vivian shaw

The inner minds of politicians

Gail Collins wrote an interesting piece that appeared in the New York Times today, on Senator Joe Lieberman’s seeming betrayal of his liberal-independent roots, particularly notable in the contrast in his previous and current stance on health care reform.

“Let’s look at our two failed-national-candidate models. You can move on, and try to make yourself useful (Kerry, Al Gore). Or you can work out barely suppressed rage by attacking things that you used to be for, like trying to control Medicare costs (McCain) or expanding Medicare eligibility (Lieberman).

Maybe the difference comes from self-image. Lieberman and McCain both thought of themselves as “character” candidates whose success was due to the love and trust of the public, and whose ultimate failure was the work of evil forces beyond their control. Kerry and Gore never believed their success was due to their innate likability. When they lost the presidency, a part of them probably shrugged and remembered that they weren’t all that popular in prep school, either.”

The article raises some theories about the role of ego in mapping the course of political outcomes. An extension of Collins’ idea is that egos, particularly the bruised ones, involve some cognitive dissonance—the self-orientation of the ego diverting some politicians from the path of their original (good) intentions.

I think it would be interesting to compare journalism in the days before Freud and psychoanalysis with media now. To what extent does it make sense for the media to assume that politicians are foremost motivated by their psychological hang ups, rather than more complex social networks of decision making?

In other Gail Collins-related news, I’m a fan of her conversational columns with David Brooks. If nothing else, it’s cute in an ebony-and-ivory way. What do you think? Is this a happy picture painted of the future of bipartisanship or just an example of mainstream media’s ongoing marketing of an overstated, if not outright false, liberal-conservative dichotomy?