Democrats Learn How to Talk Issues
Democrats turning to author of new book on passion and politics for advice
July 6, 2007 — -- WASHINGTON — Both political parties are in a constant search for advisers who can make them winners. Many Democrats think they've found one this year in psychologist Drew Westen, author of a new book on passion and politics.
The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, released last week, has catapulted the Emory University professor from the ivory tower to the political epicenter. And Democrats throughout the capital are listening to his prescriptions and adapting them for practical use.
Westen's essential point: "Passion is what drives us" in the voting booth, yet "the words we use on the left are emotionally barren." To stop losing winnable elections, he says, Democrats need to engage the parts of the brain that aren't activated by facts and figures.
Westen has met with union leaders, political donors and fundraisers, liberal and centrist groups, party committees, members of Congress and all major presidential campaigns. The Senate Democratic Policy Committee is working with him on a "messaging project." Last week Democratic senators each received a copy of The Political Brain.
The centrist Democratic Leadership Council heard Westen at its spring retreat and invited him back to address hundreds of elected officials this month in Nashville. Westen is also collaborating with Third Way, a progressive, non-partisan think tank, on a strategy memo.
The goal, says Third Way President Jon Cowan, is to get candidates of any party to focus on "the received impression" of their words — how people perceive what they're saying. That means learning that "reason and rationality … are not the most effective political weapons" in a campaign.
Republicans have been honing their language since the late 1980s, when Newt Gingrich began mailing training tapes to tens of thousands of conservative officeholders at all levels of government. They learned what issues to talk about — and how to talk about them — as they commuted to and from work.
Communications strategist Frank Luntz, who advised Gingrich and the GOP for years, in January released a book called Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear. He says Democrats have passion, but they express it unappealingly or not at all.
