“Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now,” President Obama recently told a group of Democratic donors in Massachusetts, “and facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.”
Looking at these remarks, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson sees “some of the most arrogant words ever uttered by an American president.” Says Gerson, “Obama clearly believes that his brand of politics represents `facts and science and argument.’ His opponents, in disturbing contrast, are using the more fearful, primitive portion of their brains. Obama views himself as the neocortical leader — the defender, not just of the stimulus package and health-care reform but also of cognitive reasoning. His critics rely on their lizard brains — the location of reptilian ritual and aggression. . . .The neocortical presidency destroys the possibility of political dialogue. What could Obama possibly learn from voters who are embittered, confused and dominated by subconscious evolutionary fears? They have nothing to teach, nothing to offer to the superior mind. Instead of engaging in debate, Obama resorts to reductionism, explaining his opponents away.”
Gerson has found a fascinating quote and extrapolaed from it a passel of bad conclusions, mostly because he believes Obama of being “in the thrall of pseudoscience,” maintaining that “Human beings under stress are not hard-wired for stupidity, which would be a distinct evolutionary disadvantage.”
I don’t think Dr. Gregory Berns, who is the director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University, would appreciate being call a pseudoscientist. I interviewed him early in 2009 when we still in the throes of the financial crisis, and we talked about the effect of emotion on decision-making. “Fear and decision-making,’’ Berns told me, “is like alcohol and driving. Don’t put the two together. Fear is a warning label telling you not to make decisions until you calm down.’’
Every decision, says Berns, is a contest between upside and downside, between a fear of failure and the expectation of reward. “Historically, classical economists have seen this as the opposite ends of a single continuum, probably because they were thinking in terms of money, of profit and loss. The problem with that view comes when you look into the brain, because different circuits process our reaction to profit and loss. So when you make a decision, it’s not a rational choice between two options, but much more like two agents competing with one another. And for whatever reason, our fear of the downside dominates.’’
Or, as the president put it, we don’t always think clearly when we’re scared.
But if Gerson is ignorant of matters psychological, he nonetheless did manage to locate a quote that illuminates Obama’s problems. The president recognizes that the country is scared, but for whatever reason, he refuses to confront that fear. Instead, he persists in being the rational policy wonk, working hard to address the sources of those fears, but doing a poor job addressing the fear itself. To do that, Obama needs to provide a narrative that makes sense of things. He needs to take the frightening mess of government agents and corporate actors and macreconomic influences that have combined to put us where we are, and tell us a story–a story that names villains; identifies systemic vulnerabilities; describes how we will punish the criminals, fix the weaknesses, and help the victimized; and articulates a plan that would put us back on the path to prosperity. It’s odd: you would think that someone who has told his own story so well in two books, and who managed to combine intellect and emotion so effectively in his speech on racism in the campaign, would have a problem providing the narrative framework for this very challenging moment. But he has not done so at all.
This is a failure of communication. This is a failure of leadership. And until addresses these
failures, we will remain prisoners of uncertainty and fear.
In this way, Obama reminds me of Marcia Clark, the prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Clark had tons of evidence that she introduced relentlessly, but she provided no story, no framework that would explain why good old O.J. would do something so reprehensible. But when Johnnie Cochran offered a narrative that explained how good old O.J. fell afoul of the racist police who were investigating the murders, Simpson was acquitted.
Why are people so angry with the government? Because the government has demonstrated so little anger with the bankers–the authors of the crisis, the beneficiaries of the conditions that led to the crisis, the interests that the government has protected during the crisis. And the people who are suffering most this year are the people in government–the president and the sitting members of Congress in both parties.