As some of you know I am an Experimental Psychologist so I get updates as to research that just came out. Although it is not political I try to share it on here for discussion.

If you're interested the actual article is in

Aaker et al. Recalling Mixed Emotions. Journal of Consumer Research, 2008;

More after the breakhere

Now that the Democratic nomination for President has been decided, it is up to us to define and frame John McCain in his proper context.  And, by contrast, those of us who have read up on Obama's biography and are knowledgeable about the candidate himself would do well to incorporate the sizable volume of information about Barack that has been in the public domain for a good long while  

McCain presents himself as a wise, Grandfatherly type but the reality is that he comes across as dull, charmless, stilted, and heavily scripted.  His temper lies barely restrained beneath the surface, showing to the world that he is a deeply angry man, proud, moody, and heavily caustic in personal dealings.  Those traits are understandable considering he was physically, emotionally, and psychologically tortured for five and a half years as a prisoner of war, but I am not sure I would favor them in a President.      

During the summer of 2007, I, like most of us, was completely convinced Barack Obama was going to run a distant second place to Hillary Clinton.  My admittedly minor role as a volunteer for his campaign did little to assuage my feelings.  He seemed doomed to run a respectable, but nonetheless inevitable second place.  I was again more than willing to serve my time-honored role as the supporter of the Patron Saint of Lost Causes.    

The means by which he won the nomination will be a benchmark in political science and history for years to come; I'll let hindsight speak for itself when the right time comes and I'll not dwell too heavily upon the against-all-odds nature of Obama's run for the White House.  
 

John Kerry served in Vietnam, saved a man’s life and was wounded. Somehow, a lot of voters perceived of John Kerry as a coward who never served his country and would not be tough enough to be commander-in-chief.  George W. Bush avoided Vietnam and even failed to fulfill his National Guard obligation. Somehow, Americans perceived of George W. Bush as a heroic military man and a courageous commander-in-chief.  

This is called MANAGING PERCEPTION.  

It's not just managing the perception the public has of YOUR guy, but more importantly, it's about managing the perception people have of the OTHER guy! In 2004, more people perceived that Kerry was bad and Bush was good - just enough people for Bush to win the election.

Which brings us to a cold hard fact:  if the Democrats want to take back the White House in 2008, they must become as good as Karl Rove at managing perception.  The good news is, it's not some trick only Karl Rove knows the secret to.

Don't be fooled by Rove being out of this one.  There are a thousand people currently working for John McCain who are Rovian and will do exactly what he has taught them to do.  

Managing perception is actually not all that difficult once you know the rules.

The Obama campaign is making a mistake, so I have some advice:  Don't do nine out of ten things right, and then do one thing wrong. It can cost you a race that is already won!

I learned how to lose a state legislative race that looked like a sure thing in 1994. The seat was open, and had been in Democratic hands for 40 years. I had been previously the local party chair, and had been a key organizer for two Presidential candidates. I had run the campaigns of the previous state representative for ten years before running myself.

How I lost a campaign in ten easy steps below the fold....

The following is a short discussion, abit of a long read, by two Vietnam Veterans, on a VFP/VVAW, group board. The first post is a copy of a question asked and answered by another Vietnam Veteran. The two posts following that are a reply to the original than an answer to that reply.

I would hope that it might help our present Brothers and Sisters, serving in Theaters of War and when they return from, to help find the answers to any questions that may be.

With the Mutiple Tours, Extended Tours, ever Changing Reasons For, and the initial ignorance of what type of Conflict they were led into, as this countries military had already had a long running battle with Guerilla/Insurgent warfare and those lessons still aren't being applied, there will be many more questions that need answering than even we 'Nam vets have been seeking answers for, to the closed ears of our Government and the People of this Country.

One of the most interesting things about being left of center (politically speaking) is how "weak" those on the left are perceived to be, and how centrism and fair play add to that perception. Democrats get bullied on congress, get whipped with negative ads and are seen as whining about it later, and generally give off this air of not being strong.

Talking with a good friend of mine lately, he had no choice but to comment on how my choice of voting Democratic was going to result in a weak military and hurt America was a given. When I told him that my Grandfather, Mother, and Stepfather, all Veterans, vote Democratic as well, he was unswayed. naturally, he has never served in the military, but knows better than those who have.

Republicans bragging about voter suppression and caging is excused, because it makes up for Democratic phantom stolen votes that can't be proven, or even had examples shown in court. Cutting Veteran's benefits is OK because that money pays for the contractors to fight alongside our soldiers, without accountability or oversight. (cause that's what it takes!) Any action by those on the political right today can be excused, because it prevents some imagined action that would have been much worse from the left.

Way back last century, I remember thinking that the media was biased against President Clinton, because instead of calling him "President Clinton," they frequently referenced him as "Mr. Clinton."  

Then, when Bush became president, I noticed the media doing the same thing: often referring to him not as "President" Bush but, instead, "Mr." Bush.

This isn't to say that the media is unbiased.  It's to say that I was wrong about this specific instance of bias.  I haven't performed a statistical analysis on the frequencies, but I can safely say that there seems to be a convention to not necessarily use formal titles when referring to the President of the United States and my assumption of the bias inherent in his usage was flawed.  I was ready, however, to see bias whether it existed or not.

In July of 2006, Shankar Vedantam wrote a compelling yet flawed piece for the Washington Post examining how our own biases affect how we view the media.  It shows how approaching news and information without being self-critical about our own perceptions can be dangerous, and how easily people can jump to conclusions about bias, with or without solid evidence.

Think about how we perceive: you see a bird flying. This gives information to your brain through the eyes. Your eyes transmit that information through the retina, through the optic nerve to the occipital lobe and, eventually, to the frontal lobe.

Now think about this picture.  What do you see here?  What does your brain do with the conflicting information you receive from it?

This picture is an ambigram, an image which can be viewed in more than one way depending on how you perceive it.

The thing about this sort of image, in particular, is that it manages to convince you visually that you're looking at two completely contradictory views at the exact same time.

What does this tell you about perception, and the way our brain processes conflicting stimuli? Can you see it as both images simultaneously, or merely as one, then the other, alternating based on how you squint or tip your head?

Laugh or shake your head at the above question at your own peril.

Because there are a couple of very disturbing trends emerging over the past couple of months that should make all of us, as well as the Congressional Democrats, sit up and take notice.  Saying that "we know we have to do better", as Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid recently said won’t cut it.  The level of anger and resentment over the capitulation bill was far greater than they estimated.  

And if there isn’t something with real teeth coming out of the Defense spending bill debates, there may not be another chance that the Democrats have to recover – that is until and unless they concede some credit to the republicans (which is already happening in the press) for any change of course that may occur.  This, as of a few months ago was an absolutely laughable thought, and is still pretty ridiculous, given the 100% total and unconditional support to anything that this administration has done or wanted to do in Iraq for the past 5 years.

thereisnospooon had a diary up on the rec list a couple days ago that expressed head-shaking disbelief about a recent survey showing that 70% of Republicans don't believe in the theory of evolution.

Now, putting aside for the moment the fact that 70% of Republicans would themselves form a pretty strong argument against the theory of evolution, we should not be surprised by that statistic.

Why? Simple: Because Republicans have a distinct aversion to reality. Otherwise, they couldn't be Republicans.

Since I've been here a while, I thought that I would share my one and only publication so far.  This is an essay that shares the pages with such luminaries as George McGovern and Noam Chomsky.  I highly recommend (I do not recieve royalties) this work, entitled:

The United States in Global Context: American Studies after 9/11 and Iraq

edited by Walter Grünzweig, 2004, ISBN 3-8258-8262-4

Distributed by Transaction Publishers in North America

This is my published writing so far, kind of embarrassed as I was absolutely wrong:

The forward is:

Richard Gallant is a graduate student in Germanic Languages and Literature at the University of Virginia with a focus in aesthetics, ideology, and revolutionary theater.  After spending a year in Dortmund as an exchange student two years ago, he is currently exchange lecturer at Dortmund teaching a course entitled "Pornography and Literature: Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Sacher-Masoch, and Vladimir Nabokov"

(that was 2004, I now focus on Germanic Saga)

The Really Smart Politicians Are Already Using Iraq To Play The Perception Game

In response to Mr. Populist's entry and the comments in response to it, I decided to think about how the Democrats could better shape their perception.  Hopefully, this is better than my angry and drunken rant I posted last week.

As I began to question the ideas and the picture that the GOP and the Administration has pulled over my eyes.  I had this mental image of what was going on and thought that i would share it with the DK.

It was like some reality where I sat in a chair and in front of me was this painting, of America and what it stood for on principal.  After sitting for a while, comfortable, safe, and protected; I started to see cracks in the painting.  What I saw on the other side put me into a panic, Government sponsored terrorism, NSA spying of American citizens, searches of our communications, the Patriot Act, a dependent Judiciary, Corporate corruption of our representatives, RFID chips, National ID cards, The north American Union, the Politics of terror, National Health Care crisis, National Debt, Pollution, Global Warming, ect.  The list just keeps going!  

Joe Lieberman is already being solidly portrayed by the MSM as a sore loser, a whiner and as spoiler who's only interested in his own ego. His appearance on "Today" this AM was pretty embarassing.

But Joe is continuing his campaign like the political junkie he is, unable to deal with the agonizing withdrawls of retirement. He simply can't stop being a politician. His whole ego depends on his own self-image as a senator.

He now says he's an independent, who's an "alternative to the partisanship divide".

Everything is relative.  How two people or entities, businesses or peoples receive and process the exact same event, news, or experience is always dependent on, or relative to, their perspective.  

Additionally, the passage of time warps the perceptions of each party.  As time goes on, one looks back and remembers the same event through the filter of faded memories and new experiences, reality, new events and perspective.  The other party does the same, albeit with their own version of that filter.  Different perceptions of the event, originally similar or wildly different, can change drastically.  Perhaps bringing the two perceptions back together or shoving them further apart than ever.  

Revisiting an article by essayist Lance Morrow in the June 4, 1979 issue of TIME.