Strategy: A History

by Lawrence Freedman

The problem, Westen suggested, was that Democrats wanted to believe that campaigns were about issues and that it would be possible to appeal to the rationality and better nature of voters. Unfortunately, human beings are barely rational creatures. Instead, they respond to messages which tug on their emotions and are prone to feel as much as see the world. “Most of the time, this battle for control of our minds occurs outside of awareness, leaving us as blind spectators to our own psychodrama, prisoners of the images cast on the wall of our skulls.” Republicans understood this and developed a narrative of themselves as on the side of patriotism and God. Democrats were soft and fuzzy, inattentive on crime and limp in facing the nation’s enemies, stuck with rhetoric about fighting for the working people of America as if the country was still facing the challenges of the 1930s. When persuading voters to back them, Republicans had no compunction about resorting to negativity, while Democrats continued to act as if they could rise above such aggression, dismissing the negativity as irrelevant and a turn-off for voters. To remedy the situation, Democrats had to learn to frame issues to their advantage and go on the attack, finding ways of convincing voters that their candidate was in tune with voters’ interests and values, defining the party and its principles in ways that were emotionally compelling. This involved developing a grand narrative that was coherent, using policy posi...