Everything You Think You Know About Politics...and Why You're Wrong (Paperback)

By Dan Wick

Do you believe that presidential candidates rarely fulfill their campaign promises? That attack ads have increased in recent years? Or that campaigns are mostly hype, rarely conveying useful information to the voter? If so, Kathleen Hall Jamieson would like you to know that you're wrong.

Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania as well as a frequent and dispassionate commentator on the Jim Lehrer News Hour, Jamieson certainly knows whereof she writes. By providing a wide range of empirical studies about what actually occurs in national political campaigns, she effectively dispels myth and misperception.

On Presidential promises, for example, that putative promiscuous promise breaker, Bill Clinton, fulfilled 69% of his campaign pledges, which compares favorably with Reagan's 63% or Nixon's 60%. On negative ads, Jamieson observes that in 1996, "the proportion of pure attack ads declined by nearly half from 1980, 1988, and 1992." Public grumbling about attack ads, she says, stems from media overreporting .

Indeed, argues Jamieson, with the decline of political parties, the influence of the media on elections has greatly increased. Media coverage during the early political primaries tends to winnow the race to a contest between two major contenders so, while "the media may not be successful in telling us for whom to vote, . . .they are stunningly successful in telling us whom we may choose between."

Useful information is consistently conveyed by candidates in television ads, in their (generally ignored) stump speeches, and especially in political debates. Jamieson says that candidates almost always cite evidence supporting their views, which the media usually ignores, leaving the false impression that politicians trade exclusively in slogan and assertion.

Who knows more about politics, men or women? "The gender gap in political knowledge is real. . . .Men answer more questions about candidate positions correctly than do women." But, Jamieson argues, it may be that when political "information is at odds with their political preference, women may simply tally that fact, adjusting their preference accordingly, and . . . .fail to move that information into long-term memory." She uncharacteristically cites no evidence for this bit of wishful thinking.

The February 2000 South Carolina primary illustrates three of the book's most significant themes, Jamieson says: "First, contrast mobilizes. Second, ...voters reject [negative personal attacks]. . . .Finally, media coverage helps shape personal perceptions." So when Bush claimed that McCain had gone way over the line by comparing Bush to (horror of horrors) Bill Clinton, South Carolina voters evidently agreed, according to Jamieson. But nowhere does she discuss the religious right's whispering campaign against McCain, which amounted to a ceaseless volley of vicious attacks. In short, Jamieson is more selective in her evidence than she would like us to believe.

More than a compendium of studies debunking conventional wisdom, Everything You Think You Know About Politics is also a plea for greater civility and "engaged argument" in political campaigns: "In the speeches, ads and debates that constitute their discourse, candidates should be unambiguous and fair and should not employ guilt by association. They should also be consistent, accurate, and unbiased and tell the full story, not the partial truth." Huh? It is at this point that the reader may well wonder what alternate political universe Jamieson occupies. Of course candidates should do all of that but what politicians including the over-revered Founders, ever have?

Still, idealism aside, this is both a useful and an entertaining book. Jamieson permits herself a few wry jokes (in a brief discussion of Aristotle, she refers to political scientists' perennial "polis envy") and each chapter is introduced with a clever cartoon.

Most important, Jamieson's short book should persuade even the serial cynic that elections do matter. No small achievement in a presidential election year.