Gary Galles
Contributing Writer
In the escalating negativity in American politics, as illustrated by the Swift Boat crossfire, each side constantly unearths arcane new details that support their side, which partisans quickly learn and incorporate into dueling character assassinations in every form of media. At the same time, voters are dangerously uninformed about important political policies and their likely effects.
Why do so many Americans know almost nothing of the policies elections are supposedly about, but so much about the soap opera details of personal dirt that can be heaped on opponents? It is because the individual benefits from being informed about that dirt often far outweigh those from becoming better informed about policies.
People acquire information when they expect their benefits from a better choice to exceed the added costs of obtaining the information to make it. However, in affecting public policy, each person’s vote is but one among many. Therefore, an individual voter has only a minute chance of influencing any election, which means that the benefits in terms of changing policy from becoming better informed politically are virtually zero. Even editorializing about the importance of each vote, illustrated by a handful of elections decided by only a relatively few votes, ironically demonstrates that your individual vote would not matter even in the closest of elections.
In contrast, the private payoff to being informed about political dirt can be substantial. The greatest part of that payoff for many people is in looking “with it” at cocktail parties and other similar gatherings.
Given that “birds of a feather flock together” at such gatherings, especially at a time when politics is so divisive, most people at events where conviviality is important tend to be those who largely share political beliefs (Hollywood comes to mind, as do many Web site communities). Since no one is likely to challenge those already shared views in that situation, there is little necessity to be able to seriously defend them against logical or factual objections. This makes the payoff to such information very small, especially when reinforced by the tendency to set a low standard of proof for arguments that support your position, but carefully scrutinize any argument to the contrary.
On the other hand, since what unites such groups is often a common disdain for “the other guy,” there is a substantial personal payoff in those situations to knowing dirt that can be used to demean his character. It allows you to show them how smart and informed you are with the latest “can you top this” revelations about how evil your opponent is. The same sense of shared outrage can be also invoked against the partisans of your common opponent, along with indignation that your obviously innocent and truthful candidate is similarly attacked by others, using their own collection of dirt, but ignoring the dirt you want to emphasize.
There are many reasons for the negativity of politics. But the increasing dominance of attention focused on discovering political dirt seems to be crowding out many citizens’ already limited incentives to discover policy-relevant information. That can only undermine the collective wisdom of the electorate, which politicians laud before each election, with potentially severe consequences. Of course, boilerplate rhetoric aside, that may not bother the major parties much, since whoever wins will soon override much of that wisdom by substituting government determinations and impositions for many choices such wise citizens should be left to make for themselves.
09-30-2004