In The Spot: Rise of Political Advertising on Television by Diamond and Bates there is a terrific anecdote about a truck. The story, attributed to Mark Shields, is of a minor party hanger-on who is concerned about an election in Iowa. A few days before the election he persuades the campaign to give him $100 to rent a truck, cover it with signs, put a sound system on it and drive around town. Sure enough the truck driver’s candidate wins and he proudly proclaims “it was the truck!”
Almost a week after Democrats lost the Senate race in Massachusetts, and with it apparently the ability to pass sweeping health care reform, nearly everyone is saying it was their truck. Tea Party Patriots are saying it is proof they have political power, Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) said those who didn’t see the election as a wake-up call to move to the center were incapable of waking up, professional campaign field organizers are saying Brown won because of a vastly superior field operation (and a woeful Democratic field effort), U.S. Representative Bill Pascrell says the election Democratic arrogance, and so on. All maybe right, of course, but similarly all may be wrong (the election can’t be re-run like an experiment adding or subtracting a variable).
Most of us bring our biases to bear on a situation and say “I told you so!” at the outcome. I recall (possibly falsely) a study around the 1983 post-apocalyptic film The Day After that found those who believed the United States needed a strong nuclear deterrent, and those who believed nuclear disarmament was critical, both said the movie proved their point. A recent study about incarceration rates that some advocates hoped would prove America had too many people in prison had the opposite effect on those who support ‘lock ‘em up’ policies – rather than looking at the data and saying ‘”too many folks are in jail”, they said “crime went down when we put a lot of people in jail, I told you locking up lots of people was good.”
Advocates should learn the lesson of the truck. Everyone with an opinion about a situation will find something in the situation that proves them right. One advocate’s clear evidence of A is another advocate’s obvious proof of B. Before launching an issue campaign based on examples you and your coalition allies agree makes your point, check with folks who different points of view (polling is one way to do this) and find out what, if anything, they think your examples prove. Checking your biases against the biases of others can help refine your message, help you make sure you’re making the point you want to make, and help prevent you from making your opponents argument for them.
