Newsweek Ferguson editorial on revolutions

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/27/un-american-revolutions.html

To Newsweek:

Niall Ferguson's article about revolutions was one of the worst I have ever read in your publication. Yes revolutions are a dirty business, but America's was not any more noble. Surely the British Empire represented tyranny, and the founding of the US led to many good things, but also the perpetuation of slavery, the butchering of Native Americans during Western Expansion, the gory Civil War, and Hiroshima.

Also, the US has opposed more revolutions than it supported. Business and political elites were horrified by socialist uprisings in Russia and China (the US military even sent troops to oppose the Bolsheviks, and Truman derided Mao as "Mousie Dung"), and preferred to heap praises on Hitler's leadership of post-WWI Germany. During the Cold War, we and our affiliates crushed leftist-nationalist movements in Congo, Central America, and Chile, resulting in years of repression and mass murder. We only supported revolts against the Soviets, even if they were conducted by likes of the Contras or Mujahadeen.

Current protests in the Middle East are not exclusively conducted by illiterates and Muslim extremists, as Ferguson intimates. Yes they are poor and jobless (not their fault), but many of them are college students, and some in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood are from the upper class. This of course does not guarantee that future governments will be peaceful and cooperative with Western interests, but Ferguson should not assume that the result will be carnage just because it fits the Arab stereotype.

Ferguson poo-pooed Obama's 2009 Cairo speech as feeble and vague, but he should know that Obama did call for increased women's rights as well as political reforms. And he wasn't the only Western leader to embrace the "new Gaddafi." Does Ferguson seriously prefer Bush's neoconservative "democracy at gunpoint" approach that may have been well-meaning, but an utter failure in practice? His promotion of the "McCain strategy" is questionable as well. The 21st Century Middle East is not Cold War Eastern Europe. There are no viable pro-democracy social institutions and movements to back because the oil despots that the West tolerates/supports have violently quashed them. And to call for inciting conflict among Islamists as beneficial to US foreign policy is both preposterous and appalling, especially considering the Iran-Iraq War and more recent Iraqi sectarian bloodshed (in both of which the US played a negative role).

More on teacher firings and education reform

And I guess Obama is not the only dumbass on the issue:




http://www.newsweek.com/id/234590



Newsweek had a cover story on teacher firings too, but missed the big picture. I was disappointed by the writers' narrow perspective. Bad teachers are a problem for US education, but not the only problem. What about bloated school district bureaucracies, ineffective and overpaid administrators (who are also rarely fired), declining of family time, and sociopolitical apathy to explore more sophisticated remedies than standardized testing?



The Obama administration and Newsweek praised the mass firings at Central Falls, RI. The teachers were being unreasonable, but it is not "bold" and "courageous" leadership for Superintendant Gallo to just give up and fire them. That is terribly traumatic for students, erodes community trust, and destroys the morale of good teachers with decades of professional wisdom. The finger-pointers should first remodel crumbling classrooms, help overwhelmed families, reduce poverty, and develop smarter ways to measure and enhance teaching performance. Then if learning doesn't improve, go ahead and fire the teachers.



Newsweek praised the European model where teachers are cherry-picked from top college grads, paid better vs. other professions, and more culturally respected. They say that many US teachers come from the bottom third of college-bound high schoolers, and once they reach tenure (fought for by unions in the past), they are virtually immune to firing regardless of performance. Yes this could be a problem. Well how do they propose changing our culture and economics to pay teachers more and celebrate the profession so our top people want to join? If our brightest stars hear in the media about mass teacher layoffs/firings (either due to NCLB or bankrupt governments), horrible teaching conditions (including school shootings), and now possiblying doing away with tenure and pension, then why would all but the most masochistic/saintly/both of them want to sign up? Blaming teachers is like blaming the fireman for a burning building. The fireman may have failed to save the kitten inside, but they didn't start the fire either.



So Europe has it all figured out, and our system is broken just because tenured teachers can't be fired. But Newsweek failed to consider that teacher firings in Europe are also probably very low. I couldn't find data on it, but in general it's a lot harder to get fired in Western Europe than the US. You can argue that the average European teacher is better anyway, so it's less likely that he or she would be in danger of termination. But because of job security, resources, and social support, European teachers are more likely to succeed. If you've spoken to anyone who grew up in a European education system, they will tell you that most students were well behaved and it was easy to enforce discipline. The thought of talking back to authority figures or goofing off never crossed their minds, and if they did, they knew punishment would be severe. That's like the polar opposite of many US schools, especially poor urban ones. So it's a positive feedback loop: European teachers start good, are well taken care of, and work with polite kids. So that makes it easy for them to succeed and make their students learn better, which precludes the need to fire anyone. US teachers in poor schools may be inferior, but they also have shit to work with, and are now one test score away from a pink slip. They're set up for failure. You can't chop off a marathon runner's leg and then scold him for not finishing the race.



And then Newsweek hailed the Teach for America (TFA, which I just found out is co-sponsored by Goldman Sachs - BIG RED FLAG) program for showing that top college grads sent to the worst schools can do better than their tenured underperforming peers, and some of them decide to pursue a career in education. But it's not all wine and roses; many drop out or leave the program jaded about education. Others join for their own benefit, gaining "skills and experience" to distinguish themselves from other qualified job applicants:

Looking back, I’m so glad I chose to teach before embarking on this next phase of my career. I developed skills that empowered me to excel beyond my peers in business school: organization, effective time management, dexterity in communication and public speaking, and the ability to think on my feet. The responsibilities I shouldered in the classroom prepared me like nothing else could for the challenges of management, communication, and intense focus that characterize my current position, where I conduct industry research, create financial models, identify industry trends, and explain their implications.

-Scott, an analyst at Lehman Brothers (taken from the TFA website)

Wow, I guess dealing with punk kids helped him navigate the shark-infested waters of Wall Street. The sad irony of TFA is that they accept applicants with no teaching background, throw them in the worst teaching situations possible, and for the ones who survive and succeed, their program ends just as they start to learn the skills to become good career teachers. Then they're off to their next gig, leaving their kids behind for a new idealistic greenhorn. TFA doesn't require or help alums to pursue a Master's in Education after they finish, which is required to teach in most states. So is this helpful to kids? A lot of TFA teachers went to New Orleans after Katrina and performed better than local teachers. But this created resentment, because people knew the TFAs would be gone in a few years, while the permanent local teachers were losing morale playing second fiddle. In fact, the local veterans helped teach the TFAs, and gained nothing from them, except a bunch of competitors with different life situations making it impossible to work as hard as them. One view of the TFAs is that they're actually young, underpaid, ambitious union busters disguised by philanthropy. Throwing TFAs into disaster schools is no better than throwing sacks of rice to Haiti quake victims. A temporary helpful relief, but no lasting impact. This is from a very well-written New York City Teaching Fellow's blog (a program similar to TFA):

At my school, a small public high school in Brooklyn, New York, well over half of the teachers at the school are Teaching Fellows, and, at least in the three years I have been at the school, the longest any of us has stayed (yet) is three years. A few of us are starting our fourth.

And this sucks for our students. I mean, it really, really sucks. It sucks to come back to school and have to have yet another first-year-teacher as a teacher. It sucks to have six different advisory teachers in four years (the case with my old advisory). It sucks to have no continuity from year to year. It sucks for the ninth grade math teacher you really liked to disappear by the time you are in eleventh grade and wanted to ask for some extra help before the PSATs. It sucks to slowly get the impression that teaching anywhere else, or doing anything else for a job is better than staying here and working with you. It sucks to get abandoned year after year after year by young, enthusiastic teachers who saw teaching in the inner city as something great to put on that law school application.

If you’re thinking of applying to Teach for America because you want to be a career teacher, don’t. There are many other alternative-certification programs that will help you get a masters degree (and will help you pay for it). And if you’re thinking of applying to Teach for America because you are interested in doing a service project for two years before starting a different career, don’t. There are many other Americorp-type programs that lend themselves better to that time of time-frame.

And a TFA participant's response to her blog:

Right on, and well said... TFA brings young, often incredibly privileged, enthusiastic teachers to come into schools feeling a self-righteous sense of martyrdom. We often end up fostering an expectation in our schools that a) all teachers should be able and willing to, for example, work for 15 hour days without demanding pay (which is fundamentally union busting, in the sense that many teachers who are veterans may have families or second jobs that prevent them from being able to put in that much time without pay), b) essentially “price out” veteran teachers, because new teachers come in being paid less than veteran teachers – which public schools and the public education system loves, and c) often end up becoming principals after only 2 or 3 years in teaching, over far more qualified veteran teachers who didn’t go through such “prestigious” programs.

If TFA is truly trying to eradicate educational inequality, then you would think that the goal of TFA would be to phase out, or not be necessary anymore, at some point in the future. But think about it this way: does Goldman-Sachs usually partner with or invest in something that is going to go away anytime soon? Hell no.

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/08/23/why-i-hate-teach-for-america/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/first-lets-fire-all-the-t_b_483074.html

The economic effects of layoffs

http://www.newsweek.com/id/233131

Amazingly, an un-trivialized, un-sensationalized Newsweek cover story written by an academic. The author cites several studies that have shown the supposed benefits of corporate layoffs may not hold water. Sure layoffs help the bottom line (temporarily), but also eat into sales, and a company's stock value actually suffers. So it's a net neutral or even negative proposition. And no company ever rebounded from a major layoff to take more market share and greatly increase revenues. In fact it's often just a postponement of losses or the opposite effect, as rivals smell blood in the water and use the opportunity to snatch up talent. Clearly a trend exists that successful companies with good management have fewer layoffs. Southwest, Aflac, and Microsoft have had zero until 2009, while bumbling Delta and GM seem to engage in the practice regularly. And how can we forget Circuit City's Waterloo, when they decided to cut costs by laying off the subset of their sales staff making the highest salaries? Of course those people were also their best workers, so they slaughtered their milk cow for meat while Best Buy swept in to fill the void.

And what about all those socialist European nations with labor laws making it much harder to sack workers? Their labor force must be a lot lazier than America's, right? Well it turns out that worker productivity is actually better in nations with stronger layoff restrictions, like France and Sweden. What a revelation that workers who feel disrespected by aloof management and are terrified of losing their jobs (and health insurance) won't be as dedicated to the company and as focused on doing great work. Economically, America seems to have the tendency to motivate people with the stick rather than carrot. And of course there are the negative externalities of layoffs, such as mental and physical illness, destructive behavior, and reduced spending.

Everyone and their mother knows this, except it seems for the managers who sign the pink slips. They continue the destructive habit because middle managers believe that layoffs can help their careers. If they show their VP that they cut head count and still maintained or improved productivity (by whatever BS metrics they pull out of their asses), it shows they're a great leaders and deserve a bonus (paid for by their laid off staff). As is typical with America, the greed and ambition of a few end up hurting the organization as a whole and many innocent people along the way.

Layoffs just trigger a downward spiral anyway. Management decides to reduce the workforce to save money, but morale and productivity also suffer. Probably the layoffs were not conducted very sensitively, so it puts everyone on edge and many good employees quit even if their jobs were not in danger. The collective human capital of the company suffers, and sales follow. The bottom lines looks bad again, so management decides on another round of layoffs, and so it goes. The bottom line is dictated by costs AND revenues. Maybe instead of the kneejerk layoff reaction, struggling companies could actually figure out how to develop their workers to get the most out of them, which will result in better worker satisfaction, performance, and ultimately earnings. Isn't that real leadership? Any jerk can fire someone, but can you inspire them to do better?

On that note, has anyone seen "Up in the Air"?

Newsweek's "How we could have won in Vietnam"

http://www.newsweek.com/id/221632

To Newsweek,

In response to your Nov. 16 cover story about how we could have won in Vietnam, your writers failed to mention that (a) the fact that we lost in Vietnam did not greatly imperil America as the hawks predicted, and (b) we could have recognized an independent Vietnam in 1945, and worked diplomatically to sway them from communism, thereby averting the deaths of over two million people.

a) After the US withdrew and South Vietnam fell, a pan-communist Asian axis never materialized to threaten Western interests in the region. In fact, those nations were at times hostile to each other. China briefly invaded Vietnam in response to their toppling of the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea - all three being communist nations at the time. Since the 1990s, the US and Vietnam have been cordial trading partners, though of course political differences persist. But there was no "domino effect" or hateful Vietnamese fanatics plotting revenge against America, which is often speculatively associated with radical Islam today. Defeat is never palatable, but it's not the end of the world either, even in Afghanistan.

b) Abraham Lincoln said, "Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?" A war with Vietnamese communists was not inevitable. The OSS helped Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh (precursors to the Viet Cong) fight an insurgency against the occupying Japanese during WWII, with the hopes of earning independence later. As a vision for the postwar world, the US and UK signed the "Atlantic Charter" proclaiming that all peoples have the right to self-determination, and Ho called Truman on it. But after the war, Washington ignored Vietnam as France attempted to reclaim its former colonies. If we upheld our principles of freedom and liberty, instead of succumbing to Cold War fears and bygone colonialism, we could have made an independent Vietnam our ally. Ho lived in the West and was inspired by the American Revolution, but the US decided to make him an enemy.

Obama's first 100 days

To Newsweek,

I am writing in response to Jonathan Alter and Fareed Zakaria's articles in the May 4 issue evaluating President Obama's first one hundred days in office. I believe that your publication is continuing its habit from the 2008 campaign period of being a one-sided Obama cheerleader. The fact that your magazine has not printed a single satirical cartoon (of many available, see link below) depicting President Obama, when George W. Bush caricatures were a weekly mainstay, is telling. While I think that Obama's performance is above-average thus far (especially on the environment and science fronts, as well as incremental gains in health care, which your columnists did not recognize), how can Alter and Zakaria fill two pages with accolades while neglecting to make even a single criticism or suggestion for improvement?

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/barackobama/ig/Barack-Obama-Cartoons/

Plenty of nonpartisan journalists and economists have voiced concerns over some of the White House's more questionable actions. Domestically, Alter and Zakaria totally overlooked:

-Problems associated with unfilled staff positions in the Obama government, because of his well-intentioned but flawed "no ties to lobbyists" policy (yet he has packed his economics team with people well connected to Wall Street).
-Corruption allegations associated with some key cabinet nominees.
-Caving to Congressional Democrats during the crafting of the generally helpful but pork-laden Reinvenstment and Recovery Act.
-Backing down on gun control campaign promises (and virtual silence on the issue), despite multiple atrocious mass shootings.
-Retaining Bush-era state secrecy policies despite pledges to be the most transparent administration ever.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/06/obama/index.html
-Ambiguity over CIA torture (declaring the practice outlawed and un-American, yet refusing to investigate or prosecute those responsible in the previous regime).
-More mixed signals and controversy over the AIG bonuses.
-Making generous concessions to banks/investors at the expense of taxpayers on TARP.
-Additional billions of Treasury rescue dollars so far have not impelled banks to increase lending, and did not slow the slide of the US auto industry.

While some of these events are out of a president's control, and beyond his influence in the first hundred days, they are at least worth mentioning. I would also like to point out that as of April 29, Alter is incorrect about Obama's budget being approved. Congress did pass interim spending to keep the government running through the summer, but have not passed a version of Obama's massive and contentious $3.6 trillion budget plan that was first proposed in February. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, after months of stalemate Congress is preparing to pass merely a nonbinding budget outline this week.

http://www.startribune.com/ politics/43971737.html

On the international front, Obama has been quite successful and very well received by foreign leaders and cheering crowds, which we have seen before. Mending fences with Russia, making overtures to Iran, easing some restrictions with Cuba, and proposing new arms control talks was refreshing news, and several heads of state have noted that Obama simply winning the presidency has done so much to restore America's image. But so far it's been more words than deeds; Europe has not cooperated much with fiscal/monetary policy or Afghanistan, and there has been no progress towards consensus on Iran or peace in the Holy Land. While no one expects Obama to solve global problems overnight, I think his first steps have been exaggerated. After eight frustrating Bush years, I think any new American leader would be celebrated and welcomed abroad, short of Sarah Palin.

One of his first actions as president was to sign the closing of Guantanamo Bay prison. But declaring it so is different than getting it done, and very few detainees have been transferred or tried. Plus Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan may become our new Gitmo, and there have been testimonials of abuse as well. Obama's near silence over the recent Israeli siege of Gaza (that the UN and other aid groups vociferously condemned) spoke volumes to the Muslim world, regardless of his pledge that the US is a friend. And lastly, Iraq is barely on his radar, even though it was a prominent aspect of his early campaign identity. Violence has spiked recently, and he may find it difficult to adhere to his pledge to bring all combat troops home by the end of 2011.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/168022
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/03/09/bagram/index.html?source=rss

He has performed reasonably well considering the circumstances, but I feel that your writer's unwavering praise is somewhat premature and misleading at this point.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103540635

Thailand airport protests

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7775749.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7584005.stm
http://www.france24.com/en/20081125-bangkok-airport-closes-protest-turns-violent-thailand

Dear Newsweek,

I suppose your "Conventional Wisdom" section is more meant for eye-catching than delivering concrete news, but I disagree with the comment that the Thailand airport protests were peaceful and pro-democratic. Even your own article titled "Thailand Slides Toward Civil War" (by Wehrfritz and Seaton, Dec. 6 issue) refutes those claims. While it is true that the pro-Thaksin regime was corrupt in some ways, the opposition movement People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) has anything but democracy in mind. PAD is directed by Thailand's rich and privileged (military officers, upper classes, royalists), so obviously they were threatened by Thaksin's populism. During his five years in office, Thaksin reformed government to reduce bureaucratic inertia and become more results-oriented. His initiatives increased social services, economic opportunities, and political representation for the poor, rural majority. Thaksin and his successors - all wealthy men as well - were neither saints nor tyrants, but their main political transgression was daring to upset the elite-friendly status quo.


As your own reporters noted: The PAD [...] advocates the transformation of Parliament to one dominated by appointed lawmakers because, as PAD leader Sondhi Limthongkul told NEWSWEEK a few months ago, the rural masses "lack intelligence and wisdom" to vote responsibly. The group's guards carry guns, knives and explosives and have fought pitched battles with riot police. [...] Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a foreign-policy specialist at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, says the PAD vision for Thailand is "scarily analogous" to the political system Burma's generals are constructing to perpetuate their own monopoly on power. Rural Thais resent it so viscerally that they're rallying around Thaksin's allies as a point of pride.

And as further proof that the airport protests were not peaceful, France24 reported that PAD supporters opened fire on rival pro-government protesters and assailed them with metal poles (eleven were injured).

Letter to Newsweek on Obama coverage

Dear Newsweek,

I am a Barack Obama supporter, but have been consistently dismayed by your magazine's lopsided, adulatory coverage of him. Your writers' enthusiasm for Obama may have clouded their objective judgment and Fourth Estate responsibility to inform the public and hold our leaders accountable. In order to be a better president, I think Obama needs his supporters to scrutinize and give honest feedback, not add to his ample supply of cheerleaders. While several editorials this year, especially from Jonathan Alter, have justifiably criticized John McCain's campaign decisions, personality, and positions, I have not observed a similar degree of scrutiny for Obama. Apart from exposing "Doodad Pro" and other fraudulent donors to Obama's website in the Oct. 13 issue, he appears almost faultless in the eyes of your journalists. Every politician has faults, and it does not help Obama or America at all by excusing or overlooking them.

As an example of Obama exuberance drowning out reason, consider that in the same issue (Oct. 27), your writers contradict themselves on Obama's foreign policy style. Fareed Zakaria writes that Obama favors greater international cooperation, diplomacy, and would prefer to work with other nations than confront them as adversaries. That sounds excellent to me and many voters who tire of the George Bush approach. Yet four pages before, Alter claims that Obama's "hawkish" comments on unilaterally bombing our ally Pakistan to take out Osama bin Laden proves that he can restore tough defense credentials to the Democrats. So which Obama are we going to get? Obama's aggressive stance on Pakistan is exactly what he criticized Bush for regarding Iraq : go-it-alone hubris, lack of respect for sensitive regional politics, and impulsive use of force that may result in worse anti-American blowback down the road. Our recent brazen attacks within Pakistan have been terribly problematic and destabilizing for the fragile post-Musharraf coalition. Losing our nuclear ally Pakistan to internal chaos is a lot more damaging to our interests and global stability than Osama still alive, but contained in the remote tribal belt. Does Alter or Obama realize that?

Newsweek comments about bailouts

WHEN DOES A COMPANY QUALIFY FOR A BAILOUT?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/158615

Wall Street is consumed with the subject of bailouts. As analysts chewed over the implications of the government's decision to assume the debt of ailing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, traders (and their real-estate brokers) wondered whether erstwhile titans Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual would be next in line for government assistance. Meanwhile, lobbyists for the big three automakers were refining their pitches for $25 billion in loan guarantees. It is sure to be another long weekend for Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Bailouts—the government's stepping in and providing financial assistance or credit guarantees to private-sector companies—are a highly confusing subject. As policymakers hasten to save some companies from the ravages of creative destruction, they leave others to fail. Some 5,644 businesses went bankrupt in July, up 80 percent from July 2007. So are there some objective criteria we can use to determine whether the government will toss a lifeline to a particular company?

It's a truism that the bigger you are, and the more you owe, the more forbearance you're likely to get. In 1984, when Continential Illinois, whose reckless lending practices had catapulted it into the ranks of the nation's 10 largest banks, ran into trouble, the government bought some of its loans and provided extraordinary compensation to depositors. "We have a new kind of bank," complained Fernand St. Germain, a congressman from Rhode Island, "It is called too big to fail." (St. Germain, who shepherded the bill that deregulated the savings-and-loan industry, would be blamed in part for the record-setting bailout of S&Ls later that decade).

But these days, size alone doesn't matter. Earlier this decade, Enron, WorldCom, and Global Crossing, three gargantuan companies, went bust while the government looked the other way. Of course, when the aforementioned companies filed for Chapter 11, nobody lost electricity or was unable to make a phone call. "But if the government envisions that a failure will have a serious adverse consequence on the economy, it's going to step in," said Benton Gup, a professor of banking at the University of Alabama and editor of the collection Too Big To Fail: Policies and Practices in Government Bailouts.

For that reason, certain types of financial institutions are much more likely to be helped than others. A bank that lends to people with dodgy credit in California doesn't pose much of a threat to the Davos crowd. But financial intermediaries like Bear Stearns and the FM twins function like the heart of the global financial system. If they go into cardiac arrest, the whole body is in danger. Since Bear Stearns was a counterparty to (and guarantor of) trades and financial arrangements with the world's major financial players, its failure would have triggered a cascade of losses. In the same vein, huge quantities of the $5.4 trillion in debt issued and insured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sit on the balance sheets of central banks and financial institutions around the globe. For the U.S. government simply to let this debt—which it had been implicitly backing for decades—go bad would have meant inflicting severe damage on America's most significant diplomatic and trading partners. Fannie Mae wasn't too big to fail, one Wall Street wag told me this week. It was too Chinese to fail.

To be eligible for a bailout, firms must also demonstrate a particular genius for screwing up. Before it went bust, Bear Stearns had a monstrous $33 of debt for every dollar of capital, and hedge funds it owned destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars of clients' cash. It got a bailout. Lehman Brothers, which has taken painful measures to reduce its risk, is perversely less likely to get direct government help. "The worst Lehman can do is destroy the firm," said Barry Ritholtz, CEO of Wall Street research firm FusionIQ and author of the forthcoming Bailout Nation. "Bear Stearns, on the other hand, set up the firm so that if they screwed up, they could threaten the entire financial system." That may explain why Treasury Secretary Paulson has thus far resisted providing federal succor to Lehman.

Finally, companies seeking the tender mercies of the taxpayer must have good timing. Nearly all the great corporate bailouts of modern times have come in election years. Congress enacted loan guarantees for Chrysler in January 1980, ensuring that a company that employed about 130,000 people, many of them in the swing state of Michigan, would not go bust on the eve of primary season. So, if your company is in trouble, what should you do? Double down. Establish links to other firms. Export your products with abandon. And hustle. There are only seven more weeks until the election.
PERSONAL NARRATIVES AND EMOTIONS IN ELECTION PSYCHOLOGY

http://www.newsweek.com/id/158749

Narratives have been used to attract voters at least since Lincoln's campaign managers cast him as the rugged rail-splitter from the country's frontier, not the prosperous railroad lawyer and sophisticated writer he was, notes historian Michael Beschloss: voters are drawn to someone they can relate to, and the way to make that happen is by offering them stories. (The human brain is wired so that we can follow a chain of events that have people doing things in chronological order more easily than we can follow abstractions.) But the power of the narrative has grown as party identification has weakened—putting more voters in play—and as the culture has changed. Television has made voters expect to, and think they can, "see into people's souls to take their measure," says Beschloss. To do that, "they need clues," and there are few clues so potent as the challenges a person has faced and how he or she has met them. "The feeling that we need to know who these people are has become so enormous that a good part of Sarah Palin's appeal is her life history, the choices she made, things that let voters form a bond with her," says Beschloss.

The outsized power of the personal narrative today compared with even a generation ago (in 1980, Ronald Reagan ran not on personal narrative, but on hope and the promise of change) reflects something that has become almost a cliché in political analysis—namely, that emotions, more than a dispassionate and rational analysis of candidates' records and positions, determine many voters' choice on election day. The emotion can be hope or fear, pride or disgust. And don't be too quick to pat yourself on the back for thinking you cast your vote based on a logical parsing of a candidate's positions. For all but the most wonkish wonks, what matters is how the prospect of pulling out of Iraq or expanding oil drilling or any other policy makes you feel, and not a pro-and-con analysis of its pluses and minuses, which few people can figure out.
All of this has been true for decades. What's new is that the circumstances of this election have conspired to push people away from the reason- and knowledge-based system of decision-making and more down the competing emotion-based one. The latter is more ancient and has, throughout the course of human evolution, "assured our survival and brought us to where we are," says neuroscientist Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California, a pioneer in the study of human emotions and decision-making. ...One of the most salient circumstances of this campaign is the sheer amount of information voters are bombarded with, says Damasio. You can barely pass a screen (TV or computer) or overhear a radio without being pummeled with the latest brouhaha over lipstick-wearing pigs or which candidate was cozier with lobbyists for the failed mortgage giants. When FDR was making radio addresses, "people had the time needed for reflection, to mix emotion with facts and reason," says Damasio. "But now, with 24-hour cable news and the Web, you have a climate in which you don't have time to reflect. The amount and speed of information, combined with less time to analyze every new development, pushes us toward the emotion-based decision pathway." And not even emotions such as hope. Voters are being driven "by pure like and dislike, comfort or discomfort with a personality," says Damasio. "And voters judge that by a candidate's narrative."