In last week's New Yorker there was an article about David Addington, who is Dick Cheney's legal counsel and pretty much a jerk-off. Addington is a strong believer in a strong executive position, and has basically been working for years to enhance the power of the presidency vis-a-vis the Congress for years. September 11th was, not surprisingly, his big chance. He's the kind of guy who's worked hard to make sure the president can legally torture people and pretty much do whatever he wants.
So, like I said before, all this expansion of executive power makes me nervous. It's just not how the system was set up to work and so on and so forth. What actually intrigues me more is what makes guys like Addington *tick.* I'm not interested in his psychological biography, I'm just interested in his political attitudes.
There's this concept in political behavior/public opinnoin research of "core values." And it pretty much sounds like what it is: Individuals tend to have basic ideas that define what their policy positions are, and these values tend to be shared by most members of a given society. For example, American core values incorporate capitalism and democracy. Some might also toss moral traditionalism into the mix. Intuitively, this makes sense. My guess is that even if you are suspicsious of voter capacity, dislike the system of checks and balances in the Constitution, and capitalism really pisses you off .... you still support democracy and at least *some form* of a market economy (assuming you're American - if you're not, well, you have your own core values too). Core values research is useful stuff, as it grants insight into why some policies fly and others do not in a given political context. You may not suport all the core values equally (you may prefer democratic equality over liberty and capitalism, for example), but you don't *really* oppose any of them. (It's all not quite that simple of course. How an issue is framed, external shocks, and all sorts of other things still matter. But core values can pack a lot of predictive power).
Despite their usefulness, the core values approach is not fully satisfying. Especially when we get to guys like Addington, and really any political elite. It's important to remember that elites matter. I'm not an elitist. But elites pay more attention to politics than you or I. They do a lot of work, in terms of framing issues for us and distilling important information. Of course, there is risk in letting elites do that - they coud lie or present things to their own advantage. But the likelihood of us all becoming well informed political actors is pretty slim - it just takes a lot of time that we don't have. And, even if we had it, it's not clear you could make people pay attention anyway - this is a free society after all. So, elites are a given, and they really can serve a valuable function.
But, elites are a little different. You and me, we support "democracy" - but we may not put a lot of thought into what that *means.* Elites - particulary politicians, high-level bureaucrats, journalists, pundits, and academics - *do* think about what means. Presumably, they don't all agree on what that means - and that is why we get political conflict.
So, bringing this back around to Addington and his ilk ... I just want to know what they think democracy is. I don't think Addington is *really* some totalitarian freak or anything. I'm sure he loves his country, and democracy, and wants to seem them survive. I'm willing to *assume* that anyway. But I'd like to know what Addington values and why. There's just a whole series of questions that come out of this line of thinking. Such as: What is democracy for elites? How do national security and freedom relate (he obviously prefers the former). But, *why* does he seem them relating that way? How does he feel about the mass public? How does political ideology relate to elite feeling on institutions? Does support for a strong executive vary with the partisanship of that executive (as in: Addington only likes a strong executive when said executive is a Republican, or Addington feels reasonably secure that the executive is at least "conservative enough")? Do demographic or education in any way impact the way elites think, in the same way we expect them to influece the mass public?
It would be tricky to identify a sufficient number of elites to actually gather data like this. And it might be hard to actually get people to participate. But seriously, this is the kind of large data set that needs to be gathered and crunched on. I think it would be wondefully interesting. So much analysis just tends to lump elites together. I think we really need more insight into what makes them tick and what differentiates/clumps them.
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So, like I said before, all this expansion of executive power makes me nervous. It's just not how the system was set up to work and so on and so forth. What actually intrigues me more is what makes guys like Addington *tick.* I'm not interested in his psychological biography, I'm just interested in his political attitudes.
There's this concept in political behavior/public opinnoin research of "core values." And it pretty much sounds like what it is: Individuals tend to have basic ideas that define what their policy positions are, and these values tend to be shared by most members of a given society. For example, American core values incorporate capitalism and democracy. Some might also toss moral traditionalism into the mix. Intuitively, this makes sense. My guess is that even if you are suspicsious of voter capacity, dislike the system of checks and balances in the Constitution, and capitalism really pisses you off .... you still support democracy and at least *some form* of a market economy (assuming you're American - if you're not, well, you have your own core values too). Core values research is useful stuff, as it grants insight into why some policies fly and others do not in a given political context. You may not suport all the core values equally (you may prefer democratic equality over liberty and capitalism, for example), but you don't *really* oppose any of them. (It's all not quite that simple of course. How an issue is framed, external shocks, and all sorts of other things still matter. But core values can pack a lot of predictive power).
Despite their usefulness, the core values approach is not fully satisfying. Especially when we get to guys like Addington, and really any political elite. It's important to remember that elites matter. I'm not an elitist. But elites pay more attention to politics than you or I. They do a lot of work, in terms of framing issues for us and distilling important information. Of course, there is risk in letting elites do that - they coud lie or present things to their own advantage. But the likelihood of us all becoming well informed political actors is pretty slim - it just takes a lot of time that we don't have. And, even if we had it, it's not clear you could make people pay attention anyway - this is a free society after all. So, elites are a given, and they really can serve a valuable function.
But, elites are a little different. You and me, we support "democracy" - but we may not put a lot of thought into what that *means.* Elites - particulary politicians, high-level bureaucrats, journalists, pundits, and academics - *do* think about what means. Presumably, they don't all agree on what that means - and that is why we get political conflict.
So, bringing this back around to Addington and his ilk ... I just want to know what they think democracy is. I don't think Addington is *really* some totalitarian freak or anything. I'm sure he loves his country, and democracy, and wants to seem them survive. I'm willing to *assume* that anyway. But I'd like to know what Addington values and why. There's just a whole series of questions that come out of this line of thinking. Such as: What is democracy for elites? How do national security and freedom relate (he obviously prefers the former). But, *why* does he seem them relating that way? How does he feel about the mass public? How does political ideology relate to elite feeling on institutions? Does support for a strong executive vary with the partisanship of that executive (as in: Addington only likes a strong executive when said executive is a Republican, or Addington feels reasonably secure that the executive is at least "conservative enough")? Do demographic or education in any way impact the way elites think, in the same way we expect them to influece the mass public?
It would be tricky to identify a sufficient number of elites to actually gather data like this. And it might be hard to actually get people to participate. But seriously, this is the kind of large data set that needs to be gathered and crunched on. I think it would be wondefully interesting. So much analysis just tends to lump elites together. I think we really need more insight into what makes them tick and what differentiates/clumps them.
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Superman Returns was awesome indeed.