Why Politics Ought To Be More Like Science

[mareserinitatis]

Comments

[ext_93272]

Bravo. I wish a lot more people would apply skepticism and critical thinking to their political decisions, rather than just voting on their emotions. In fact, I know a number of people who voted for Obama simply because they had an emotional reaction to his charisma and had a good feeling about him. That makes me very uneasy, especially because the decisions we make for emotional reasons are the ones we tend to cling to the hardest even when they prove to be the wrong ones. I do think Obama will be the better president, but he will make mistakes and we the people need to be prepared to call him on them when they happen.

[zedmanauk]

I support politicians based both on policies and character. I liked Clinton's policies but definitely not his character, so I did not vote for him in '96 (I voted Perot, more as a protest than as a meaningful vote). So I don't think there is anything terribly wrong with emotional reactions to pols, as long as it is tempered with some reasonable expectation as to their policies. If McCain had won the primary in 2000, I (like Jon Stewart) would have voted for him. Even though policy-wise, I agreed with Al Gore far more than McCain. But I trusted McCain because he had shown a knack for doing what he felt was right for the country even if that meant it was unpopular with his party (on immigration, campaign finance reform, taxes, and torture) or with the nation as a whole (on drilling in ANWR, or his opposition to corn-based ethanol), and I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He continued to do that until this year when he decided that he would rather be president than be right, which is when I (and many others) lost a

[pammalamma]

Not everyone votes based on who the candidate is. Some, like me, vote for a platform of issues, and for a person they feel is going to tow the party line and stick to that platform. For voters like me, we don't like surprises, so going against the platform would actually be worse than some kind of personal misconduct that doesn't affect their administration.

Also, keep in mind that the general sentiment about 2004 is that Bush won because of "values voters" like me. People like me didn't vote for Bush because he was a "great guy." I've never been that impressed with Bush as a person, but not appalled, either. I think he's kind of a schmo, but not a weasel, which is preferable, IMO.

Not all of your assumptions are based on science, because some of them are ethical, which is philosophy. That's true of everyone.