2. READ: Lost Children Archive. A novel by by Valeria Luiselli.
4. READ: There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration. A book by Ali Noorani.
5. READ: What the first 24 hours on U.S. soil looks like for detained immigrants.
6.LOOK: Our 2018 photo essay in the midst of a rally outside the gates of Tornillo, Texas.
This interview with Dan Hopkins, Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
What were the original assumptions in the Constitution about state-level loyalty versus national government loyalty?
It's a good question. The Constitution is now far enough back in our collective memories that I think it's really valuable to start by having some sense of what the U.S. was like at the time. There were some scholars who argued that the Constitution is well understood as a peace treaty between sovereign states about how they were going to govern their affairs.
In 1776 and even in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted, the U.S. was a collection of 13 quite different colonies. It took the Georgia delegation six weeks to travel to Philadelphia in order to participate in the Constitutional Convention. Different colonies had very different economies and different religious heritages. This was a quite diverse country and, thus, the Constitution was designed to protect substantial levels of state-level autonomy. I think it is really important to recognize that at the time, many of the people thought of themselves as Americans, but also to a certain extent, as New Yorkers or Virginians or Pennsylvanians.
When do you start to see a shift towards politics in the U.S. becoming more nationalized?
To some degree, it's an ongoing process that has unfolded in fits and starts over our 200-plus year history. I do think that the Civil War is a critical turning point. In the run-up to the Civil War, you see many more implications of state-level identities. I'm a Georgian, I'm a Virginian. And obviously, the Civil War pitted state against state.
It's generally been the case that the Republican party has been more likely to invoke federalism. Of course, the exemplary issue is the issue of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Even in more recent times, the Republican party has advocated for there being less of a role in the federal government asserting itself to protect the rights of African-Americans, especially, but not only in the South. I think it's fair to say that if you've heard a state rights argument in the last 50 years, it's more likely to be coming from the Republican party.
There's also an element in which as power shifts, we see changes. When the Republicans control the federal office, sometimes it's Democrats who say, "Hey, it's important to let California write its own laws with respect to clean energy or car emissions standards." At the same time, the extent to which we see Republican states moving to block sanctuary cities, for instance, is surprising.
If you're a principled federalist, then presumably cities shouldn't be punished for diverging.
In general, I see very few principled federalists in American politics. I think that all too often in contemporary American politics, federalism is just the clothing we use to dress up certain arguments instead of being a principled approach to a range of policy problems.
What factors contribute to a nationalized political landscape?
I actually think there's a relationship between the transformation of campaign finance, the transformation of voting, and the transformation of what's getting covered in our newspapers. There's a unifying element to all of this.
Let's look at campaign finance first. In many of the most competitive 2020 Senate races, large majorities of money came from out-of-state donations. What does that do to the candidates, and how does that affect the way constituents perceive elections?
I think that the nationalization of the campaign finance structure is an example of our nationalized set of divisions. What we're trying to do is refract these highly nationalized divisions through our federalist system. And the result often distorts representation in critical ways. One of the key facts about campaign finance has been that as late as 1992, two-thirds of all donations to federal candidates, to members of Congress, were coming from within the state that they represent. 20 years later in 2012, only one-third of all dollars were coming from the states that people represented.
The danger is that the representatives and senators increasingly have one constituency where they get their votes, but a separate constituency from where they get their money.
That is not how our system was designed to work. It was not designed for members of Congress to spend four hours a day raising money from people who are not their constituents.
And simultaneously, there has been a collapse of local media. I wonder how the decline of local news plays into this landscape?
When the internet first became a sizable presence, there was a hope that it might actually lead to a proliferation of local news. With the internet there are very, very low production costs, so, theoretically, I could put up a newsletter about my neighborhood. But in fact, as you said, the rise of the internet and the rise of cable television led to this dramatic concentration of our attention on a very, very small number of nationalized news sources. Partly that's because the news media would target us based on where we lived. The Philadelphia Inquirer targeted a set of people who wanted to know about life in and around Philadelphia.
But more recently we instead see that the business model for many media companies is to compete based on who voters are and who readers are and who consumers are, rather than where they live.
Rather than providing me with information specific to Philadelphia, they will identify me as someone who likes the National Football League or cares about politics.
That has led to the fragmentation of our media environment. One of the real losers in this has been people's attention to state and local politics. State and local politics have never been on the top of people's priority lists. It used to be that if I were reading the Philadelphia Inquirer, as a by-product of learning what the Eagle's score was, I also learn a little bit about who my mayor was or who my governor was. And nowadays, since I can go right to ESPN or I can go right to Fox News, I can skip over all that state and local information.
In a world where state and local politicians want to be well-known, they're much more likely to attach themselves to a lightning rod federal issue than they are to actually dive into the challenging, complex issues that face their local community.
Which really allows issues to be manipulated. When we focused on immigration, something I found interesting was how much immigration was used as a campaign tool in Ohio or Maine. It’s easy to make a border terrifying when you don’t live near one. Do you feel like campaigning has changed based on the ability to take issues that don't have anything to do with your constituents, but are made to look like they have everything to do with constituents?
Yeah, absolutely. One of the real challenges with a nationalized political environment is that it encourages attention to issues that are evocative and emotionally charged and often have to do with specific groups of people, but ultimately do not have clear policy effects. I think one prominent example of this is not long after President Trump was elected he attacked football players who refused to stand for the National Anthem. I think it's a very instructive case because he wasn't proposing any policy. This was purely about symbols.
I worry that in the nationalized political environment, it's very hard to put together a political coalition that speaks to auto workers and nurses in the suburbs of Detroit, and retirees in Maricopa County. This is a very diverse country. One of the easier ways to knit together a political coalition is to reach for these divisive, identity-oriented issues, even if that's not actually what's going to motivate the policies that you're proposing.
I do think that there's been a real connection between the way in which our politics has nationalized and the way in which our politics has become more identity oriented.
It's these kinds of identity charged issues that can have an intuitive meaning to people in places from Montana to North Carolina.
Has your work clarified your opinion about how national politics should work? What do you advocate for moving forward in terms of policy and campaigning?
I certainly think that voters do better when they have the information that they need, and I think that we are missing an opportunity to really use our federalist system, because there are so many different kinds of issues that face the different communities in our country.
If we are trying to force all of those issues onto a single divide between Democrats and Republicans, we're going to miss a lot of critical issues.
I think some of the disaffection with contemporary politics stems from the fact that many of us deal with problems in our day-to-day lives that are not represented by the Republican-Democrat divide.
I do want to be wary of nostalgia — or suggesting that some earlier period of history was markedly better. Yes. I worry a lot that today's voters just don't know much about state and local politics, but state and local politics wasn't always vibrant and democratic in previous generations, right? As a social scientist, I think part of my job is to lay out trends. I do think that nationalization is something that we should forecast as being a major part of our politics moving forward.
I also think that there are some policy changes on the edges that I would advocate for that I think would help reinforce the connections between places and voters, and to make better use of our current federalist system. For instance, I think campaign finance matching, so that every dollar you get locally is amplified, is a great idea. I think that could encourage politicians to lay down roots in the specific communities they represent and to spend less time trying to raise money from Manhattan or Dallas.
I think we should also do everything in our regulatory capacity to help promote, protect, and foster high-quality, non-partisan coverage of states and localities.
As a country that is hemorrhaging reporters who cover states and localities I do think that given how many important decisions are made at the state and local level, as a society, we have a real stake in the quality of local news media. There are fewer statehouse reporters, there are fewer city hall reporters, and there are fewer people who are tracking state and local politics to hold our politicians accountable. I think that has been underappreciated, and one of the real dangers in contemporary American democracy.
interviews
The Evolution of Brand Presidents
by Ciara Torres-Spelliscy
December 13, 2020
This interview with Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a Brennan Center fellow, professor of law at Stetson University College of Law, and author of Political Brands, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | You wrote a book recently about political brands, and in it you talk about the "rebranding of corruption." What does that mean?
Ciara | The Roberts Supreme Court has systematically redefined what counts as corruption, both in campaign finance law and in white-collar crime. The Roberts Court has made the definition of corruption so incredibly narrow that almost nothing counts as corruption anymore. And the people most delighted with what the Roberts Court has done, are corrupt politicians.
Are there examples of politicians taking advantage of the narrowed down scope of corruption?
Just this spring, the Roberts Supreme Court decided the Kelly v. U.S. case, better known as the Bridgegate case. Bridget Anne Kelly, who worked for Governor Chris Christie at the time, used her influence to close down most of the George Washington Bridge, and she did it for a really petty political reason: she was trying to get back at the mayor of Fort Lee, who hadn't endorsed Chris Christie for re-election. By closing this bridge down, she created traffic that was so epic it backed all the way into the town of Fort Lee. She lied about the bridge closure. She had been prosecuted and charged for commandeering the public bridge essentially for private use. But when her conviction was appealed to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court wrote a unanimous decision that said that “not every corrupt act by state or local officials is a federal crime.” So she did not go to jail.
Another example is Bob McDonnell. He was the governor of Virginia. There was this businessman who wanted to sell tobacco-based pills to the employees of the government in Virginia. And the governor sets up all of these meetings for the businessmen. Meanwhile, the businessman gave the first lady of Virginia high fashion clothes, he gave the governor a Rolex, he gave the governor money.
This was not that subtle. But when the Supreme Court looks at the case, they decide that the governor’s setting up meetings for the businessmen to pitch the tobacco pills is not an official act. And because it's not an official act, there was no quid pro quo. And thus no crime was committed. I think the McDonnell case is another instance of the Supreme Court so narrowing what a normal person thinks is corrupt. Most people would think that this businessman who keeps on giving money and gifts to the governor of Virginia is wrong, but the Roberts Supreme Court does not have a common-sense view of corruption.
Do you think that the rise of money in politics, or the narrowed rebranding of corruption, has set us up for what you call "brand presidents?"
One of the reasons I got interested in branding in the first place was that most of the money spent in politics is spent on advertising. The millions of dollars gathered by PACS, or super PACS, in large part, goes to buy ads. And Trump is just sort of the most extreme example of this, but arguably we've been electing presidents as brands since at least 1952.
Eisenhower was the first candidate to really use television in a successful presidential campaign. He literally gets Madison Avenue ad executives, or Mad Men, to help him with his 1952 political campaign. And they use the same branding techniques that companies would use in a commercial branding situation — repetition, short, clear messages, one idea per ad, with catchy tunes. They really packaged him. One of the things I concluded after writing that book was that, maybe with the exception of the 2020 election, the candidate who was more willing to be merchandised, won the election.
Eisenhower runs against Adlai Stevenson twice and crushes him both times. Adlai doesn’t believe that the presidency should be sold in the same way that a bar of soap is sold. He once said, “This isn’t a soap opera. This isn’t Ivory Soap versus Palmolive.” Eisenhower, by contrast, was willing to be merchandised with songs like “I like Ike.”
Obama was willing to be merchandised – his hope posters, the music videos around him, the whole “yes we can” spiel was very clever and very effective political branding. Besides Trump, Obama was the best political brander that this country has ever seen.
Do you know just how much money was spent on advertising in this last election cycle? Is that an increase from the previous cycle? Does increased advertising make it easier to craft a "brand" president?
Much more money was raised and spent on advertising during the 2020 presidential election than the 2016 election. The Wesleyan Media Project, in conjunction with the Center for Responsive Politics, estimated $1.5 billion was spent on TV, digital, and radio in the presidential general election between April 9 and October 25. In 2016, these same sources found that Trump and Clinton spent $295.9 million combined. Increased spending on advertising has bolstered the ability of both major party candidates to brand themselves and their opponents.
Merchandising or commodification of a political figure is something that supersedes any campaign finance changes that came from Citizens United. Do you see them interacting with each other at all?
There are times when political branding and money in politics interact and make each other worse. For example, I think it is easier for extreme positions to generate funding. If you’re fundraising and your stance as a Republican is that you will never compromise with the Democrats, or if you are a Democrat your position is that you will never compromise with the Republicans, you will find an audience for that. That's one way of fundraising.
But I think the forces causing political polarization in our country are much bigger than the campaign finance system. Take the ridiculous information silos many Americans place themselves into, for one. Almost all of us have done this. If we are left-leaning, we want to see news that confirms that thinking about things in a liberal way is the correct way. If we're conservative, we want conservative media to echo all of our preconceived notions. We are in these very different information silos that make it very hard to have a shared view of reality.
How do these silos affect our understanding of politics?
One thing that struck me while doing this research on political brands was that anything could be normalized with enough branding, and anything could be pathologized with enough branding. By branding, I mean the purposeful repetition of a word, a phrase, or a logo until it gets stuck in the mind of an audience.
We are seeing both of these things occur after the 2020 election. Trump is pathologizing democracy right now by repeating over and over that the election was stolen. He knows that if he repeats a word or a phrase, it will penetrate his audience. He pathologized the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller by repeatedly calling it a hoax, and a witch hunt. He is doing the very same thing with democracy itself right now, which is very dangerous.
You can also normalize anything with branding. I think that's what Trump tried to do with COVID-19. He tried to downplay it. His messaging was almost always about how it's less serious than it is, how you should get back to work, and how you shouldn't let it take over your life. For certain populations who got their news all from conservative sources, who listened to and believed Trump over the past four years, they were much more likely to fall for the lie that COVID-19 wasn't a real problem.
Does there seem to be an asymmetry between the two silos? The liberal media attempts to adhere to traditional liberal values – which calls for balanced media, time for the other side. Conservative media doesn’t seem to feel that need, Trump’s brand is based on a willingness to tear it all down.
Danielle Citron writes about there being a liar's dividend. What she means by that is lying is easy. You can literally just make things up. Sticking to the facts can be difficult, especially if the facts are complicated or if telling the truth literally takes hundreds of pages. A lie can be pithy. A lie can be effective, especially if it appeals to an audience's pre-existing biases. Saying to Republican voters that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is a very seductive lie. It plays into their worst conspiratory fears, and it plays into their suspicion that the only way they could have lost was if the other side was cheating.
The truth about the 2020 election is much more complicated. The truth is we have federal elections that are run not just by the 50 States, but by localities within the 50 States. There are different technologies that are used state to state, and in some cases, county to county. There are different election laws that apply in each of the 50 States. They had different rules about who could have a mail-in ballot. They had different rules about early voting. They had different rules about signatures. When you're trying to describe what happened in the 2020 election, it's very hard to do it with nuance in a quick way. A lie — that it was “rigged” — is much easier. And I hope the press gets better at holding everyone to the same standard and not paving an easier path for lies for one side of the partisan aisle.
History and context take time – which much news doesn’t have apparently.
Yes. That actually makes me think of the racial reckoning that we had this summer. For a couple of months, it seemed that Americans were starting to have conversations about structural racism, which is something that doesn't fit very well into soundbites. For a while there, there was some actual introspection. People could actually process the horror of George Floyd’s killing and have some historical discussions about race relations in the United States. And then that devolved into a debate around the 2020 election about whether the term "defunding the police" was productive for the democratic side electorally. Young activists on the street won’t have the image-makers and advertising Mad Men to help them craft the perfect focus-group-tested message.
It will always be seductive to try to have a slogan for fixing race relations in the Americas, but I hope we have more moments of introspection, more moments of learning history and we can actually build some empathy so that we get out of these stupid information silos that we put ourselves in. At some point, political branding loses some of its power if regular people recognize it for what it is: a means of manipulation. Branders tell you what you want to hear so that they get something in return whether that’s your attention, your money, or your vote.