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| The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation | 
 enlarge | Author: Drew Westen
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (35 reviews)
Sales Rank: 19872
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.7
ISBN: 1586484257
Dewey Decimal Number: 324.9730019
EAN: 9781586484255
ASIN: 1586484257
Publication Date: June 25, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Partisan Brain February 5, 2008
4 out of 18 found this review helpful
I am an ex-Democrat, now third party affiliate who came to this book very interested. Can the Democratic Party be saved and get millions just like me who left to come back. Unfortunately this book has neither the correct answers, but it does not even diagnose the problem correctly.
Mr. Westen makes not bones about it he is a hard core democratic partisan, nothing wrong with that if he would take a moment and step back to look at why the large group of people who have left the Democratic party LEFT. Instead of doing this and trying to attract us back his book is more a feel good polemic designed to bolster preconceived notions that the Democrats are great and the Republicans stink and the big problem is that the Democrats don't have a good message.
I have so many notes on this book that I could write a ten thousand page review in rebuttal instead let me short and concise. Do the Democrats really want to win here are some ideas and yes some of them completely contradict the book but what I am trying to do is represent reality not partisan ideology.
Policies vs Talking points - To be brutally honest the republicans kick but in telling the public what they want to do and the Democrats stink. WHY? It's not at all what Westen says in the book, it's not that republicans can tell a better story it is that they can tell you what they are going to DO. Read a Newt Gingrich book and then read Obama's book. Newt's if full of plans, proposals, and statistics, in other words here is the problem and this is what I am going to do to fix it. Obama - nothing more than simple platitudes, nothing of substance, nothing that I can dig my teeth into.
What one has to realize is that the Democrats don't have a play book (Westen calls it a master narrative) but he never discusses why. The answer is that if we take a neutral look at the polices that the Progressives are advancing we find that a majority of Americans disagree with them. Westen says this is not true but he only cites far left surveys, the right can do the opposite with a larger majority agreeing with their views in their far right surveys, but if we look at non-partisian surveys the republicans mirror more of what the average America wants. This makes it very hard to speak truthfully about your vision to voters who disagree with you so the Democrats are left mutter platitudes trying to cover up what they truly intend to do or lie about their goals. And this leads to the next point.
Truthfulness -Bill Clinton was and is a very popular president because he was very charismatic and also had the uncanny ability to lie to your face and make it believable. Sorry but most people cannot put forth a bold face lie with believability. The Democratic Party not realizing that Clinton was a very unique person has adopted this strategy of coming up with patently false talking points. These talking points are tired out on the party devotees who will believe anything and they go over great but when presented to the middle who do a little more research we are appalled at the untruthfulness that the party leaders are tying to cram down our throats.
For example Westen could not go more than 10 or 20 pages without repeating the talking point of "Bush's tax cut for the super rich." There is only one problem Mr. Westen, those of us who look at this independently and do a little research aren't swayed much by this fabrication. I admit that it is a easy and popular talking point repeated ad nauseam by the left and their media but it rings hollow in my and many other independents ears. Let's examine it.
When Bill Clinton instituted one of the largest tax increases in Americas history he targeted this directly upon the backs of middle class Americans. As most people know by now, his tax raise explicitly cut out the top 700 taxpayers from receiving any raise. This was payback to the largest group of supporters to the Democratic Party, the super rich all earning over $ 1million a year with a average of $ 45 million a year. I'm sure most readers are aware that in the 2000 campaign the Democratic Party received 92% all of donations totaling $ 1million or more. Only someone living in a box does not realize that it is the Democratic Party that is controlled by the super rich, let's just be honest about this.
When Bush lowered taxes his tax cut bill first raised it on those top 700 taxpayers that Clinton rewarded, it than lowered along with everybody else's. The net result was that "after" this so called-tax cut on the super rich their rates actually went up (payback by Bush against the Democratic supporters). Anybody reading this has access to the data from the democratic controlled CBO report and the actual IRS figures. The super-rich are paying the highest percentage of federal tax dollars in history.
Now I understand why Westen and the rest of the Democratic Party vomit out this falsehood liked trained automata, it is because it polls very well and creates ignorant voters to fell disgust the republicans. Fair enough and a good tactic but the hypocrisy is that Westen spent several chapters hitting home the theme to not follow the opinion polls but to speak the truth. For me as for most independents when your main talking points consist of falsehoods your party loses a great deal of credibility with us. In this case silence would be preferred over blatantly lying to the voters and hoping that they do not notice.
Negative campaigning - I did not vote for Bush in 2000 but I did vote against Kerry and for Bush in 04 and so did many of associates just like me. WHY? Kerry ran the most vicious negative attack campaign that I have ever seen. When it came to vote what were we supposed to do? Kerry had presented 25 seconds of anti-don't-vote-for-bush negativity in his ads and 5 seconds of vote-for-me-instead. These constant attacks ads with no substance about Kerry turned more people off, including Democrats, than Westen can even fathom, his solution - Kerry needed to be MORE negative.
What Westen and the Democrats have not figured out is that I would rather vote FOR someone rather than AGAINST someone. I didn't vote "for" Bush but for the first time in my life I did vote "against" someone and that was solely because of his negativity and his inability to tell me his plans or goals.
Conclusion:
Unless the Democratic Party is willing to step away from their ideology and take a hard cold look at why the independent voters are turned off by them they will never be able to solve the "real" problem. Stop trying to feel good about yourself and instead start trying to be the party that is for the people.
 This book will help you predict the outcome of this election January 5, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I enjoyed reading Drew Westin's book and his emphasis on the narrative power of political speakers. The point: whoever tells the most compelling story wins. I decided to test this out using the websites of the candidates in Iowa the morning of the election. Using Westin's criteria of a great narrative, I evaluated the candidate messages. On that basis I identified the candidates predicted to win. They were Huckabee and Obama! I'm going to try the same experiment the morning of the New Hampshire race and see what happens there. However, based on this preliminary data, this book is on to something important that is regularly overlooked by Democratic candidates.
 Just propagating the same old us-against-them mentality December 5, 2007
8 out of 13 found this review helpful
The book started off in superb fashion-tossing out psychological gems like candy to the reader, but the grotesque bias that clouds an otherwise intelligent person makes this a difficult read and an awful philosophy.
Westen starts off by mentioning a study in which participants showed how people rationalize blatant contradictions by their favorite political candidates. When the participants found a way to keep their candidates in good standing, the "happy circuits" in their brains lit up like a Christmas tree. This study showed that people--once they've picked a political party or candidate--very little evidence will change their mind about them.
Instead of dwelling on this dramatic finding and elaborating on why today's us-against-them mentality in politics is killing our democracy and bigger goals (like truth), Westen spends the majority of the book showing how Republicans use emotion to manipulate the populace and how Democrats should use emotion also--not to manipulate constituents' minds--but to reveal the valid points Democrats are trying to get across.
This book fails because it's contradictory itself: The religious right is evil when they use religion to make a political move, but Westin uses religion throughout his book (not just his native Judaism) to make his points; Westen shows that popularity of issues are an indication of their validity, but then contradicts that by saying the Civil Rights movement was correct despite its unpopularity; and of course, Republicans who use emotion are diabolical, but Democrats are the white knights using emotion to spread truth. Westen also uses polls throughout the book, but at one point explicitly says that polls can basically say anything you want them to--each poll can be used for either side.
Despite the author's initial plea to people on both sides of the aisle, his bias is deliberate and obvious and it's another major drawback to the book--Nixon wasn't the President who got us out of Viet Nam, he was the President who dismantled the War on Poverty. Johnson wasn't the President who presided over the largest troop deployment in US history (to Viet Nam) he was a champion of civil rights. Clinton wasn't lucky to get elected (minority votes) and lucky to preside over a boom--he was an emotional and economic genius. Well, I hate to break it to you Drew, you aren't the objective voter who shares the views of every American, you are a snide, biased, commentator.
Die hard Democrats will love this book, but people with an honestly open mind will struggle to get past the first few pages--unfortunately, there's little new in this book--it just perpetuates the us-against-them mentality that makes politics today so unbearable. For a better book about politics, try Justice and Equality: A Dialogue on the Philosophies of Conservatism and Liberalism and for a better book about psychology, try Stumbling on Happiness.
 Good Book November 25, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Excellent book, and I am not even through it yet.
But pair it with 'Words that Work' and you will be well on your way to understanding how to frame what people think and feel.
Excellent Book October 11, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Definitely worth your while to read and understand how we think about politics.
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