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EIGHT
The Conservative Advantage
In January 2005, I was invited to speak to the Charlottesville
Democratic Party about moral psychology. I welcomed the chance
because I had spent much of 2004 as a speechwriter for John Kerry’s
presidential campaign. Not a paid speechwriter—just a guy who,
while walking his dog every evening, mentally rewrote some of
Kerry’s ine ectual appeals. For example, in Kerry’s acceptance
speech at the Democratic National Convention, he listed a variety of
failures of the Bush administration and after each one he
proclaimed, “America can do better” and “Help is on the way.” The
rst slogan connected to no moral foundation at all. The second one
connected weakly to the Care/harm foundation, but only if you
think of America as a nation of helpless citizens who need a
Democratic president to care for them.
In my rewrite, Kerry listed a variety of Bush’s campaign promises
and after each one he asked, “You gonna pay for that, George?”
That simple slogan would have made Bush’s many new programs,
coming on top of his tax cuts and vast expenditures on two wars,
look like shoplifting rather than generosity. Kerry could have
activated the cheater detection modules of the Fairness/cheating
foundation.
The message of my talk to the Charlottesville Democrats was
simple: Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don’t.
Republicans have long understood that the elephant is in charge of
political behavior, not the rider, and they know how elephants
work.
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Their slogans, political commercials, and speeches go
straight for the gut, as in the infamous 1988 ad showing a mug shot
of a black man, Willie Horton, who committed a brutal murder after
being released from prison on a weekend furlough by the “soft-on-
crime” Democratic candidate, Governor Michael Dukakis. Democrats
have often aimed their appeals more squarely at the rider,
emphasizing speci c policies and the bene ts they’ll bring to you,
the voter.
Neither George W. Bush nor his father, George H. W. Bush, had
the ability to move audiences to tears, but both had the great
fortune to run against cerebral and emotionally cool Democrats
(Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry). It is no coincidence
that the only Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to win election and
then reelection combined gregariousness and oratorical skill with an
almost musical emotionality. Bill Clinton knew how to charm
elephants.
Republicans don’t just aim to cause fear, as some Democrats
charge. They trigger the full range of intuitions described by Moral
Foundations Theory. Like Democrats, they can talk about innocent
victims (of harmful Democratic policies) and about fairness
(particularly the unfairness of taking tax money from hardworking
and prudent people to support cheaters, slackers, and irresponsible
fools). But Republicans since Nixon have had a near-monopoly on
appeals to loyalty (particularly patriotism and military virtues) and
authority (including respect for parents, teachers, elders, and the
police, as well as for traditions). And after they embraced Christian
conservatives during Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign and became
the party of “family values,” Republicans inherited a powerful
network of Christian ideas about sanctity and sexuality that allowed
them to portray Democrats as the party of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Set against the rising crime and chaos of the 1960s and 1970s, this
ve-foundation morality had wide appeal, even to many Democrats
(the so-called Reagan Democrats). The moral vision o ered by the
Democrats since the 1960s, in contrast, seemed narrow, too focused
on helping victims and ghting for the rights of the oppressed. The
Democrats o ered just sugar (Care) and salt (Fairness as equality),
whereas Republican morality appealed to all ve taste receptors.
That was the story I told to the Charlottesville Democrats. I didn’t
blame the Republicans for trickery. I blamed the Democrats for
psychological naiveté. I expected an angry reaction, but after two
consecutive losses to George W. Bush, Democrats were so hungry for
an explanation that the audience seemed willing to consider mine.
Back then, however, my explanation was just speculation. I had not
yet collected any data to support my claim that conservatives
responded to a broader set of moral tastes than did liberals.
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