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THE CONFIDENCE MAN
BY THANDEKA
Unless John Kerry can make human emotion rather
than political platforms the center of his campaign, George Bush
will win the Presidential election by the end of June. Kerry won't
know what hit him until it's too late.
Here's how Kerry will lose. When Kerry clinched the
Democratic nomination of March 2, most voters did not know
much of anything about him. A window of opportunity opened
up for voter education However, the factual information the
Kerry campaign is trying to shove through this window will not
shape voters' political judgment — their emotional responses
will As political scientists Richard Nadeau, Richard G. Niemi,
and Timothy Amato have trenchantly argued in their essay
“Emotions, Issue Importance & Political Learning," voters may
forget the information they initially learned about the candidate,
but they will hold onto their emotional attitudes.
Bush’s team has been studying this new science on
political emotion. In fact, one of Bush’s advisors, W. Russell
Neuman, who works on information and security technology
policy at the White House, literally wrote the book on this
kind of political maneuvering (Affective Intelligence & Political
Judgment, co-authored by George E. Marcus and Michael
MacKuen). While Kerry went on a much deserved but poorly
timed vacation, Bush’s team got busy shaping voters’ affective
responses to the candidates, pouring over $20 million into anti-
Kerry ads in March alone.
The Bush campaign is based on what Nadeau et al
call the anxiety/hope model. In this model, the politician who
promises voters (or creates the expectation) that a threat to
voter well-being will end wins emotional capital. In short, if a
politician can replace voters' anxiety with hope, that politician
will come out ahead. It's a political confidence game.
Here’s how it works:
A politician:
1. Takes an issue that causes anxiety among some
voters.
2. Turns it into a high anxiety issue for most voters.
3. Offers up guaranteed hope and thus an expectation
that the threat will be removed
4 Gains new emotional capital from voters because of
new confidence in the leadership ability of the politician to end
the threat.
5. Becomes their confidence man.
The fundamental structure of this strategy draws on
the formula for Christian faith created by 16th century Protestant
reformer Martin Luther in his 1535 Lectures on Galatians.
Luther’s formula can be divided into the same five steps:
1. Anxiety. The believer tries to please God on his own
(without Christ or the Holy Spirit) and fails miserably because
he is a sinner.
2. Anxiety Heightened. Each repeated attempt by the
believer to please God through works increases God’s wrath.
God is enraged because He is being offered the man’s sin
(unfulfilled Divine Commandments of “Law”) as if it were good
works (fulfilled Law). The believer thus experiences an ever-
deepening terror and humiliation in the sight of God. He comes
to the realization that he is all flesh and not spirit.
3. Universal Salvation Guaranteed'. Christ.The believer
now sees himself as God sees him (he’s a sinner). Being in
complete accord with God’s vision and will is the human exper
ience of faith This experience of faith is the experience of the
presence of Christ, who is present in the faith itself.
4 The Human Feeling o f Salvation While on Earth:
Christ as Divine Mediator takes the sins of man upon himself.
With this act by Christ the man is justified in the sight of God
and no longer feels guilty.
5. Confidence. Luther now proclaims that “[Anyjone
who teaches something different or something contrary — we
confidently declare that he was sent by the devil....' By equating
inner, personal certainty (a conscience at peace because it is
united with Christ) with so-called objective truth (“Christians
[are] constituted as judges over all kinds of doctrine and become
lords over all the laws of the entire world”), Luther made the
emotional experience of extreme personal confidence the
central religious experience o f faith for many Protestants.
For Christians, Christ certainly deserves personal
confidence. But Bush is not Christ. The confidence Bush asks
MIKE LANE
Here’s how he put it during a fund-raising event on Long Island
the following day: “[American voters have] a choice between an
American that leads the world with strength and confidence or
an American that is uncertain in the face of danger” (New York
Times, March 12, 2004). The issue, in short, is confidence,
Bush is the confidence man.
Every major policy statement by Bush or his top
administrators can be reduced to these five political steps.
Try it. Read Bush’s statements on the Iraq War, its aftermath,
his stance toward the United Nations, his tax cuts. He’s even
used the formula on his opponent, creating voter anxiety about
Kerry by insisting that Kerry lacks conviction and is indecisive
(New York Times, March 20, 2004).Once this negative assoc
iation is made, Bush moves in with the message that he has
conviction, and offers the hope that he will be the decisive
President voters need. The formula never changes.
Bush's focused use of theologically-based anxiety/hope
strategy explains why most Americans believe, despite all the
hard evidence, that he is a moral man, a defender of the faith,
a Christian leader, and an American savior. In short, an elect
man of God chosen to rule over others.
John Kerry will not be able to beat Bush at this confi
dence game unless he also becomes a confidence man. This
means that:
1. Kerry must speak to the anxiety of the American
people in specific, concrete terms.
2. Kerry must heighten the anxiety.
3. Kerry must then promise universal salvation.
Anything less than this will mean Kerry’s defeat. If Kerry
succeeds, it will be because of one decided difference. Kerry will
actually be salvific for our ailing, anxiety-ridden nation. Nothing
less, thanks to Bush, will do.
for, unfortunately, is of a completely different sort. What secular
liberals don’t understand is that when Bush uses the anxiety/
hope strategy effectively, it doesn't matter if the economy's
depressed, jobs continue to disappear, the U S. deficit’s still
rising, and Bush is still calling for more tax cuts and free trade.
While these liberals speak policy-talk, much of Protestant
America resonates to the affective force of Bush’s anxiety/hope
strategy.
Here’s just one example of Bush’s mastery of this politi
cal strategy: Gay and Lesbian marriages.
'- ^ r ’Anxiety Noted Bush is told by “several prominent
» evangelical Protestants in Washington” that voter turnout by
evangelicals is directly linked to his support of a constitutional
amendment to ban homosexual marriage (New York Times,
March 12, 2004). Thus Bush, when introducing his proposal
for a constitutional amendment of marriage, first mentions the
anxiety: the “uncertainty” caused among the American people
by “arbitrary court decisions" and “defiance of the law by local
officials" who have sanctioned gay and lesbian marriages at the
state and local level.
2. Anxiety Heightened. Bush escalates the anxiety into
a universal, all-encompassing threat: a “few judges and local
authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental
institution of civilization," one “honored by all cultures and by
every religious faith."
3. Guaranteed Hope Through Universal Salvation.
Bush promises a guaranteed salvation: he declares his intention
to “prevent the meaning of marriage to be changed forever,”
by calling for the enactment of a “constitutional amendment
to protect marriage in America. Decisive and democratic action
is needed, because attempts to redefine marriage in a single
state or city could have serious consequences throughout the
country."
A. The Feeling o f Political Salvation on Earth is Achieved
Bush now speaks of God. This time via a teleconference at the
National Association of Evangelicals annual conference on
March 11, held in Colorado Springs, which represents 30 million
members. Bush tells them they “are doing God’s work” and
thanks them “on behalf of our country."
5. Bush Becomes The Confidence Man Bush now
reveals the actual content of his political hand: confidence.
Thandeka is associate professor of theology at Mead
ville Lombard Theological School (Chicago), affiliate minister
at the Unitarian Universalist Church at Rockford, Illinois, co
president of the Center for Community Values, and author of
Learning to be White: Money, Race & God in America. He wrote
this article for TIKKUN.
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