SOCIAL: fascinating election article

[Amandeep Jawa]

Fascinating article from a professor at Emory, exploring how & why  
Obama won & the roles of both reason and emotion in political choice.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/lessons-learned-from-the_b_144300.html

Here are two good snips:

Yet none of these factors--the Bush legacy that bedeviled McCain,  
which he had to embrace to win his party's nomination but ultimately  
tightened like a noose around his political neck as November  
approached, or the Obama team's ability to mobilize people and  
technology--can explain what happened between mid August, when McCain  
had caught up to Obama in most polls (and early September, when McCain  
took his first clear lead) and November 4, when Obama achieved a  
decisive victory. Nor can these factors explain why Obama, who was  
steadily losing ground to Hillary Clinton from the summer of 2007  
through early November of that year (when she broke 50% in the  
national polls among Democratic voters and seemed, according to many  
commentators, "inevitable"), suddenly took off after his speech at the  
Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa, which many observers described as a  
turning point in the Democratic nomination process.

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Messages matter. Compelling narratives, carefully crafted one-liners,  
and pithy phrases are no substitute for carefully thought-out policy  
positions if you want to govern well. But carefully thought-out policy  
positions are no substitute for compelling narratives, carefully  
crafted one-liners, and pithy phrases that capture the essence of your  
values or vision if you want to govern at all.

And there is nothing as powerful in politics as a powerful messenger.  
This time, this moment, the American people found that messenger.



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Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory  
University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of "The Political  
Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation."







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Amandeep Jawa
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deep AT deeptrouble DOT com
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San Francisco, CA 94110-2320

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