Dems, You Gotta Have Heart

If the other side is trashing you and you say nothing or back down, you cede to your adversaries the neural networks that constitute public opinion. People vote largely with their passions, and if you jam their emotional radar, you prevent them from making emotionally informed decisions. Consider the case of George W. Bush, whose life story telegraphed everything voters needed to know to make an informed decision about him: He had dodged the Vietnam-era draft while avidly supporting the war; he had drunk his way through much of his adulthood, even while he had young children at home; he had shown extraordinary incompetence in the business world; his campaign had smeared Sen. John McCain with stories about mental instability and an allegedly illegitimate baby to get Bush through the South Carolina primary in 2000; and he had mocked a fellow born-again Christian whom he put to death as governor of Texas. It was quite a story. The problem was that the Democrats wouldn't tell it.

When you hear a pollster or strategist say, "We've got 'em beat on the issues," you know you're on the dispassionate river, and you know you're going under. By my count, voters disagreed with Ronald Reagan on about 75 percent of "the issues." But they liked him. They believed he would restore America's greatness. They voted with their values.

So do Democrats, but their candidates too often hide their values in the fine print of their policies. Democratic pundits, strategists and primary voters require their candidates to do precisely the things that lose general elections: to offer their 16-point energy plans rather than to offer their life stories, their values, their visions and a couple of well-chosen "signature issues."

Data from thousands of voters surveyed since the late 1940s suggest that voters tend to ask four questions (in this order) that determine how they vote:

· How do I feel about the candidates' parties and their principles?

· How does this candidate make me feel?

· How do I feel about this candidate's personal characteristics, such as integrity, leadership and empathy?

· How do I feel about this candidate's stands on issues that matter to me?

Candidates who focus toward the top of this hierarchy and work their way down generally win. They drink from the wellsprings of partisan sentiments, which account for more than 80 percent of votes. They tell emotionally compelling stories about who they are and what they believe in. They don't say, "Karl Rove needs to testify under oath about the CIA leak case because we must have a transcript." Rather, when the president invokes executive privilege, they ask, with righteous indignation: "Mr. Bush, just what is it about 'So help me God' that you find so offensive?" Likewise, if you don't make people feel the health care crisis -- either as a disaster that could one day hit them or as something that just isn't right -- you won't win on health care, regardless of how sound your plan is.

In the Democratic debates thus far, the most memorable lines have all come from moments when a candidate created a feeling: Edwards's suggestion that you can't "split the difference" between economic fairness and unfairness; Obama's principled stand on immigration ("We are a nation of laws, but we are also a nation of immigrants"); Clinton's recognition, when vowing that she would respond aggressively if al-Qaeda again struck in the United States, that the first task of government is to protect its citizens' security.

For some reason, I can't remember the candidates' plans on biofuels. But perhaps they'll come back to me.

dwesten@emory.edu

Drew Westen is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University and the author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation."