On
June 4, the Pew Research Center For
The People & The Press came out with
a report titled, “Trends in American Values
1987-2012: Partisan Polarization Surges in the Bush,
Obama Years.” My first response was “Yea,
tell me something I don’t already know.” There are
decisions that both Presidents have made
or not made that have brought us to this
polarized place in terms of electoral politics.
And there are efforts that both Presidents
have attempted that could be interpreted as actions
capable of bridging the partisan divide but which
have failed more because of the contemporaneous
context than because of Presidential effort or capability.
This is the best and the most that could be said
about these two President’s histories,
or the histories of any Presidents in terms of their
impacts on the evolution of “American” values. [Note:
this is an inaccurate use of the term “American;”
that term does not mean only folks from the US
as it is used by Pew.] Presidents are the momentary
symptoms or products of values decisions and/or
they are spinners of frames and perspectives; they
are not the shapers of values.
Then
I read in the first line of the report the following
phrase: “…the values gap between Republicans
and Democrats is now greater than gender, age, race
or class divides.” Wow! Could that really be
true…that values differences between those leaning
towards or those in one Party or another are greater
than the differences folks have on these other more
visceral and more immutable characteristics?! That
opening phrase did not make a lot of sense to me!
Politics
cannot be lined up on a linear scale that stretches
from radical left to radical right and that individuals
and Parties can always be pegged somewhere along
that line.
For
me, values differences manifest in differences around
gender, age, race, religion, and class; those things
are tightly meshed together into dynamic
collections of perspectives for the individual and,
therefore, for groups. Politics, partisan or otherwise,
is merely a momentary or particular framing or branding
of a short collection of these inter-meshed
values. Politics is mostly that frame that highlights
the public policy expressions of collections of
values. By my definition, politics can not extend
beyond or exist beyond the material values of which
it is constructed. Politics is only a framing or
a category of framings. What could this Pew study
be measuring about U.S.
values?
I
know enough social science to know that it is the
actual raw questions that were asked that will be
most revealing about how best to analyze the summation
of the data that prompted that misleading phrase.
It is of little value to discuss the technical,
statistical, and practical issues of doing surveys;
these issues are the grist of the arguments among
social scientists. Each academic discipline builds
its elitist credentials out of its special use of
arcane mathematics and esoteric vocabulary that
ultimately means little if the foundational theories
and conceptions are flawed. It devolves at that
point into the “how many angels can dance on the
head of a pin” kind of discussions. Let’s let others
do all that. So here we will not talk about sampling
error, confidence intervals, telephone interviews
- mobile phone or not, interviewer methodology,
the demographics of interviewees, corrective weighting
of the data, or the means of randomization. Neither
should we allow ourselves to be mesmerized by pretty
colored charts and lines - that can be deceiving
where the scales that are used on the axis are used
to exaggerate or diminish differences; this is the
source of the phrase about statistics “lying.” But
the basic survey questions can indicate what we
are actually talking about.
A
quick perusal of Pew’s 79 questions, which are listed
in the index of the report, is instructive. The
first thing that jumped out at me is the false assumption
- one that is prevalent within almost all public
discussions of politics - that politics can be lined
up on a linear scale that stretches from radical
left to radical right and that individuals and Parties
can always be pegged somewhere along that line.
This has got to be a conscious denial of history
and the facts even when you do as Pew did and limit
the range to the Democratic and Republican Parties.
Framing
cannot be ignored if one wants to get to the truth
The
Republican Party started out as the slavery abolition
party before it became the corporatist party. The
Democratic Party, the supposed party of “minorities,”
was the home party of segregationist up until relatively
recently. The Republican Party is now rejecting
legislation that they thought up and proposed in
the past. Individuals, depending on the context
and the framing, will be opposed to a policy issue
- say Obama’s health program - when it is presented
one way, and be for most of its individual elements
when it is presented another way - in the same conversation.
Vice President Chaney can be a Darth Vader-like
hawk and at the same time support Gay and Lesbian
Rights. Framing cannot be ignored if one wants to
get to the truth. Pew’s questions push responders
to either the Republican or the Democratic Party,
basically ignoring that responders may make very
different responses based on the framing. The report
imprints the frame of the current Party’s squabbles
on the interviewees by heavily frontloading the
survey with “what party are you in or leaning towards”
questions.
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The
second issue that jumped out at me has to do with
Pew’s extrapolation from many other past and current
surveys. There is very little comparison of the
framing and actual questions in most of those other
surveys that are used to demonstrate this so-called
great increase in a Democratic/Republican values
gap. This is an after-the-fact forcing of responses
that were given in other contexts from other surveys
and surveyors into the current report’s framing.
OMG! This is the worse failing of social science
research: doing science to prove the assumptions
with which you start out, rather than doing studies
intended to disprove your assumptions. Doing
research that is intended to disprove hypotheses
is the best aspect of the scientific approach. The
worst aspect of the scientific approach is reductionist
thinking; reductionist thinking is also a failing
of this Pew report as noted earlier by their obvious
assumptions about static individual values and positions
that do not take into account the larger framing
and context. Pew’s report is doubly wrong and seriously
misleading.
Values
are profound for the individual and our community
but political framing is just one way to view values
Because
of the acute nature of our problems today, the depth
and breadth of intransigence between the two Parties
in power (Republican and Democratic) falsely described
by this Pew report is downright scary. However,
further review shows that Pew is doing us an inexcusable
disservice and heightening general pessimism and
fear. Politics and values have a more complicated
relationship than Pew implies. This Pew report leaves
us with the false belief that the differences between
Democrats and Republicans are more profound than
they really are. Values are profound for the individual
and our community but political framing is just
one way to view values. Political framing will and
does change in ways that reverse individual and
Party positions on basically the same legislation.
Pew is measuring “push” survey effectiveness,
advertising and media spin, and truncated political
analyses. They are not measuring values differences
in the US. I say shame on you Pew Center for the
People and the Media. Pewy!
