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3 out of 5
by
John
from
The United States | Dec 8, 2008
The book started off in superb fashion-tossing out psychological gems like candy to the reader, but the grotesque bias that clouds an otherwise intelligent person makes this a difficult read and an awful philosophy.
Westen starts off by mentioning a study in which participants showed how people rationalize blatant contradictions by their favorite political candidates. When the participants found a way to keep their candidates in good standing, the "happy circuits" in their brains lit up like a Christmas tree. This study showed that people--once they've picked a political party or candidate--very little evidence will change their mind about them.
Instead of dwelling on this dramatic finding and elaborating on why today's us-against-them mentality in politics is killing our democracy and bigger goals (like truth), Westen spends the majority of the book showing how Republicans use emotion to manipulate the populace and how Democrats should use emotion also--not to manipulate constituents' minds--but to reveal the valid points Democrats are trying to get across.
This book fails because it's contradictory itself: The religious right is evil when they use religion to make a political move, but Westin uses religion throughout his book (not just his native Judaism) to make his points; Westen shows that popularity of issues are an indication of their validity, but then contradicts that by saying the Civil Rights movement was correct despite its unpopularity; and of course, Republicans who use emotion are diabolical, but Democrats are the white knights using emotion to spread truth. Westen also uses polls throughout the book, but at one point explicitly says that polls can basically say anything you want them to--each poll can be used for either side.
Despite the author's initial plea to people on both sides of the aisle, his bias is deliberate and obvious and it's another major drawback to the book--Nixon wasn't the President who got us out of Viet Nam, he was the President who dismantled the War on Poverty. Johnson wasn't the President who presided over the largest troop deployment in US history (to Viet Nam) he was a champion of civil rights. Clinton wasn't lucky to get elected (minority votes) and lucky to preside over a boom--he was an emotional and economic genius. Well, I hate to break it to you Drew, you aren't the objective voter who shares the views of every American, you are a snide, biased, commentator.
Die hard Democrats will love this book, but people with an honestly open mind will struggle to get past the first few pages--unfortunately, there's little new in this book--it just perpetuates the us-against-them mentality that makes politics today so unbearable. For a better book about politics, try Justice and Equality: A Dialogue on the Philosophies of Conservatism and Liberalism and for a better book about psychology, try Stumbling on Happiness.
3 people found this review helpful
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4 out of 5
by
Steven
from
Hershey, PA | Oct 21, 2009
The dust jacket has one line that is at the center of this book: "The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works." Drew Westen uses this thought as a takeoff point in his book, "The Political Brain." He asserts that (page xv) "The political brain is an emotional brain."
One point that he hammers throughout the book is that Republicans do a better job of connecting with voters at an emotional, gut level than do Democrats. Ds tend to make rational points; Rs wed their points to emotional appeals, ending up doing much better. He provides examples from the Gore-Bush and Bush-Kerry campaigns. One interesting feature of the book is the author's development of how Gore and Kerry could have crafted statements to wed emotion to policy talking points in a way to, in Westen's view, would trump the Republican efforts. As an example of where Democrats have succeeded, he notes Bill Clinton's wedding of talking points to emotional appeals.
The discussion of neurosciences and how they tie into the argument is a bit underdeveloped. Westen does discuss some studies and notes some of his own research. Nonetheless, he could have elaborated more completely and made a more compelling case. He also addresses the evolution of what he terms "the passionate brain," in which (page 51) ". . .Feeling and thinking evolved together, and nature `designed' them to work together."
He discusses specific policy arenas and how Democrats have ceded the potent ground wedding emotion and thinking, from abortion to gun control to race to taxes. He takes Democratic consultants and campaign advisors to task. There is a bit of "conflict of interest," in some senses, since he also consults for Democrats. He is most explicit about one goal of this volume during his policy arena by policy arena analysis on page 380: "The central point of this chapter is that Democrats need to talk about values, morality, and faith again, but not by talking like Republicans. They need to offer a counternarrative that has as its core beneficence, tolerance, and humility, not hate, contempt, and dogma." That quotation surely provides a taste of Westen's passion and his political perspective.
One real annoyance with the book that I purchased. Each chapter is studded with numbered footnotes--but nowhere in the volume are the corresponding citations. One must go to a web site to get them. This keeps the volume shorter, but it makes it more difficult to check out citations. One might not necessarily be near the Internet while reading the book and wanting to check something out.
His call to realize that there is a passionate component to politics and political discourse, his linkage of evolution and brain structure and function to political thinking and behavior is well taken. There are some less than optimal elements to the book, as noted, but, overall, this is a provocative volume that will get readers to thinking.
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5 out of 5
by
Gordon
from
The United States | May 23, 2009
In the 2004 Presidential election, George Bush beat John Kerry by “Swift Boating” him. Karl Rove, Bush’s campaign strategist, recruited a group of military veterans of the Republican far-right persuasion, who formed a group called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” and attacked Kerry for allegedly lying about his military record commanding a patrol boat in Vietnam and for collecting a Purple Heart Medal for a trivial wound. The star witness in the Swift Boat TV ads was a man who claimed he had actually treated Kerry for his “wound”.
There were a few problems here. The name of this witness didn’t match the names of any of the medical personnel on Kerry’s records. For such a supposedly superficial wound, it was hard to explain why Kerry still carried shrapnel in his body decades later. Kerry had returned to the US and become a prominent member of the anti-war movement, subjecting him to intense attack from the Republican administration and the right-wing in general. Yet none of these charges had come up then, at a time when the facts would surely have been fresh in everyone’s mind and their was plenty of motivation to use any unflattering information to discredit that "traitor", John Kerry.
Faced with this attack, the near-universal expectation was that Kerry would come back swinging immediately. He did not. He waited in dignified silence. He waited a full two weeks, then responded by having his campaign manager (!) send a letter to her Republican counterpart (!) requesting that Bush repudiate the attacks. Bush did nothing of the kind. Kerry and his campaign then tried to systematically refute the charges by presenting the facts, but it was far too little, too late. The effect of the attacks and their impact on voter opinion was devastating. In a close election, the Swift Boat ad campaign represented the margin of victory that brought the country four more years of George Bush and Dick Cheney.
The irony of this whole sorry episode is this: Notoriously, Bush had used his father’s political connections to get him into the safety of the National Guard (and then failed to show up for duty much of the time) while Cheney had obtained draft deferments FIVE times, explaining later that he had “other priorities” than going to war.
The Bush campaign had given Kerry’s team a golden opportunity to score a knockout blow: to shine a light on the sorry record of his armchair-warrior opponents, their thread-bare ethics, and their willingness to send other people’s children off to die on the battlefield despite their unwillingness to serve when their own turn had come 30-some years before. Kerry’s team blew it.
And that story, in a nutshell, represents the core of the thesis of The Political Brain. It goes like this:
• Democrats think that the guy with the best facts, the best policies and the best logic will win. Republicans think that the guy with the best story line that goes straight to the emotions of the voters wins.
• Democrats think that negative campaigning is a bad thing. Republicans recognize that it doesn’t matter whether you go positive or negative – the idea is to tell an effective story that makes your guy look good and the other guy look bad.
• Democrats think elections are fought in the marketplace of ideas. Republicans think elections are fought in the marketplace of emotions.
If you like the application of psychology to politics, and if you like great political story-telling, you'll love this book. You'll also never listen to any political speech in quite the same way again.
1 people found this review helpful
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5 out of 5
by
Bruce
from
The United States | Mar 1, 2009
I echo Robert Kuttner's and Bill Clinton's comments : This is the most illuminating book about American politics I've ever read. The author is a clinical and theoretical psychologist who also has an incredible intuitive understanding of politics and the political mind. He argues that Democratic political strategists, like most economists, political scientists, and others, have been captive to a view of the mind that drastically underestimates the role of emotion, as opposed to rational calculation, in making decisions. He offers striking experimental evidence but also detailed, penetrating, and savvy analysis of speeches and statements from recent campaigns to make an extremely persuasive case. Also humorous and marvelously well written. Seems like Obama got the point in the last election.
1 people found this review helpful
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4 out of 5
by
Ray
from
Oceanside, CA | May 3, 2010
The unfortunate thing about Westen's book is that he probably is correct in describing how our brains respond to emotional political adds rather than on the basic facts behind them. Weston provides examples of well planned political speeches from the past, and effective political ads from previous elections (mostly all Republican ads), and explains why they grabbed the listeners on an emotional level. A life-long Democrat, Weston also bemoans the lack of effective responses or campaigns of the Democratic Party on a National level, with few exceptions. His writing tends to evolve into recommendations for Democratic candidates in general. Ultimately, his insights and recommendations are interesting, but the unfortunate thing, and his point, is that more and more, future campaigns are likely to be decided by clever adds than by the policies and ideas of the candidates.