Book #20 Completed! "The Political Brain: the Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation" by Drew Westen

Ocean Moon. Just remember those words. Ocean Moon. I will get to why in a bit....

So the first thing they teach you in grad school is "pay your tuition bill". The second, I seem to remember, is that when you write something academically that you are supposed to acknowledge your personal biases in your writing so the reader can use that information as a filter when they are reviewing your work. Westen is a psychiatrist that studies political science and what his research is centered around is why people vote/elect the people that they do. In reading the synopsis of the book I thought that this would be very interesting because I like psychology (mainly deviants and crazy people because they are fun), political science, and just being a knowledge whore (as my cousin Mike so eloquently described me as once). So starting the book, Westen uses a great deal of examples of various presidential campaigns to show what the right thing to say was and what the wrong thing to say happened to be. It is heavy on examples of the Bush/Gore 2000 campaign - mainly because it was one if not the most contested election in the history of the country and that it was very recent to the writing of the book (2006). So as the book progresses, Westen tells a lot about the mistakes the democratic party has done over the last - oh 30 years or so - in very winnable elections but ended up on the losing side of the ledger. He goes on and on about this but the framing of his story becomes more and more anti-republican party (which is fine I guess if that is the way he feels about it). But here is the thing, he's an academic and does not admit that he is a lifelong democrat until the middle of the book and if you did not know that by then, well you were just not reading.

Oh, before I forget: Name a laundry detergent. First one that comes to your head. Hold on to that for a second.

So Westen beats up the Republican party and I am not sure if it was just his ever loving hatred of the philosophies of GOP or he is over leveraging his examples. That being said, he does give them credit (in almost a jealous tone) for doing things the right way when it comes to getting people elected. The party has a unified message that most people can recite (conservative, pro-life, strong military, tax cuts, smaller government, etc) and the democrats really don't have a good sticky message that resonates with voters across the country. The democratic party relies to much on logic and well thought out arguments for their positions and fails to capture the imagination and subsequent interest of the American people. It is odd how foreshadowing the book is for it was written 2 years before the Obama/McCain election of 2008 where President Obama did almost exactly what Westen mentioned as keys to success in getting elected if you are a democrat.

Oh did you pick "tide"? Why did you say that do you think?

It is probably because by my mentioning the words "ocean" and "moon", I primed you for that answer. This priming of thoughts and concepts goes on in all political ad's now and it is very effective in swaying people's opinions about candidates. What gets you elected is not the 30% who are Republican's or the 30% that are Democrats - it is the 40% of the undecideds and how much of their attention you can garner.

Anyway, I will not bore you with my nerding on about this subject. The book is well written and makes a great deal of sense however I feel that it might not be everyone's cup of tea. As such, I give this book:

"Vroom, Vroom, Vroom, Vro" (3 1/2 "Vroom's" on the motorcycle scale of awesomeness)