughly stupid idea. Yet politicians do this, carefully crafting their words to be inclusive and the views to be moderate. We peer down our noses at the likes of Farage, talking of extremism and division - as if it's impossible to present a moderate view in polemic.


If the public simply don't grasp our language then all those hours of policy wonkery, the backroom chats and the market research will be wasted. We fail if we think it's enough for our political tribe to like, retweet or forward the latest banality. We don't breakthrough if our policies are presented in press releases with all the wit and charm of one explaining a vending machine. Or where those policies trickle out in speeches to selected audiences and are couched in the language of those chosen few not words a shop assistant or sales rep would use. No-one cares, no-one's listening.

Clarke's Beasley Street captures a place and the idea of a place in a few sharp words - you've an image of that Salford street instantly as he delivers the words. And politics can do this too:

It's morning again in America.

It didn't matter much about the words that came after this opener in Hal Riney's ad - he'd got your attention with that image, those few words said more than all the statistics we politicians play our games with. And it worked.

Our words are guided by audience analysis, filtered through focus groups and derived from the policy brief not the benefit on offer. We list initiatives and policies with each one design to tick a communications box. Speeches and announcements are made according to a framework rather than because we've anything to say. And we make the grand assumption that it's the detail of policy that matters rather than the positive image of the place we're in or the place we want to get to.

Here's the opening paragraph of the 1945 Labour Manifesto - this is how it's done:

Victory is assured for us and our allies in the European war. The war in the East goes the same way. The British Labour Party is firmly resolved that Japanese barbarism shall be defeated just as decisively as Nazi aggression and tyranny. The people will have won both struggles. The gallant men and women in the Fighting Services, in the Merchant Navy, Home Guard and Civil Defence, in the factories and in the bombed areas - they deserve and must be assured a happier future than faced so many of them after the last war. Labour regards their welfare as a sacred trust. 

Bang - straight to the point. We've won the war, now let's make the country a great place for the men who did the winning for us. If you read that manifesto - and for good or ill it changed the country forever - it's not filled with statistics or analysis, just a narrative describing the Britain a Labour government would create.

For balance read the 1979 Conservative Manifesto - again it makes a clear call from the start:

THIS ELECTION is about the future of Britain - a great country which seems to have lost its way. It is a country rich in natural resources, in coal, oil, gas and fertile farmlands. It is rich, too, in human resources, with professional and managerial skills of the highest calibre, with great industries and firms whose workers can be the equal of any in the world. We are the inheritors of a long tradition of parliamentary democracy and the rule of law.

Yet today, this country is faced with its most serious problems since the Second World War. What has happened to our country, to the values we used to share, to the success and prosperity we once took for granted? 

Today's politics with its media and message management does not allow for great narrative, let alone poetry. The popular response to most of our words is 'so what'. We don't paint pictures with words or tell stories, we relate a barrage of 'facts' and a torrent of policy hoping some of it sticks.

So let's remember that, come the day that matters, the politicians aren't in charge - we are. Election day as John Greenleaf Whittier put it is everyone's day and politicians should remember this:

The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known
My palace is the people’s hall,
The ballot-box my throne!

Who serves to-day upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;

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