In the early years of the U.S. republic, the politicians
were people of stature and intellect. They were people like Thomas Jefferson,
John Adams, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin. Of course, at that time, only
land-owners, educated people and men could vote. But that is not true anymore-
at least in theory. As a result, now we get the likes of the Bushes, Richard
Nixon, the Clintons, a do-nothing Congress controlled by special interests, and
a dwindling middle class.
In the U.S. the reputation
of politicians is extremely poor. A recent 2015 poll indicated that the
approval of the Republican dominated Congress is at 19%. In fairness, this
statistic is largely the results of the politicians own making. In a "what
me worry" congressional attitude,
the same politicians who shut down the U.S. government and had an approval
rating of 14%, was re-elected.
Politician enact bad and/or self-serving policies. By and large, they are terrible people. They
are mostly weak, self-serving people who
are not concerned about the public good and therefore, not fit for public
office. Politicians promise improvements but they are obviously lying and we all know
that is going to happen.
So, why do people bother to vote at all? Actually, they
don't. The United States has one of the lowest percentage turnouts for election
in the industrial world. And, the turnout continues to decline especially among
the young. The elections of 2014 had the lowest turnout since 1941, an election
that took place during World War II when many men were in the military and
could not vote.
However, not all politicians are idiots or self-serving,
but plenty are. The U.S. seems particularly afflicted with them, for instance, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, etc. And, the archetype of the idiot
politician, George W. Bush, was the president for 8 years during which time he
caused an economic crisis, went to war without any justification, and whose idiotic musings and
statements caused laughter around the world.
So, what is going on here? Logically, you would want to
have an intelligent compassionate person in office who understands the best
approach and methods for running a country in the best possible way. But no,
people seem drawn to demonstrations of questionable intellectual abilities.
There are a wide variety of ideological, cultural, social, historical,
financial and other factors involved, because politics incorporates all of
these things, but there are also some known psychological processes that may
contribute to this phenomenon.
Confident people are more convincing. This is has been demonstrated in
many studies. Most studies focus on a courtroom setting, and suggest
a confident witness is more convincing to a jury than a nervous, hesitant one
(which obviously has worrying implications for justice), but it can be seen
elsewhere. It is a phenomenon used-car salesmen and estate agents have
exploited for decades. And, politicians are clearly aware of it so any
politician that does not come across as self-assured, likeable, and confident
does not win elections. So, confidence is important in politics even if you are
a self-serving liar and hypocrite.
However, the Dunning-Kruger effect reveals
that less-intelligent people are usually incredibly confident. More intelligent people, by contrast,
are not. Self-appraisal is a useful metacognitive skill, but one that requires
intelligence. If you do not have much of it, you do not consider yourself
flawed or ignorant, because you do not have the ability to do so.
So, if you want an intrinsically confident person to
publicly represent your political party, an intelligent person would be an extremely bad choice. However, this can
backfire. Studies have shown that when very confident people are shown to be
wrong or lying, they are then considered far less reliable or trustworthy than an non-confident person.
This may explain the negative image of politics which is mostly a series of
confident individuals making big promises and failing miserably to keep them.
This turns people off not only concerning a specific politician but politics in
general.
Add to that, effectively running a country of millions of
people, all of whom have different requirements and demands, is an incredibly
complicated job. There are many variables which need to be considered.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to condense all this into a convenient sound-bite
for use with the modern media and a population conditioned to not delving into
complex matters, so personalities tend to come to the fore more often. And, the
less intelligent and confident personalities are more successful in politics
than intelligent, thoughtful and introspective people are.
Add to that, people are generally put off by intellectual
and complex subjects and discussions. They may have no experience with the
issue or may find it too complex and time-consuming. They want quick answers
and simple solutions to complex issues and not ones which require a lot of thought,
time and effort. However, politics, particularly in democracy, requires people to be involved. After all, the word
"democracy" means "government by the people". Oops, I
forgot. The U.S. is a republic and not a democracy!
Personality studies suggest that many people demonstrate goal orientation,
a “disposition toward developing or demonstrating ability in achievement
situations”. Feeling that you are actively influencing something (e.g. an election)
is a powerful motivator, but if some knowledgeable type starts spouting big
words about interest rates or health trust deficit management, this is going to
alienate those who don’t follow or grasp such things. So if a confident person
says there’s a simple solution or promises to make the big complicated thing go
away, they’re going to seem far more appealing.
This is also demonstrated by Parkinson’s law of triviality which says that people will spend
far more time and effort focusing on something trivial that they do understand than something complicated
that they do not understand. The former offers far more scope for contribution
and influence. And, people do not like to concentrate on complex issues. They
tend to leave to the "experts", in this case, the politicians. But,
they love trivial and non-complex
issues like the latest fashion trends and the antics of movie stars and sports
heroes. Therefore, less-intelligent people can only deal with big issues in
brief snippets. Most of the American news outlets understand this. The news is
kept brief and complex issues lack depth. They know that unless they do that,
people will turn off the dial.
One of the often-cited qualities of George W Bush was
that people felt they could “have a beer with him”. Therefore, they felt they could relate
to him. By contrast, elitism is a negative quality. The idea that those running the
country are outside the norms of society is alarming to many, hence the constant
efforts by politicians to “fit in”. Ironically, most people do not feel that way about
their doctors. They want them to be more intelligent than they are. They fail
to realize that running a nation is also a life-and-death situation the
ramifications of which can have long-lasting effects.
The majority of people are prone to numerous subconscious biases, prejudices, stereotyping and prefer their own “groups”. None of these things are
particularly logical and invariably are not supported by actual evidence and
reality, and people really don’t like being told things they don’t want to hear. People
are also keenly aware of social status; we need to feel we are superior to others in
some way to maintain our sense of self-worth. As a result, someone more
intelligent saying complicated things that contain uncomfortable (but accurate)
facts isn’t going to appeal to anyone, but someone demonstrably
less-intelligent is not challenging to someone’s perceived social status, and
if they’re going to say simple things that support inherent prejudices and deny
uncomfortable facts, then so much the better.
It is an unfortunate situation, but it just seems to be
the way people’s minds work. There’s a lot more to it than what’s mentioned
here of course, but including that would make the whole thing more complicated,
and that is no way to get people to like something, as should be obvious by
now.
