The Pictures in Our Heads (2)

"Two dogs were standing guard on a pig farm, talking about the pigs.

'You know,' said one, 'humans say that the pigs can't do looking up.'

'So, what do humans suggest pigs can do?,' asked the other.

The first answered, 'They suggest that the pigs have to somersault, as if sleeping on their backs'," the Moon continued.

"Politics and culture are endlessly talk about Public Opinion," the Moon carried on. "The president, members of Congress, candidates for public office, interest group leaders, journalists, and corporate executives, as well as ordinary citizens, routinely ask, 'What does the public think?' Political leaders need to know what sorts of policies and initiatives voters support, but other groups and individuals also need a working knowledge of public opinion. Interest group leaders must decide which battles to wage and how best to mobilize potential supporters. Journalists, who are key players in measuring and communicating public opinion, strive both to inform those of us who are curious about our fellow citizens’ attitudes and to understand what their audience wants. Corporate executives must pay attention to trends in a country's culture—what consumers think about, what they purchase, and generally, how they choose to live.

Perhaps the most obvious indicator of public opinion is the sample survey or opinion poll. Quantitative data from surveys can often give us a sense of how citizens feel about policy issues, social practices, or lifestyle issues. The results of elections and referenda sometimes reveal citizens’ preferences in very dramatic ways; it is often said that an election is the only poll that matters. Yet one must go beyond these obvious techniques and consider all of the 'places' that people’s opinions can be found: in the scripts of television programs; at political rallies, town meetings, or city council hearings; in the rhetoric of journalism; in the dialogue among friends who frequent a coffeehouse or neighborhood bar; in the political discussions one sees on the Internet and on social media or hears on talk radio. To focus on survey results alone is to miss most of the story.

The phrase 'public opinion' was not used widely before the nineteenth century, but many political philosophers of the ancient period used similar phrases to speak about popular sentiment. Plato, a Greek philosopher of the fourth century BCE, acknowledged public opinion as a central force in political affairs, but he doubted that people could realize their own best interests or work on their own to create a morally sound state. Plato thought that the just state should be governed by philosopher kings, and that members of the public should be educated to appreciate how these leaders act on behalf of the common good in order to understand and appreciate their government and the laws they lived under.

Aristotle argued most eloquently for the voice of the public, defending the wisdom of the common citizen. Aristotle did not see public opinion as the sentiments people held toward particular issues of the day, although he saw those attitudes as important and worth articulating. Instead, he emphasized the prevailing values, norms, and tastes of the citizenry.

Cicero, the renowned statesman and orator, claimed, 'Sic est vulgus: ex veritate pauce, ex opinione multa aestimat,' which can be translated as 'This is the common crowd: judging few matters according to truth, many according to opinion.' The Romans did not dismiss public opinion completely, but they believed that it mattered most in regard to leadership. Were statesmen honored by the people? Were they popular? Much discussion of public opinion in Roman times was oriented around this narrow dimension of politics.

Niccolò Machiavelli, the Italian statesman and writer, who began to write at the start of the sixteenth century, best known for his book on political strategy, The Prince, written as an advisory tract for potential rulers. In it, he discusses such questions as how a prince should act ('bear himself') in public, whether he needs to build fortresses, and whether it is better to be feared or loved by the people. Machiavelli writes about the nature of the people, 'For of men it may generally be affirmed that they are thankless, fickle, false, studious to avoid danger, greedy of gain, devoted to you while you are able to confer benefits upon them, and ready, as I said before, while danger is distant, to shed their blood, and sacrifice their property, their lives, and their children for you; but in the hour of need they turn against you. … Men are so simple, and governed so absolutely by their present needs, that he who wishes to deceive will never fail in finding willing dupes.'

From Machiavelli we see how closely early theorizing about public opinion and governance was tied to observations about human nature. Before the twentieth century, it was conventional for philosophers to speculate about the essence of human nature so that they could provide a holistic picture of man as political animal.

The eighteenth century was a time of immense political and social change. It was the century of the French and American Revolutions, and both were grounded in political philosophy. The most important discussions of democracy and public opinion occurred in Europe. Some leading early American statesmen, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, often participated in these debates during the considerable time they spent in France and Great Britain.

Perhaps the most important work on public opinion was produced by Jean- Jacques Rousseau, a brilliant and unruly Enlightenment thinker who challenged a variety of social norms and existing theoretical paradigms. More than any thinker to date, Rousseau thought it necessary to place considerable power in the hands of the public.

We cannot leave the era of the French Revolution without mentioning Jacques Necker, finance minister to Louis XVI, widely believed to have popularized the phrase “public opinion.” Necker recognized that political discourse and the nature of politics had changed dramatically in the eighteenth century.

In the nineteenth century various political philosophers tackled the problem of public opinion. Among them were the English scholars known as the Utilitarians. Jeremy Bentham was the first of the Utilitarians to write extensively about public opinion, and he was most interested in how public opinion acts as a sanction or constraint. Bentham believed that public opinion keeps society in equilibrium by preventing people from engaging in non-normative behavior.

Similar views of public opinion as a force of social control were held by Alexis de Tocqueville, the French observer of nineteenth-century American politics. Tocqueville made his famous argument about political equality and its relationship to mass opinion. He noted that in societies with extreme inequality—in an aristocracy, for example—public opinion is not viewed as particularly important.

At the same time that Tocqueville was writing about American politics, Karl Marx was studying political and social life from an entirely different standpoint. Marx did not often use the phrase 'public opinion,' in part because it was not commonly used in German philosophical hought until later in the nineteenth century. Yet he and Friedrich Engels, his collaborator and patron, did argue strongly that organic, grassroots public opinion is rare.

Although 'public opinio' is an essential concept in democratic theory, it eludes a simple and agreed upon definition. Researchers and theorists from many disciplines, applying disparate assumptions and methodologies, often use distinct definitions. This diversity reflects the inherent complexity and ambiguity of the subject. Also, the meaning of public opinion is tied to changing historical circumstances: the sort of political culture that exists, the nature of communication technology, and the importance of public participation in the everyday workings of government.

It is difficult to say which definition of public opinion is “best.” In contemporary American life, all the definitions are used, depending on the circumstances in which the public mood is being discussed. Scholars certainly use all five categories in their work, as do journalists and public officials. Some might argue that because of the popularity of polling, the first category (public opinion as an aggregation of individual opinions) is most common, but journalists and our leaders often gain knowledge of public opinion by speaking with interest group leaders. And almost all reporters and policymakers have, either knowingly or unknowingly, manufactured notions of public opinion through their spoken and written rhetoric.

So, why Public Opinion is so important? Public opinion research is a very broad field, because scholars in many disciplines need to understand how attitudes about public affairs are formed, communicated, and measured. There are four broad reasons why so many scholars and public officials study and care about public opinion.

First, the legitimacy and stability of governments depends on public support. If citizens withdraw their consent, the government has no legitimate powers.

Second, Public Opinion should constrain political leaders. People’s opinions about policy issues, like their opinions about government and democratic values, engage both normative and empirical questions.

Third, Public Opinion provides clues about culture.

Fourth, political leaders seek to change or mobilize public opinion. While political leaders may be constrained by public opinion, they also try to influence it. The most obvious circumstance is wartime, when presidents typically urge citizens to make large sacrifices: to send their sons and daughters off to war, to conserve scarce resources, and to contribute in other ways.

In direct democracy, all qualified citizens can participate directly in policymaking. We think of direct democracy as a practice within a political system, not an entire system; it is difficult to imagine any government making all decisions by direct democracy. In a strong form of direct democracy, qualified citizens can participate in meetings at which all major policies are decided. Of course, people can disagree about what counts as a 'major' policy or decision. In more limited forms of direct democracy, qualified citizens vote occasionally on certain issues, not all major issues. These various democratic procedures differ widely both in how much power they give to the public and in the demands they place on citizens.

Even minimalist (or 'elite') normative theories of democracy entail some degree of democratic competence. What constitutes democratic competence? According to Walter Lippmann in 1922, although US political thinkers have disagreed about who is qualified to deal with political affairs, they generally have agreed on the basic qualifications, which they have construed as innate, 'What counted was a good heart, a reasoning mind, a balanced judgment. These would ripen with age, but it was not necessary to consider how to inform the heart and feed the reason. Men took in their facts as they took in their breath.'

Let us begin with 'a good heart.' Most conceptions of democratic government (and even of non-democratic government) assume the existence of a common good, or 'the general welfare.' Now, belief in 'general welfare' need not be a matter of 'heart' at all; in principle, people may cooperate to promote a shared interest even if they are utterly indifferent—or even hostile—to each other’s welfare. Nevertheless, most conceptions of a well-ordered society assume that citizens generally respect and sympathize with each other’s basic interests. For example, we typically are heartened, but not surprised, by reports of donations pouring in to help survivors of a natural disaster. People who seem to value no interests other than their own may be called “antisocial,” or on a more extreme level, 'sociopathic': hostile to society and everyone within it.

But the issue of 'good-heartedness' is not a simple morality tale of human generosity and solidarity versus blinkered selfishness. One complication is that people tend to assess whether others are 'antisocial' by whether they conform to social norms, some of which are widely shared, others of which are divergent or controversial. Moreover, people tend to identify with social groups, large and small. You might identify as Cubs fan, a woman, a dog lover, a feminist, a Republican, a Baptist, a vegetarian, or any of dozens of other social identities. Sometimes our identifications and how we think about them—and how we think about people in other social groups—can influence our attitudes and behaviors in ways that we may not even notice. People may think of each other as comrades, adversaries, or anything in between based on our perceptions of each other’s group identities. As with social norms in general, there is no agreement on how to deal with our divergent group identities—and even if we agreed in the abstract, we would still be influenced by our often unconscious assumptions.

Now we turn to 'a reasoning mind.' Probably most policy questions will not simply yield to benevolence, tolerance, and a willingness to transcend group loyalties, important as those may be. Policymakers should weigh relevant facts and consider the likely and possible consequences of their actions, resisting wishful thinking. Plato, in book 6 of The Republic, argued that government should only be entrusted to the sort of person 'who has the gift of a good memory, and is quick to learn—noble, gracious, the friend of truth, justice, courage, temperance.' Plato’s ideal ruler (a 'philosopher king') thus combines expert knowledge and intelligence with a range of noble virtues. Most citizens, however gracious and courageous they may be, may lack the time and motivation to learn and reason about policy issues.

Indeed, many people may not be well suited to reason about policy issues, regardless of time constraints. Most of us know people whose eyes seem to glaze over when a conversation turns to politics or policy, as well as others who are 'often wrong but never in doubt.'

What is 'balanced judgment,' and how is it distinct from a 'reasoning mind'? We cannot be sure what Lippmann meant, but we can consider at least two meanings. Some people think of 'judgment' as a sort of practical wisdom—a sense for how to listen to people who disagree with each other, when to postpone a decision and when to move ahead, how to avoid big mistakes, and how to identify the mistakes one has made—that reason alone cannot confer. Alternatively, but not incompatibly, one can think of judgment as a decisionmaking process that integrates Lippmann’s other elements: a good heart and a reasoning mind. If our emotions (our 'heart') and our reason seem to tug in opposite directions, reconciling the dispute may be a matter of judgment. Or if our emotions seem to sweep our reason along in their path—if our reason is providing rationalizations for conclusions we immediately jumped to—'balanced judgment' may be the mental attribute or process that tells us not to decide until we have really considered all sides as fairly as we can.

The meaning of 'public opinion' is always shifting. How we think about the concept depends on historical circumstance as well as on our research hypotheses and, more than ever today, the technologies we have on hand to assess public opinion and the influences on it. Public opinion is a psychological, sociological, economic, and political phenomenon all at the same time. Public opinion formation takes place constantly as people react to the world around them. We are all bombarded with persuasive communications daily, from the mass media, online, through social media, from local political leaders, and from our friends and our families. This flood of incoming information—often symbolic in nature—shapes how people think about particular political events, actors, and policy.

When we think about the future, we must always think about the past. As we think about the often troubled but crucial relationship between the public and its leaders, perhaps it is best not to end on a cynical note, but on a hopeful and historical one. Abraham Lincoln, one of the most impressive democratic leaders of all time, was also—not surprisingly—very attentive to public opinion, and thoughtful about it. In many ways, Lincoln anticipated the problems of mass democracy and how difficult it would be for American presidents to hear all the citizens all the time. But Lincoln did his best, creating forums for public expression and listening as hard as he could, given the pressures of his office.

Do our own leaders do as well as Lincoln in taking public opinion seriously? Might new media, social media, and advances in communication technology be used to this effect? How will people go about forming and expressing their opinions on major political and social issues? The future of public opinion remains to be written. And Allah knows best."

Unlike Cinderella—who left one of her shoon for the Prince to find, the Moon left no shoon except for the traces that was swamped in the mind of those who looked at her. And time had run out, the Moon left while chanting, 

After my picture fades and darkness has turned to gray

Watching through windows

You're wondering if I'm okay

Secrets stolen from deep inside

And the drum beats out of time *)

Citations & References:
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, 1922, Free Press
- Carroll J. Glynn, Susan Herbst, Mark Lindeman, Garrett J. O’Keefe, Public Opinion, 2016, Westview Press
- Maxwell McCombs, Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion, 2014, Polity Press
*) "Time After Time" written by Cyndi Lauper & Robert Hyman

[Session 1]

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