Let’s be grateful that Louis Menand did not become a brain surgeon. If he had, To get a true sense of Menand’s surgical skills, you have to read the New Yorker piece in its + In election years from 1952 to 2000, when people were asked whether they cared who won + The most widely known fact about George H.W. Bush in the 1992 election was that he + Three theories have arisen. The first is that electoral outcomes, as far as “the will of the + A second theory is that although people may not be working with a full deck of information + The third theory of democratic politics is the theory that the cues to which most voters <\/P> Or in knowing how to eat a tamale. (You have to read the article.) <\/P> Finally, there is no culture war among Americans at large, despite polls indicating that the Menand’s piece would be hilarious, if it weren’t so scary.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let’s be grateful that Louis Menand did not become a brain surgeon. If he had, he probably would never have found the time to apply his scalpel to intellectual history, as he did in his spellbinding best-seller, “The Metaphyical Club,” or as he does in “The Unpolitical Animal,” his dissection of how voters think, in the current New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-cJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nhe probably would never have found the time to apply his scalpel to intellectual history, as
\nhe did in his spellbinding best-seller,
\ndissection of how voters think, in the current New Yorker. <\/P>
\n
\nentirety. It’s short anyway, and a mere summary won’t do. But just to whet your appetite, here —
\nchosen at random — are some of the things he notes as he reviews various political theories based
\non <\/FONT>
\nTactics”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> by Ron Faucheux and Ronald A. Faucheux; a 1964 article by political scientist Bruce M. Sabin on
\na 2004 paper written by Princeton political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels;
\na theory of shortcuts, particularly the ideas of M.I.T. professor Samuel Popkin; and
\nStanford’s Morris Fiornia and others:<\/P>
\n+ An estimated “2.8 million people voted against Al Gore in 2000 because
\ntheir states were too dry or two wet” as a consequence of that year’s weather patterns. Achen and
\nBartels think that these voters cost Gore seven states, any one of which would have given him the
\nelection.
\n
\nthe Presidential election, between twenty-two and forty-four per cent answered “don’t care” or
\n“don’t know.” In 2000, eighteen per cent said that they decided which Presidential candidate to
\nvote for only in the last two weeks of the campaign; five per cent, enough to swing most
\nelections, decided the day they voted.<\/P>
\n
\nhated broccoli. Eighty-six percent of likely voters in that election knew that the Bushes’s dog’s
\nname was Millie; only 15 percent knew that Bush and Clinton both favored the death penalty.<\/P>
\n
\npeople” is concerned, are essentially arbitrary. The fraction of the electorate that responds to
\nsubstantive political arguments is hugely outweighed by the fraction that responds to slogans,
\nmisinformation, “fire alarms” (sensational news), “October surprises” (last-minute sensational
\nnews), random personal associations, and “gotchas.”<\/P>
\n
\nand beliefs, their preferences are dictated by something, and that something is \ufffdlite opinion.
\nTherefore, democracies are really oligarchies with a populist face.<\/P>
\n
\nrespond are, in fact, adequate bases on which to form political preferences. People use shortcuts
\n— the social-scientific term is “heuristics” — to reach judgments about political candidates, and, on
\nthe whole, these shortcuts are as good as the long and winding road of reading party platforms,
\nlistening to candidate debates, and all the other elements of civic duty. The will of the people may
\nnot be terribly articulate, but it comes out in the wash.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\n
\n
\npublic is polarized into a “red state-blue state” paradigm. Opinions on most
\nhot-button issues do not differ significantly between voters in red states and voters in blue states.
\n“What has become polarized, Fiornia argues, is the \ufffdlite.”<\/P>
\n