"Empathy, Anyone?"
LENZNER, STEVEN J.
Empathy, Anyone? The politics of feeling. BY STEVEN J. LENZNER The politics of hope? The politics of change? How about the politics of empathy? To judge from the 2008 campaign so far, a...
...According to MSNBC’s exit poll, Romney won about 60 percent of the 42 percent of voters who rated “Romney’s ties to Michigan” as “very important” or “somewhat important...
...Obviously, appeals to emotion, questions of motivation and sincerity and the like always have been and always will be part of the political life of a liberal democracy...
...Of the 56 percent who answered “not too important” or “not at all,” he won about a quarter...
...The politics of empathy is a new and invidious corrosive of our political life...
...Since more bandwidth has been consumed in two weeks by Hillary’s tears than ink has been spilled over Juliet’s in almost half a millennium, I will tread briefl y, if not lightly...
...Hillary Clinton’s act took the politics of empathy—a politics in which feelings are disconnected from anything remotely political or rational—to new heights (or depths...
...And like a good member of the family, he cared...
...Every one of you can tell the difference between somebody giving an academic speech and somebody who’s coming from right here,” he said, gesturing toward his chest [Washington Post, January 2...
...Of the leading contenders for the nominations, only John McCain and Barack Obama have largely steered clear...
...Though it is of some comfort that Edwards’s candidacy will soon be a thing of the past, the fact that this Sinclair Lewis character became a serious contender for the presidency may cause thoughtful citizens some sleepless nights...
...Good intentions can replace good ideas as a qualifi cation only if politics are no longer serious...
...Romney was part of the family—neither distant cousin nor prodigal son...
...Perhaps it is too much to expect a candidate in our day and age to echo the British statesman Edmund Burke’s famous (postelection) declaration to the electors of Bristol that his parliamentary actions would be guided solely by considerations of the good of the nation...
...Take Michigan: With his candidacy in danger of collapse, Mitt Romney went to the state in which he grew up and told his audience again and again that he was a Michigander’s Michiganian: “You see, I’ve got Michigan in my DNA, I’ve got it in my heart and I’ve got cars in my bloodstream...
...The Republicans, however, are mere tyros at the politics of empathy...
...When Bill Clinton had his brief moment of vicarious pain, it was fashionable to think we were enjoying such a politics: The Commies had been whupped, liberal democracy had triumphed, and history was at its end...
...Romney’s Michigan victory is only the thin edge of the ascendancy of the politics of empathy...
...Really, really, cared: “I care about Michigan...
...The appeal worked...
...But enough of Edwards’s artlessness...
...So powerful and reflexive is this appeal in today’s Democratic party that a serious candidate for its nomination based his campaign on little more than his capacity for feeling compassion for the have-nots and anger at their plutocratic oppressors...
...So we should be concerned that the national sensibilities that produced a healthy reaction to Bill’s “I feel your pain”—widespread and protracted derision—are all but invisible at Hillary’s moment of need: sex discrimination at its worst...
...It is no accident that her emotional moment was immediately followed by the words, “You know, this is very personal for me”: the perfect postmodern marriage of empathy, emoting, and solipsism...
...But we seem to be descending even from “Ask not what your broken federal government can do for you,” to “ask how deeply I feel about Michigan...
...What distinguishes today’s politics of empathy is its lack of political content, the way in which it utterly divorces questions of feeling from the important problems of the day...
...To judge from the 2008 campaign so far, a candidate could do worse than to promote herself, above all, as a person of feeling...
...For me, it’s personal...
...No one holds such illusions today...
...John Edwards even went so far as to suggest that politics should free itself from that invidious political imperialist, thought: Edwards said his arguments come from the heart, rather than the head...
...And the voters responded to it—or should one say fell for it...
...Though far less grating, Huckabee’s appeals are more insidious than Romney’s, for the former seek to wed empathy to resentment...
...Romney’s fellow GOP contender Mike Huckabee, fl air and wit notwithstanding, is scarcely less naked in his appeals to fellow feeling, be it to his co-religionists or to the hitherto unidentifi ed laid-off majority: “Because I believe most Americans want their next president to remind them of the guy they worked with, not the guy who laid them off...
...The Democrats have been championing such a politics for the better part of two decades, ever since Bill Clinton (in)famously made “I feel your pain” part of the American political lexicon...
...Steven J. Lenzner is the Henry Salvatori research fellow in political philosophy at Claremont McKenna College...
...It’s personal for me because it’s where I was born and raised...
...Solicitude is—or is on the verge of becoming—the preeminent qualification for our nation’s highest office...
Vol. 13 • January 2008 • No. 19
