Party-to-Party Conversation

The American political system is the field and there is only one way to play the game.

In the American political system, the two main political parties, Republicans and Democrats, function fairly similarly.

In the campaign “game,” the three main goals (no pun intended) are to demonstrate competence, consistency, and adept communication skills (Wayne). They need to appear to have a competent understanding of the prominent issues, and more importantly how they intend on fixing or responding to those issues. Additionally, their stances on these issues must be constant—in maintaining a loyal constituency, consistency is key. Consistency breeds trust in an electorate. And, most importantly, candidates need to be able to communicate these ideas properly and effectively. Wayne explains this necessity in Is This Any Way To Run A Democratic Election?: “They [candidates] need to learn about public concerns and  convince voters that they will address those concerns satisfactorily” (195). In the end, promises, positions, and priorities= performance; the promises they make, the positions they take, and the priorities they put at stake end up defining what voters perceive as potential performance.

These facts of the game do not change between political parties. Different political parties go about this in the same way but are simply promoting different ideologies: “Democrats stress equal opportunities and political liberty, whereas Republicans point to personal economic initiatives and to law and order within the domestic sphere” (Wayne 201). The two teams, so to speak, fit within the same framework. They present different ideas using the same tactics.

I ask, then, what are the ramifications of these “tactics”? What does the use of “tactics” mean with regards to the purity of the political system? If politicians use the same tactics, are they both simply participating in using the media to manipulate voters into yielding a certain public or electoral response?

It could certainly be assessed that the similar tactics used by politicians are an indication of a promotion of manipulation. Politicians know how to get to voters in an attempt to produce a particular response. However, I do not see this so much as manipulation but rather as a knowledge and understanding of the political field and of how to energize and mobilize voters.    

For example, politicians take their opponent’s negative and make it their positive. In Is This Any Way To Run a Democratic Election?, Wayne provides an example of this: In the 1988 election, presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was presented as a “knee jerk liberal who released hardened criminals from jail” (201). In response, the George H.W. Bush campaign then focused on Bush’s tough approach to criminals, in juxtaposition with Dukakis’s leniency. This tactic could be assessed as manipulating voters by demonizing one candidate and idolizing the other.

However, I think tactics like these are not devious, but rather a vehicle of fostering party-to-party conversation. This conversation is a device of informing voters on the issue, and providing views from all differing angles. When a candidate makes their opponent’s negative a positive, it is possible, if not probable, that they will respond to this by providing a reason as to why that “positive” perhaps isn’t as positive as it seems. These divisions reflect differences in ideologies, not an attempt to control voters. These differences need to be revealed for the political process to function properly. Conversation is necessary to having a holistic image presented to the voters. Conversation does not promote polarization. It allows voters to see all sides. They way candidates converse can reveal a lot about their competence, consistency and most prominently, their communication skills. Which, in turn, do end up yielding voter perception of candidates. 

Wayne, Stephen J. Is This Any Way to Run a Democratic Election? 3rd ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2007.