Hillary Clinton Concretizes Liberalism

Over at Anger Management, Don Watkins recently discussed the Democrats' favorite issue, frames. He makes several interesting points, the central one being that the issue is more fundamental than many Democrats seem to realize. Framing is not just "how the Republicans keep conning their way to electoral victory" (or how the Democrats can, if they ever figure out how to "speak like Americans"). A "frame" is the conceptual context of a given concept.

The subconscious, in the Objectivist view, is the sum of a man's stored knowledge … A man's knowledge does not consist of disconnected items of information, but an integrated whole. Each item of knowledge is linked to other related items (Rand calls these links "mental connections") -– the mental equivalent of a relational database. When a particular item of knowledge is brought up from the subconscious into conscious awareness, it does not come up as an isolated item of knowledge -– it activates the other items of knowledge most closely linked to it. Those other items comprise the automatized context.

Yesterday, an interesting piece on Hillary Clinton's electoral prospects at Kos (via RealClear Politics) reminded me of this, and related issues.

The piece is written by a Democrat who is sober enough to realize that Hillary Clinton is nearly unelectable as President of the United States, but who is not sober enough to realize that Hillary Clinton is the very personification of the central problem faced by the Democrats!

Suppose you were a businessman looking to hire a new employee. Would you hire someone like this?

Her voice is flat. Her affect is flat. Words that [should] be dramatic and inspiring coming out of the mouth of someone [else] ... sound instead like a shopping list where every item has exactly equal interest and concern. Every phrase of every sentence more or less the same. No variations in pitch. No tension and release. No peaks and valleys. Flat.

She is saying almost all the right things, painting a lovely picture ..., but she doesn't look or sound very excited about it. She threw all the spaghetti on the wall, mentioning ... everything including the kitchen sink, ... but there was no focus, no overarching point, no sense of building up to something significant.

No. You would wonder what the hell she wanted from the job besides a paycheck because she does not "have her head in the game." She does not seem personally invested in the job.

Well, this is a description of a very similar situation and it comes from a left-wing diarist at Daily Kos who wants a Democrat in the White House in 2008. He is describing a speech given to a friendly audience by Hillary Clinton. One wonders: What does she want besides power from the job of President if that's the best she can do?

The flat affect -- evidence of a lack of emotion -- is quite revealing. Emotions, after all, are nearly instantaneous evaluations of our circumstances generated by our subconscious minds in accordance with our values. Since they are experienced like percepts, introspection is sometimes needed to understand them fully. I bring this up because one's emotions are directly related to how one might frame a given situation. Hillary Clinton plainly does not care about -- in the sense of regarding as vitally important -- the ideas and policies she was speaking about. By extension, it does not matter to her that the people in her audience supposedly do care about them, and so she seems cold to them. (Why does this not bother this writer, aside from the fact that he sees Hillary as unelectable? This question will just about answer itself. Read on.) She is there to get her ticket punched as a means of eventually getting elected President and that's pretty much it.

This makes loads of sense considering what the Democrats supposedly stand for. The important parts of the civil rights agenda of the sixties have either been adopted long ago (e.g., Jim Crow is over.) or have been implemented and are now being scaled back as "obsolete" (e.g., affirmative action) or are being called into question (e.g., welfare). The recent splitup of the AFL-CIO has been caused at least in part by the fact that many workers feel no need to unionize. So the Democrats can't even pretend to claim to be the party of the "working man". On the personal liberty front, Democrats seem either needlessly combative (e.g., by insisting on calling domestic unions for homosexuals -- which they could get -- "marriage") or curiously AWOL (e.g., when they offered no serious opposition to the GOP's assault on the judiciary during the Terri Schiavo fiasco). As for central planning of the economy, the Ghost of Jimmy Carter and the collapse of Communism make that part of the agenda a tough sell to say the least. And appeasement in foreign policy is DOA.

Knowing that one has to tick off items from such an agenda to placate every single-issue constituency the Democrats have cobbled together would understandably make one less than enthusiastic. For once in my life, I almost feel for Hillary, but then I recall her energetic push for socialized medicine in the early 1990s. She buys into this agenda, at least when she thinks it might be popular. And what are we to make of such reliable constituencies as blacks, who bloc vote for Democrats despite their regular complaints of being taken for granted?

It might be that the relevant frame for Hillary's speech was not a love for the agenda itself, but the fact that her mouthing the words of the speech ratified her as the recipient of a bunch of predictable Democrat votes. It might also be that Hillary's lack of enthusiasm stems from the knowledge that so much of her agenda is, in fact, irrelevant or impractical or both. Americans have a keenness for relevance and practicality. Oops! (Note that these two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. I think both apply.)

The next big question is this: Why would such a ritual satisfy rank-and-file Democrats? Our Kos diarist answers that one himself, through his snooty attitude towards ordinary Americans. (All emphasis mine.)

We reality-based political junkies have so much influence at the primary level that, with the notable exception of the [Bill Clinton], Dems in my lifetime have nominated people who have great positions and ideas but no flair for presenting them. The ideas are enough for us. But they are not enough for Clueless America or Purple America. If they were, we would have won the last two elections easily.

When are Democrats going to learn that the majority of voters can't (or don't choose to) analyze political campaigns for policy content? Whether we Kossacks like it or not, whether we think they should act that way or not, the vast majority of voters respond to presentation: emotional connection, personal identification, the general tone/atmosphere of a campaign, and a gut feeling of whether a candidate can be trusted. Hillary's skills on these intangibility scales are limited at best.

Reality-based. Clueless America. The majority of voters can't or won't analyze a political campaign for policy content. A gut feeling for whether a candidate can be trusted is somehow not a valid part of how one must evaluate a candidate. (More on that later.)

We can deal with this by examining the last presidential election. On one issue, the two candidates clearly had different views: the war. Bush was clearly in favor of continuing the use of the military in the current war. Kerry, known as a pacifist, refused to give a detailed alternative, but endlessly castigated Bush for his policies. Kerry was plainly a pacifist hiding behind his military service in the hopes of fooling enough of "Clueless America" to get elected. So Kerry's amorphous "nuances" were "reality-based"? America's seeing through his military disguise is "clueless"? A majority of the voters, in a war referendum chose to keep fighting -- thus showing an inability or unwillingness to examine "policy content"? And we are to choose a candidate we do not feel we can trust? Well. That did happen twice, but not by majorities, when Bill Clinton got elected. But seriously, psychologically healthy people generally want someone trustworthy for important jobs. This is anything but brainless emotionalism.

So the whole slew of charges is wrong. More importantly, it is disdainful. In a republic, where the right to vote is a recognition that all men are capable of rational thought, this writer is expressing, contrary to evidence, the contention that "a majority" are not fit to cast votes. This majority, of course, is the one which disagrees with him.

While the truth is not subject to majority vote, the notion that one must resort to mass deceit to win elections can mean either that free elections are a mistake or that "the majority" have enough contact with reality that they can see what is wrong with the Democratic agenda and so reject it. Indeed, the practice by most Democrats of pretending to themselves that the first of these is true while evading the evidence in favor of the second underlies:
(1) this entire article and (2) the collective Democratic orgasm over George Lakoff as their con-man messiah.

Framing is indeed a valid epistemological concept, but it can be used successfully or abused and exposed when that "ultimate frame", objective reality, comes into play. Enter an elaboration missing from every discussion of framing I've ever seen by a leftist: the concept of a valid frame. (See Note below.) Is that famous phrase "tax relief" valid framing? Is taxation the removal of one's rightful property by force as implied by better Republicans or is less taxation somehow oppressive to, say, minorities as the Democrats might hold? Framing can be used in politics to advance a valid agenda or to sell snake oil, but sooner or later, the public will learn the true nature of what it bought.

Why is Hillary so uninspiring and why are the rank-and-file so openly disdainful of "Clueless America"? Because they don't check their premises against reality and "Clueless America" does. Two consequences follow from this. (1) Democratic politicians cannot tie their beliefs to reality in terms that matter to them personally (or to voters). This makes them unemotional and unconvincing as orators. Barring the occasional cunning natural actor like Bill Clinton, such politicians will be uniformly unappealing. This lack of appeal, as a consequence of these unmoored beliefs, is thus a somewhat reliable correlate to a more intellectual, abstract appraisal of such candidates. (2) "Clueless America" does "re-frame" the Democratic agenda -- against reality -- in terms relevant to their own selfish interests. The bizarre -- to the Democrats -- refusal on their part to accepts trinkets and handouts elicits further disdain. (To wit: The lament, "What's wrong with Kansas?" is the title of a book.) The people are dolts and should be easily fooled! Why is this not working? Because you can't cheat an honest man.

Hillary Clinton, dour, uninspiring, and apparently motivated only by a desire for power, is the fundamental problem of the Democratic party incarnate. This is a party that refuses to frame its ideas against objective reality, whether it be to evaluate them initially (and in the process of fleshing them out) or to determine how they might be beneficial to individual citizens. As a result, the platform remains an uninspiring laundry list which cannot be made inspiring because it has, in fact, no moral or practical relevance to an individual citizen. The Democratic Party thus blatantly -- to most Americans -- offers nothing of real benefit and yet seeks political power. Its unelectability is manifest to everyone but itself. Will Hillary Clinton win if she can only learn to "speak like an American"? Yes, but to learn to "speak like an American", she would first have to learn how to think like one. (And if she did, her party would reject her.)

And so we see a diarist howling in the echo chamber of Kos about Hillary Clinton's unelectability, filling his own mind with despair over her chances and disdain for the American electorate, and crowding out even the first stirrings of an impartial examination of his and her shared political premises. And this refusal to check one's premises is why the only thing that registers to this diarist and others like him about Hillary Clinton is her lack of appeal.

An inability or unwillingness to "analyze political campaigns for policy content" indeed!

-- CAV

Note: An anonymous commenter makes a very good point about a word choice of mine that is, rigorously speaking, wrong. See the comments for his fuill explanation. The error, as he points it out is: "Regarding the concept of a valid frame being missing from leftist discussions on framing: validity pertains to the relationship between arguments. The concept of an accurate frame would be more accurate."

Updates

8-4-05: Added note.