Deliberation and the 2004 Presidential Election

by David M. Ryfe

I've been asked to reflect on the question of whether the 2004 presidential election was in any sense of the word "deliberative." I know what you’re thinking: this could be a short column indeed.
But I think it’s worth taking the question seriously, if only to help us think intelligently about the kinds of things we might do to make the process more deliberative.

By process I mean the decision-making process voters go through when choosing a candidate. I take it for granted that the United States' electoral system in no way approximates a deliberative democracy, and the task of trying to imagine such a political system is so daunting I’d prefer to bracket it for the moment. In its place, I’d like to focus on a narrower question, one that is thorny and complex in its own right, but perhaps not quite so indigestible as that of deliberative democracy writ large. My question is this: how might we help voters choose in a more deliberative manner? To make that choice they might flip a coin, sell their vote to the highest bidder, or vote the way their parents have always done. How might we help them make a more deliberative choice? By deliberative I mean very simply the practice of intentionally weighing the costs and benefits of choosing one candidate over another (see Mathews, 1999 for the broad definition). My question then, has to do with making the act of voting a more intentional and reflective exercise.

If you are a reader of this newsletter, then you know the basic reasons why voters do not choose deliberatively. But it’s worth setting them out briefly if only to help guide us toward meaningful reforms.

A first reason is that candidates and their campaign strategists have little incentive to help voters choose well. After all, candidates are in the business of winning votes, not satisfying some ideal of democratic life. In formal terms, this means that they will set agendas and frame issues in ways that promote their candidacy (for descriptions, see Friedenberg, 1997; Manheim, 1991). Candidates will, for instance, parse the truth to exploit facts convenient to their cause and obscure others. They will highlight an issue that seems to help their cause even when it is only tangentially connected to the responsibilities of the office. And they will ignore issues of paramount importance if they seem negatively affect their campaigns.

None of this is particularly helpful to voters. In 2004, for instance, we heard a great deal of talk about a war now forty years old, and much less about the war in which we currently find ourselves. Moreover both Bush and Kerry embellished facts that supported their views and ignored those that did not. Voters understandably have a difficult time piercing through the fog of this verbiage to gain a clear sense of where the candidates stand on the salient issues.

But wait, you say, what about the media? Don't the media have a responsibility to hold campaigns accountable for what they do and say? Shouldn't reporters press candidates to talk about issues of direct interest to voters, and to do so in ways that don’t overly injure the facts?

Yes and no. Since the writings of Walter Lippmann (1922), we have known that the news is not the truth. Instead, it is a literary genre that demands a “good” story, preferably one involving colorful characters in dramatic conflict with one another. Since the 1960s, we have known that the routines and practices of the profession make journalists peculiarly attentive—and vulnerable—to the views of political elites (for reviews, see Cook, 1998; Sparrow, 1999). And, since the 1970s we have seen economic changes in the news that have (a) reduced the number of reporters in newsrooms; (b) reduced political coverage in local news; (c) accelerated the decline of accepted professional norms; (d) stressed interpretation over fact-getting and checking; and (e) led reporters to focus ever more closely on the spectacle of politics (on these trends, see Kovach & Rosenstiel, 1999; Roberts, 2002; Underwood, 1993).

These trends are not particularly helpful to the cause of holding candidates accountable for their actions. For example, one of the most memorable factoids of the 2004 campaign is that polls continued to report that a majority of Americans believed that a direct connection existed between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 tragedy (Althaus and Largo, 2004). It is not clear what to make of this fact. However, whatever else it means, it surely stands as an indictment of American journalism. When we combine what we know about journalism with what we know about campaign communication, it is easy to see why voters have a difficult time adopting a deliberative pose toward their choices.

However, suppose for a moment that the situation miraculously changed. Candidates were willing and able to speak about relevant issues and to offer full information about their proposed policies, and reporters were willing and able to report this information fully and objectively to the public.

Most voters would still not make their choices in a reflective and intentional manner. Over forty years of research on public opinion shows that individuals do not consume and evaluate political information in an unbiased, rational manner (see, for instance, Lupia & McCubbins, 1998; Popkin, 1991). We know, for instance, that people are "cognitive misers" who look for information shortcuts on which to base their choices. We also know that people tend to pay attention to information that confirms their prior points of view and ignore the rest. And we know that many Americans are willfully uninformed. It is not only that they don't know, they don't want to know more about the political process. Even if candidates were more forthcoming, and the media more willing and able to provide fuller information, many people would still use such shortcuts and/or pay attention only to that information which confirmed their prior views. The bottom line is that even if the campaign process offered more and more accurate information, a great many if not a majority of the electorate would not become more informed.

If I have purposefully painted the gloomiest picture I can for the prospects of more intentional and reflective voting, I have done so for a reason. For those of us invested in the idea that campaigns might be more deliberative exercises, we shouldn’t minimize the difficulties of making this happen. Significant obstacles of the kind I have just listed stand in the way of such changes.

Even still, I believe that some things can be done to improve the situation. As a start, we might recognize that deliberative thinking arises out of an interrelationship of three conditions: civic knowledge/skills; motivation; and, civic culture (on this point, see Ryfe, 2005). Put simply, people must have a certain base level of skills and knowledge even to begin reflecting intelligently on their choices. But they also must have the motivation to adopt this pose, and to retain it even when the going gets difficult. Finally, as I read the literature, the best evidence indicates that a vibrant civic culture that fosters and promotes deliberative habits is the best way of achieving the latter two conditions.

In part, this view of deliberation means that simply giving people more and better information is not likely to make their thinking more intentional and reflective. In the last hundred years, Americans have become better educated and gained access to more political information than ever before, and yet they remain relatively uninterested in elections and unreflective about their choices. And, as Bruce Bimber (2003) has recently shown, new technologies like the Internet have not changed this fact of political life.

Instead, I agree with Robert Goodin (2004) when he argues that more and better political information ought to be embedded in civic rituals that model and promote deliberative habits. We might think of Ackerman and Fishkin’s (2004) proposal for a national “deliberation day” as one such ritual. This kind of ritual is important not because it offers voters an opportunity to become better informed (though it does that). Rather, it is important because it lends our collective support to the idea of deliberation; it offers individuals an opportunity to watch and learn deliberative skills; and, it motivates citizens by making the practice of deliberation a publicly preferred activity. It is just the kind of civic ritual that combines the necessary ingredients of successful deliberation.

In no sense of the word was the 2004 presidential campaign deliberative. Having said this, there are things we might do to encourage voters toward a more deliberative posture in future election seasons.

References

Ackerman, Bruce and James Fishkin. (2004). Deliberation day. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Althaus, Scott and Devon Largo (2004). "When Osama became Saddam: Origins and consequences of the change in America's public enemy #1." PS: Political Science & Politics, 37(4).

Bimber, Bruce. (2003). Information and American democracy: Technology in the evolution of political power. NY: Cambridge University Press.

Cook, Timothy E. (1998). Governing with the news: The news media as a political institution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Friedenberg, Robert V. (1997). Communication consultants in political campaigns: Ballot box warriors. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Goodin, Robert. (2004). Reflective democracy. NY: Oxford University Press.

Kovach, Bill and Tom Rosenstiel. (1999). Warp speed: America in the age of mixed media. NY: Century Foundation Press.

Lippmann, Walter. (1922). Public opinion. NY: Harcourt, Brace & Co.

Lupia, Arthur and Matthew McCubbins. (1998). The democratic dilemma: Can citizens learn what they need to know? NY: Cambridge University Press.

Manheim, Jarol. (1991). All of the people, all the time: Strategic communication and American politics. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Mathews, David. (1999). Politics for people: Finding a responsible public voice. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Popkin, Samuel. (1991). The reasoning voter: Communication and persuasion in presidential campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Roberts, Gene. (2001). Leaving the readers behind: The age of corporate newspapering. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.

Ryfe, David. (2005). “Does deliberative democracy work?” Annual Review of Political Science, 8.
Sparrow, Bartholomew. (1999). Uncertain guardians: The news media as a political institution. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Underwood, Doug. (1993). When MBAs rule the newsroom: How the marketers and managers are reshaping today’s media. NY: Columbia University Press, 1993.

David M. Ryfe is Assistant Professor of Journalism at Middle Tennessee State University. He is the author of Presidents in Culture: The Meaning of Presidential Communication, forthcoming this spring from Peter Lang Publishing

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