Dan Shafer's Blog

It seems to me that, when it comes to politics, Americans can be seen as divided into four basic camps: liberals, conservatives, centrists and apathetics. The first three groups vote, to one or another degree, and they're the focus of my thoughts here.

There are likely dozens of points of differentiation between liberals and conservatives. Here are the most important that leap to mind.

Faced with a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the general welfare and the good of the individual, liberals will tend to support the public good and conservatives will tend to favor the individual's rights and position.

Liberals believe in equality of opportunity implemented through government regulation and laws where necessary. Conservatives believe that fairness derives better from an unregulated and freely competitive society.

In terms of international policy, liberals tend to favor multinational efforts (e.g., the United Nations) aimed at diplomatic solutions to conflict that are ultimately mutually beneficial. Conservatives tend to favor the promotion of America's national interests, as they perceive them, over and if necessary at the expense of other nations and to oppose U.S. involvement in multinational organizations like the UN and the OAS.

Cultural pluralism and tolerance for a wide range of viewpoints characterizes liberal thinking while conservatives are inclined to oppose policies that encourage pluralism and immigration.

In general, liberals favor a large and strong central government that can equalize and homogenize policy and practice across state borders. Conservatives, by contrast, favor states rights over national government power and a resultingly smaller federal government.

There is of course a broad spectrum of intermediate positions between these two extreme variants as I've painted them here. But those who subscribe to the tenets of one or the other of these political philosophies -- and who apparently comprise about 60% of the voting public (35% liberal and 25% conservative, approximately) -- tend to make political decisions and cast votes based on these philosophical frameworks.

What of the center? How do unaffiliated, independent voters make difficult political decisions where they can't or don't have enough information or time and attention to make a fully informed objective decision? What ruler do they measure against? My sense is that the broad center of America, which despite being a minority nonetheless determines the outcome of virtually all elections, makes decisions based primarily on two factors: what they deem to be in their own best interest and what they perceive to be the views of their neighbors and friends. This tends to vary issue by issue, location by location. As a result, the center acts as an unpredictable balance of liberal and conservative perspectives. I also think they tend to cast less well-informed votes on the issues that fall outside the main editorial focus of election cycles. 

For example, if you are asked to choose among three candidates for, say, the airport commission, how do you know which of those candidates is really the best person for the job? Without spending considerable time researching them, you probably don't. But if you're a liberal and one of them is endorsed by the local Democratic Party, you probably have a tendency to vote for that candidate. Similarly, if you're a conservative and one of the candidates is favored by the GOP, you probably cast a vote for that person. In both cases, you have a right to expect and believe that the candidate you choose will at least subscribe to the broad philosophies of governance of the party endorsing them. 

But the independent? It seems to me they have no steady or reliable basis on which to make such judgments and therefore tend to make largely arbitrary decisions. This is the group to whom political advertising is mostly directed. Exposure is more important than substance or policy.

Somehow, this seems to be at the root of a great many of our political problems as a nation. Uninformed voters making arbitrary decisions about second-tier candidates and policy questions tend to produce scattered and often contradictory results. 

I don't have a solution but it does seem to me the problem is one that gets far too little attention and  debate.