3rd
What Politico — and other campaign-obsessed outlets — fear are the narratives that expose much of their work as simple distractions. What they fear, I think, is political science. Here’s a different list:
1)Campaigns don’t really matter. Elections are largely decided by the fundamentals of the economy. The graphs in this article would’ve done more to predict the 2008 election than reading Politico every day.
2) Presidential speeches don’t matter much, either.
3) Nor does the executive’s legislative strategy, come to think of it. Politics is much more interesting when it’s told as the story of the executive, but in fact, the rules and composition of the Congress decide 80 percent of everything — including the president’s legislative priorities and strategy.
4) Polls are useful for measuring impressions but very bad for measuring beliefs.
5) The media is a political actor, not an observer.
6) Pretty much no one watches cable news.
7) What you emphasize is a lot more important than what you report. People don’t read you closely.
Ezra Klein - Seven stories Politico fears
The big takeaway for me has been something I’ve been grasping at: what parts of the political science literature are used by practitioners?
It seems to me like in most other fields it’s relatively straight forward (e.g., econ relevant to for-profit sector managers is taught in MBA programs, and similarly in health sciences) but rather opaque in politics.
What I want to know comes down to a simple question:
What does the reading list look like for a graduate practicum in high political strategy?
(Research to follow, maybe?)
