Thinking through Political Decisions

November 10, 2010

To:  The Editor

     When a nation's children rank 23rd and 24th (and falling) in science and math, respectively, there is little surprise that their parents ("the American people") also will not think rationally in the political decisions they make.

     Rational decision-making in politics--as in education--is a problem-solving activity.  As in science and mathematics, both begin with a set of given conditions that are relevant to a goal to be achieved during a solution process.  Each goal has it own set of relevant conditions.

     A student who has not been taught to think critically and reason logically in English, history, government, health and other non-science and non-mathematics classes will not automatically do so in science and mathematics classes either unless science and math teachers encourage, stimulate and teach them how to do so. If voters have not been taught to think rationally in their schools, how can they be expected to do so in preparation for election day?

     Being prepared to think rationally in preparation for election day does not mean that all people will come to the same conclusion.  With difficult math and science problems some times the correct solution is reached by students only because the answers are in the back of the book.  Rational thinking will not alway lead to the correct answers to problems, but it gets one on the road toward the solution.

     Solutions to all problem require access to correct information and knowledge of relationships between and among the variables existing within that body of relevant information.   The relationship between a home to live in and a good job is simple:  If the father has a good job, the family will have a place to stay.  An employer, however, does not relate directly to the family having food and a place to live.  But both an employer and family needs relate to the father's having a job.  Hence, if the employer hires the father, there will be food on the table and a place to live.  But employers also have needs, further complicating the problem.

     I once attended a conference of science teachers who were setting the guidelines for the curriculum of a science course, and the teachers had been led to conclude that teaching the scientific method was no longer appropriate because even real scientists did not use it.  I was unable to convince them that the scientific method was not just an approach to tackling science problems, it was useful in problem-solving and decision-making in everyday life activities--like voting.

     I'm again reminded of my favorite mathematics teacher, Burton West, saying to us:  "Think, young people, think."  If children are not taught and encouraged to think in school, who will teach and encourage them to do so after they become adults? 

      In a recent column, Bill O'Reilly asks, " Why do the West Coast and the Northeast continue to embrace liberalism, especially when it has led to economic disaster?"  That statement was aimed at an uninformed and misinformed audience whom O'Reilly hopes remains so about such facts.

     Often, when voters are not able (or inclined) to think rationally during political campaigns, they either flip coins to decide how to vote or engages in "trial and error problem-solving.  Trial and error works sometimes but mostly when one knows the answer and has much time to solve the problem.  Flipping the coin always has a fifty-fifty chance of being right, but votes tend to cancel each other.  Recent elections suggest that the present electorate is resorting to both methods in making political decisions: If the bunch who are in office are not getting the job done," trial and error" says choose someone else.  "Flipping the coin says: I don't know which is better; I'll just pick one.  At least I'm voting.  Both can be persuaded, by the party which claims to know and represent what "the American people" want.

      President Obama was doing what "the American people" wanted:  Preventing a depression required that money be spent to stabilize banks.  It required that money be spent producing and saving jobs.  Saving General Motors and Chrysler saved jobs at the automakers, their dealerships and their suppliers.  Health-care reform was aimed at  reducing the contribution of health-care costs to the growing national debt.  Keeping economic conditions and unemployment from getting worse and effecting an economic recovery, slow though it may be, made Democrats worthy of two more years.  "The American people" disagreed, and TV personalities, almost to a person, espoused that kind of thinking by them as reasonable.

      No person who survives an auto crash in critical condition goes home the next day.  Yet that's what "the American people" thought was possible with America's great recession.  Trial and error thinking has demanded another doctor, presuming that with another "doctor", our economy would have been well the next day.  The reason why people don't make bad decisions in medical emergencies is because they don't constantly hear and submit to other people who tell them to do what is contrary to their better judgment.  Yet, in politics, "the American people" allow surrogates to think for them.

      Granted, liberals are no more thoughtful than conservatives about what is best for government to be and be doing.  The more rational or centrist elements of either ideology could move the country forward.  But ideologies no longer control political agendas.   The contest is no longer one of political and social ideas; it is about whether the wealthy have the right (and should be allowed) to become richer at the expense everyone else.  

     Middle-class voters, whose incomes have been stagnate for the past ten years or more as incomes of the wealthy increased, and others who earn less than $250 thousand dollars a year, essentially said on Nov. 2:  If taxes of the wealthiest Americans are increased on Jan. 1, then, we want ours increased also.         

     How can Democrats regain the faith of "the American people" who use trial and error, flipping the coin and the thinking of others to make political decisions?  How will Democrats deal with "the American people" who allow questionable financial contributions to essentially buy their votes?  Better education might help; a better national character would demand it.  But Republicans won't allow either.  

Ronald