The Manager and the Moralist

David Brooks has most succinctly boiled down the debate, I think. Remove style, eloquence, and off-camera body language, and you basically have two ways to see the world. Like a “manager or engineer,” Kerry is results-oriented. He is mostly focused on the details and the process. I?m not sure he?s “coldly secular,” but undoubtedly the thrust of Kerry?s arguments were rooted in pragmatism and reason. If a company is floundering, the board or senior management must develop a plan to fix the problems. This doesn’t necessarily mean it must change its business principles, however. In fact, often struggling companies return to their core values ?”This is what we do best, this is what we?re good at, and we must re-commit to our founder?s vision for the company.” A smart business would never continue down the wrong path just because it was “certain” about that path’s viability in an earlier era. Any veteran dot-com around today can attest to this fact. Kerry successfully employed this formulation when he said, “It’s one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong. It’s another to be certain and be right, or to be certain and be moving in the right direction, or be certain about a principle and then learn new facts and take those new facts and put them to use in order to change and get your policy right.” But Kerry?s big problem is that while he is learning new facts and changing policy, average Americans don’t detect consistent, guiding principles.

Meanwhile, Bush is almost a character and values fetishist. While Kerry?s “heart went out” to Florida?s hurricane victims, Bush one-upped him by saying, “Our prayers are with the people of this great state.” His classic black-and-white worldview was on full display: “if you harbor a terrorist, you’re equally as guilty as the terrorist.” You could sense that he just wanted to look at the camera, and say, “OK screw it. This debate business is a waste of my time. Here?s the deal. If you want to be safer, stick with me. If you think terrorists are evil, stick with me. If you don?t want to be a slave to the UN, stick with me. Otherwise, Frenchy over there is your man.” Strong, resolute, steadfast. Just not all that concerned with reality.

But what if Lincoln, Churchill, or Martin Luther King were only guided by a strict adherence to pragmatism? Would there have been an Emancipation Proclamation? How much longer would it have taken for civil rights reforms to change hearts and policies? Isn’t it sometimes worth abandoning reason when it comes to fighting against injustice and tyranny and fighting for freedom and liberty? But while it is debatable whether freedom is really on the march in Iraq, as George Will pointed out, it is certainly on the retreat in Russia. And the best intentions won’t change this fact.

George Lakoff, a “progressive linguist,” has been busy demonstrating to Democrats how the GOP so effectively “frames the issues” by repeating accusations (think “flip-flop”) over and over again until they stick. Lakoff rightly argues that voters?people?are not automatons only concerned with where candidates stand on issues. “Democrats and liberals always assume people vote their self-interests, he said, like shoppers with a grocery list,” wrote Matthew Craft in a [url=http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/02/lakoff/index.html] recent Salon article[/url] about Lakoff. The linguist contends that Cognitive Science shows us that?s not how people work. It?s the values, stupid. And it helps explain why George Bush, despite all of his failures, is supported by 50% of America. He cries with war widows. His favorite philosopher is Jesus. He put his arm around firemen after September 11. He has convinced a lot of people that he really has convictions. But will voters demand more than faith in November? Will they want results too?

October 4th, 2004