I think the most frequent comment I receive via email asks how so many Americans, despite all we’ve learned over the last four years, can still support Bush. It’s a reasonable question that I struggle over myself. While there are a variety of explanations available, I tend to believe the most obvious one: many voters — especially Bush voters — really haven’t learned much of anything.
A system that is completely dependent on an informed electorate begins to break down when the electorate is uninformed. Unfortunately, that is exactly what’s happening across the country.
If matching presidential candidates to their positions on basic issues were like a “Jeopardy!” category, most Americans wouldn’t earn a single dollar.
More than half of those polled by the National Annenberg Election Survey didn’t know President Bush alone favors allowing private investments of some Social Security money. Nearly as many didn’t know that only Democratic candidate John Kerry proposes getting rid of tax breaks for the overseas profits of U.S. companies.
Importing drugs from Canada? That’s a Kerry issue, but nearly half either didn’t know or thought Bush also supported changing federal law to allow for drug imports from Canada.
Making abortions more difficult to obtain? Nearly one-third of those surveyed didn’t know Bush alone supports more restrictions on abortion.
Eliminating the tax on estates? Two-thirds didn’t know that’s a Bush proposal.
This is a serious problem.
Granted, I don’t hold voters exclusively responsible for the dilemma. People are busy with their daily lives; it’s hard to expect them to keep up on the intricacies of politics, policies, and current events.
But when voters are given so much responsibility in choosing government officials, as is the case in the American system, it’s problematic, to put it mildly, when those who do the choosing don’t know what they’re talking about. It also, unfortunately, makes them overly susceptible to misleading campaign ads because they’re not informed enough to know they’re being misled.
Thanks in part to the Internet, it’s never been easier for citizens to know exactly what candidates believe. And yet, voters choose to remain uninformed.
After two years of presidential campaigning and hundreds of millions of dollars in political ads, many voters remained clueless about those and other policies, according to the survey. Annenberg analyst Kate Kenski blamed the candidates for not stressing their points of view and the news media for focusing on character assessments and the race itself.
“It’s disappointing that people don’t know where the candidates stand, given how much money’s been spent on the campaigns,” said Kenski, a senior research analyst. “In the absence of good information, voters guess and often guess incorrectly.”
Blaming candidates strikes me as foolish. Candidates on both sides desperately try and emphasize their agenda and generate public attention for their chosen issues. Yes, the media often does an abysmal job of reporting current events, but the public has to accept some responsibility for such widespread ignorance.
In addition, though it may be an overly convenient observation coming from me, the right seems to know a lot less about current events than the left.
As the nation prepares to watch the presidential candidates debate foreign policy issues, a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll finds that Americans who plan to vote for President Bush have many incorrect assumptions about his foreign policy positions. Kerry supporters, on the other hand, are largely accurate in their assessments.
[…]
Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: “What is striking is that even after nearly four years President Bush’s foreign policy positions are so widely misread, while Senator Kerry, who is relatively new to the public and reputed to be unclear about his positions, is read correctly.”
Is this really so hard to believe? That Kerry’s supporters are more engaged and better informed than Bush’s? Isn’t that self-evident by virtue of their political preferences?
In fact, going over the details is pretty embarrassing for the GOP.
Majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assumed that Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (84%), and the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the International Criminal Court (66%), the treaty banning land mines (72%), and the Kyoto Treaty on global warming (51%). They were divided between those who knew that Bush favors building a new missile defense system now (44%) and those who incorrectly believe he wishes to do more research until its capabilities are proven (41%). However, majorities were correct that Bush favors increased defense spending (57%) and wants the US, not the UN, to take the stronger role in developing Iraq’s new government (70%).
Kerry supporters were much more accurate in assessing their candidate’s positions on all these issues. Majorities knew that Kerry favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (90%); the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (77%); the International Criminal Court (59%); the land mines treaty (79%); and the Kyoto Treaty on climate change (74%). They also knew that he favors continuing research on missile defense without deploying a system now (68%), and wants the UN, not the US, to take the stronger role in developing Iraq’s new government (80%). A plurality of 43% was correct that Kerry favors keeping defense spending the same, with 35% assuming he wants to cut it and 18% to expand it.
Perhaps most frustrating of all, this is almost impossible to campaign around. It’s hard enough to convince voters that your ideas and agenda are the right course of action; it’s all the more difficult when those voters don’t have a base of knowledge upon which campaigns can build.