„The Political Brain“ von Drew Westen

In PsychoNeuro habe ich kürzlich den Psychologieprofessor und Psychoanalytiker Drew Westen vorgestellt. Hier will ich vorwiegend auf sein im vergangenen Jahr veröffentlichtes und in den Vereinigten Staaten breit rezipiertes Buch The Political Brain hinweisen.

Die Kernthesen sind:

Politische Wahlen werden auf dem Feld der Emotionen gewonnen oder verloren, Sachargumente sind dagegen zweitrangig. Erfolgreiche Wahlkampagnen richten sich an die Gefühle der Wählergruppen, die man für sich gewinnen will. In den Vereinigten Staaten verstehen die Republikaner dies weitaus besser als die Demokraten. Diese setzen in ihren Kampagnen meist auf die Kraft der besseren Argumente – und verlieren. Siehe Al Gore und John Kerry.

Hier einige Links zu englischsprachigen Rezensionen:

New York Times: Counseling Democrats to Go for the Gut und Stop Making Sense (David Brooks) mit einer Antwort von Drew Westen in der Huffington Post („Dissecting the Political Brain of David Brooks“).

Daily Kos bringt eine ausführliche Besprechung, die 267 kontroverse Leserkommentare nach sich zieht.

Jonah Lehrer in Scitizen

Culturekitchen

Dr. Jonathan Dolhenty

Kicking Over My Traces

Austin Kleon

Ezra Klein

Grumpy Lion

Robert Greenwald

Washington Monthly

Update 25. Sept. 2008: Spiegel Online hat Drew Westen zu den bevorstehenden TV-Debatten der amerikanischen Präsidentschaftskandidaten interviewt.

E-Mail from Wasilla: Eine Weggefährtin über Sarah Palin

In einer Mail, die zunächst nur in Sarah Palins Heimatort Wasilla kursierte, mittlerweile aber Kultstatus hat, schildert Anne Kilkenny das problematische Wirken Palins als Bürgermeisterin.

Mit Bezug auf die „glanzvolle Performance“ der Kandidatin bei Ihrer Parteitagsrede zeigt sich einmal mehr: es ist nicht alles Gold, was glänzt.

Hier einige Auszüge:

She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice for vice president and won’t vote for her can’t quit smiling when talking about her because she is a „babe.“ (…) She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym. (…) She’s smart.

During her mayoral administration, most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings, which had given rise to a recall campaign.

The huge increases in tax revenue during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list, though — borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt but left it with indebtedness of more than $22 million.

While Sarah was mayor of Wasilla, she tried to fire our highly respected city librarian because the librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the city librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the city and as governor, she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal — loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the state’s top cop.

As mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s police chief because he „intimidated“ her, she told the press. As governor, her recent firing of Alaska’s top cop has the ring of familiarity about it.

Why am I writing this? First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. Secondly, I’ve always operated in the belief that „bad things happen when good people stay silent.“ Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Die interessanteste Berichterstattung über die neusten Entwicklungen im Fall Sarah Palin bringt der Blog Mudflats aus Alaska, der mittlerweile Kultstatus erlangt hat.