Elections as Arguments and the Debate

One way to view any electoral contest is as an argument. As to each candidate there are a number of different proposed reasons why they should be elected and a number of different proposed reasons why they should not be. These reasons can relate to the candidates' policy platforms, what kinds of judges they'd appoint, their moral character, their appearance, whatever. They can, in other words, be good reasons or bad reasons. And then you see how all the various reasons weigh with the polity, and what balance they eventually reach. Of course, the balance within the polity is really just the aggregated sum of all the balances in each member of the polity, each of whom can have their own individual weighting scheme among the various lines of argument.

I've had the feeling all throughout this election that political analysis pays insufficient attention to this argument-based model of an election, and treats elections more as some kind of point-scoring contest, where if X happens and X makes candidate A look good, then it adds points to candidate A's score, etc. So, for instance, we find the almost unanimous view that one of the few things that could materially damage Obama's rather robust lead at this point would be an economic collapse in Europe that spread to the United States. Why would this help Romney? Because political science literature suggests that the "vote for the incumbent because the economy is good" argument and the "vote for the challenger because the economy is bad" argument are among the strongest arguments out there, exerting disproportionate force over even those elections which are not viewed as being about the state of the economy. So, the thinking goes, anything that makes the economy worse is bad for the incumbent. In my view, it's harder to say.

In my view, that's a bit of a premature judgment. Sure, a new economic crisis might help Romney, if only because a new crisis should introduce greater variance and chaos into the whole process which will generically give the trailing candidate more of a chance than he had before. But the "European economic policy has screwed up in a truly massive way, so vote Romney" argument is pretty much incoherent on its face. At least, it's incoherent until and unless anyone develops a reason for thinking Romney would be better at dealing with the consequences of such a crisis, or until Obama displays poor judgment in his handling of the crisis. Either of those things could happen, but their opposites could just as easily happen. And if Romney reacted with a panic of the variety that affected the McCain campaign in September of 2008, the opposite probably would happen, and Obama probably would benefit politically. (Note that the "vote Obama '08 because of the financial crisis" argument is not incoherent, because that was a home-grown crisis that pretty much everyone felt was substantially the fault of the policies of the incumbent regime, and McCain was running on a platform virtually identical to Bush's.)

Now, the counterargument to my view is that I'm taking an overly charitable view of the electorate. I'm giving them too much credit for being smart, or for understanding the issues in some meaningful way that there's really no justification for. I don't mean to be. Remember what I said about how the arguments can be good ones or bad ones. Plenty of voters can give weight to silly arguments, like that one should vote for the candidate with the better speaking voice or whatever. But I do think that it's important to analyze events in the course of the campaign not just in terms of who looks better during them but in terms of how they reinforce existing arguments for or against each candidate or provide new such arguments.


So, regarding last night's debate. Barack Obama is said to have done rather badly. What's the content of that word "badly"? Well, mostly that his demeanor was kind of sluggish, and also, especially among liberals, that he didn't do a very good job of challenging Romney's frequent lies. Now, that latter point isn't really about the impression that was created by this debate, but more about the strategic opportunities to inflict damage to his opponent that Obama passed up. But consider the first one: does Obama's uninspired performance undermine any of the arguments for electing him? I don't think so, and not because candidates' demeanor and persona don't matter. Rather, it's because people know Barack Obama. They know that he often gives great speeches filled with soaring rhetoric and masterful oration, they know that he's extremely charismatic at campaign rallies, and they know that sometimes he can get a little bit boring. Last night was one of those nights. Okay, fine, whatever. Meanwhile, Obama really didn't speak any damaging strings of words, or even any strings of words that shouldn't be damaging but could be when taken out of context. In other words, the Argument for the Re-Election of Barack Obama sustained basically zero damage last night.

How about the Argument for the Election of Mitt Romney? That's slightly more complicated, because the Argument that Romney presented last night was veeery different from the status quo ante Argument. Arguably, since the new argument involves a much more moderate package of policies than the old one, we might expect it to be more appealing across a broader sweep of the electorate. Plus, a big part of Romney's problem is his general anti-charisma, and he was about as appealing as he's ever been in last night's debate. (Of course, the problem is that that ain't saying much, and a lot of people [especially women!] found his smirking aggression rather off-putting.)

However, there's also the Argument Against the Election of Mitt Romney, and I'm not sure that wasn't bolstered as well. One of they key points in that argument is that one simply can't trust a damn thing Mitt Romney says, because he says so many different things at so many different times to so many different people. And, well, last night he was saying yet another completely different set of things. Plus, Obama got in what I thought was far and away the best line of the debate, when he asked whether Romney was concealing the details of his plans because his plans are just too damn good; by calling attention in a catchy way to Romney's serial vagueness, Obama adds a reinforcing argument to the "you can't trust him" framework. You can't trust him, because he's just giving you the snake-oil "trust me, I'll tell you the details after you sign the paperwork" line.

Another key point is that Romney takes a kind of unseemly pleasure in inflicting misfortune on the non-plutocratic segment of society. The line about cutting PBS funding even though he likes Big Bird and Jim Lehrer, the moderator of the debate, was a pretty big deal for reinforcing that line, especially since it's gone rather viral. Shocking, right? There was also the display of the "don't worry if you're over 60" line from the Romney people about Medicare, an enormous tell because "my plan is great, but don't worry seniors, it won't affect you" is self-evidently nonsense, on its biggest stage yet, and I thought Obama did a pretty good job of pointing it out.

Overall, I guess my point is just that the arguments about Obama didn't change much coming out of that debate, and while there were arguably some new reasons to vote for Mitt Romney there were also new reasons, or newly-strengthened reasons, to vote against him as well. It's hard to anticipate how that will play out, and the early poll results are kind of equivocal, with the first real(-ish, it's an internet tracking poll and there's some oddness to the numbers) post-debate poll showing Romney gaining four points but Obama losing zero points and staying at 48%, to Romney's 43%. That sort of makes sense given how the debate felt to me: Romney made himself a bit more appealing but not making Obama any less so. Only time will tell, and, of course, time will have a limited time to tell before subsequent events muck up the data. But from everything I've seen so far, I'd say reports of Barack Obama's demise were greatly exaggerated.