Why Do Politicians Use Political Rhetoric to Win Elections?

What do Democrats and Republicans believe? Explore their governing instincts, why they see risks differently and how political psychology shapes our views.

Table of Contents

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• Same Goals, Different Approaches
• General Democratic and Republican Governing Instincts
• Why Do Democrats and Republicans Think Differently?
  • Examples of Noticing Risk Differently
    • Immigration
    • Government Assistance
    • Business Regulation
    • Taxes
    • Schools
  • Our Psychology Plays a Part
  • We Feel First. Then We Explain Why.
• Why We Need Political Diversity
• Keep Exploring

Summary

Democrats and Republicans often want many of the same broad outcomes: safe communities, good schools, economic opportunity, freedom, security and a government that works.

Where they often differ is in how they think those outcomes should be achieved. Democrats tend to place greater emphasis on collective solutions, public investment and government's ability to expand opportunity, while Republicans tend to place greater emphasis on individual responsibility, private initiative, markets and limiting government power.

Those differences may also reflect something deeper. Political psychology suggests that people can notice different risks, respond differently to uncertainty and have different instincts about change, stability, freedom, responsibility and collective action.

Understanding those differences doesn't require you to change what you believe. It can help you understand what someone who sees the problem differently may be noticing that you aren't.

Same Goals, Different Approaches

Neither party represents a single ideology, and neither party's members agree on everything. But each has developed recognizable ideas about the role of government, individual and collective responsibility, markets, freedom, fairness and social change.

Strip away the candidates, campaign ads and insults, and something interesting happens:

Democrats and Republicans often want many of the same things. They disagree about how to get there.

Ask people from either party what they want for their community and you're likely to hear many of the same answers:

• safe neighborhoods;
• good schools;
• decent roads;
• jobs and opportunity;
• affordable homes;
• clean water;
• reliable infrastructure;
• competent government;
• freedom to make choices about their own lives;
• a fair chance to succeed; and
• communities where their children can build good lives.

A Republican doesn't wake up hoping the local school fails. A Democrat doesn't wake up hoping businesses close. Republicans don't want people dying in the streets. Democrats don't want violent criminals roaming neighborhoods.

So if we agree on so many of the outcomes, what are we actually fighting about?

Mostly, we're arguing about how to get there.

A thriving community isn't a Democratic idea or a Republican idea. It's the destination both are trying to reach, using different theories about how to get there.

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General Democratic and Republican Governing Instincts

Broadly speaking, Democrats tend to place greater emphasis on collective solutions, public investment, regulation and government's ability to expand opportunity, while Republicans tend to place greater emphasis on individual responsibility, private initiative, markets and limiting government power.

These are general tendencies, not beliefs held by every member of either party. With that caveat firmly in mind, here's the instinct each coalition tends toward, on average.

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Why Do Democrats and Republicans Think Differently?

If Democrats and Republicans often want many of the same outcomes — safe communities, good schools, economic opportunity, freedom and security — why can they look at the same problem and come to such different conclusions?

Part of the answer may be that we don't all notice the same risks first.

Examples of Noticing Risk Differently

Put two people in front of the same situation. Both may be asking legitimate questions. They're just noticing different risks first.

1. Immigration

One person looks at immigration and sees a family fleeing violence or poverty, trying to build a better life. Their first instinct: These are human beings. How can we help them?

Another person looks at the same issue and sees millions of people entering a country that has laws governing who can enter and under what circumstances. Their first instinct: A country has to be able to control its borders. What happens if we don't enforce the rules?

Those aren't opposing goals. You can believe immigrants deserve humane treatment and believe a country needs a functioning border. The disagreement begins over which risk deserves more attention, what tradeoffs we're willing to accept and what policy is most likely to work.

Political rhetoric skips all of that: Democrats want open borders, or Republicans hate immigrants.

Now we aren't solving the immigration problem anymore. We're defending ourselves against an accusation about what kind of people we are.

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2. Government Assistance

One person sees someone who works full time and still can't afford housing, food or healthcare. Their first instinct: How can someone do everything we're asking them to do and still not make it? Something about the system isn't working.

Another person looks at government assistance and thinks about incentives. Their first instinct: If benefits are too easy to get or too hard to lose, could that discourage people from becoming self-sufficient?

Both concerns can be true at once:

• People can genuinely need help.
• Programs can also create unintended incentives.
• Fraud can exist without everyone receiving assistance being a fraud.
• A safety net can help people get back on their feet without every program being well designed.

Political rhetoric skips all of that: Republicans don't care about poor people, or Democrats just want to give people free stuff.

The harder, more useful question is: How do we help people who need it while preserving incentives, personal responsibility and the program's long-term sustainability?

That's a much harder sentence than either label — but it's much closer to the actual problem.

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3. Business Regulation

One person thinks about what happens without regulation. Their instinct: We need rules because people and organizations with power don't always use it responsibly.

• What keeps a company from dumping waste into a river?
• What prevents unsafe products from being sold?
• What protects an employee from dangerous working conditions?
• What prevents a monopoly from abusing its market power?

Another person thinks about what happens with too much regulation. Their instinct: Rules can become part of the problem.

• What happens when it takes three years to get permission to build housing?
• What happens when a small business has to comply with rules built for a company with 10,000 employees?
• What happens when permitting and paperwork make something unaffordable — or impossible to build at all?

Both instincts can be valid at once. Rules can protect people from abuses of power. Rules can also become abuses of power. Those ideas aren't mutually exclusive.

Political rhetoric skips all of that: Republicans want to let corporations poison your water, or Democrats want to regulate small businesses out of existence.

Now nobody's arguing about where the line between protection and overreach actually belongs. We're arguing about whether the other side is corrupt or authoritarian.

The difficult work — the work rhetoric lets us skip — is figuring out where that line actually goes.

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4. Taxes

One person sees taxes and thinks: This is how we pool our resources to pay for things none of us could reasonably provide alone — schools, roads, police, fire departments, courts, water systems and infrastructure.

Another person sees taxes and thinks: That's money someone earned. Government should have a compelling reason before taking it and deciding how to spend it.

Both instincts matter. Without collective contributions, you don't have much of a functioning community. Without limits on what government can demand, individual freedom and accountability suffer.

Political rhetoric skips all of that: Democrats are tax-and-spend liberals who want to take your money, or Republicans just protect the rich and won't pay their fair share.

That's a much easier sentence to say than the real question:

What should we pay for together, how much should it cost, who should contribute, and how do we know we're getting enough value for what we're spending?

That's a political argument worth having.

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5. Schools

Suppose a school district says it needs more money.

One person thinks: We have to invest in kids. A strong school system benefits the entire community.

Another thinks: They're already receiving millions of dollars. Where is that money going, and why isn't it enough?

Neither position rules out the other. The second person hasn't said education doesn't matter — they've asked an accountability question. The first person hasn't said funding should be unlimited — they've raised an investment question.

Political rhetoric skips all of that: Republicans don't care about kids, or Democrats just want to throw taxpayer money at everything.

The more useful conversation asks both sets of questions at once:

What outcomes are we trying to produce? What does it actually take? What are we spending now, and what's working? What happens if we spend more — or don't?

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Our Psychology Plays a Part

Political psychology suggests these differences don't begin with a party platform.

Research has found associations between political orientation and psychological characteristics such as openness to new experiences, conscientiousness, sensitivity to threat, preference for stability, comfort with change, conventionality and attitudes toward hierarchy. The research also discusses evidence that some personality characteristics observed much earlier in life are associated with political orientation later.

That doesn't mean there is a "Republican personality" and a "Democratic personality."

There isn't.

These are averages across groups, with enormous variation among individuals. Your personality can't tell someone how you voted.

But it does suggest something fascinating: Our political reasoning may not begin with politics.

Think about two people confronted with uncertainty.

One person's instinct might be: Interesting. Let's try something different and see if it works.

Another's might be: Wait. What could go wrong? Let's make sure we understand the consequences first.

Society needs both people.

• The first person may discover something better.
• The second may prevent everyone from driving off a cliff.

The problem isn't having either instinct. The problem comes when each person assumes the other's instinct reflects a character defect.

• "Cautious" becomes fearful.
• "Experimental" becomes reckless.
• "Order" becomes authoritarian.
• "Compassion" becomes weakness.
• "Personal responsibility" becomes selfishness.
• "Collective responsibility" becomes dependency.

Now we've stopped asking what each instinct might contribute.

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We Feel First. Then We Explain Why.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of an elephant and a rider to explain this.

The elephant is our intuition — the fast, automatic part of us that reacts first. It's big. It's heavy. It's hard to control.

The rider is our conscious reasoning — the part that can analyze, explain and make arguments.

We like to imagine the rider is in charge: we gather information, carefully weigh it, reach a conclusion, and then act.

But Haidt argues that much of the time, it works the other way around. We have an intuitive reaction first — the elephant moves — and then our reasoning goes to work explaining or defending it. The rider justifies why the elephant moved the way it did.

Imagine two people hear:

"The government wants to create a new program to guarantee healthcare coverage."

One person's "elephant" hears:

People won't have to go without medical care because they're poor.

The other person's "elephant" hears:

The government is about to take control of another enormous part of my life.

• Neither person has read the legislation yet.
• Neither has looked at the cost.
• Neither knows how the program would actually work.

But something has already happened.

Their elephants noticed different things.

Now the riders get to work.

One starts finding evidence about uninsured families, medical bankruptcies and countries with universal coverage.

The other starts finding evidence about taxes, government inefficiency, wait times and failed public programs.

Both people may sincerely believe they reasoned their way to their position.

But some of the reasoning may actually be the rider building a case for what the elephant noticed first.

And that gives us a much better question to ask ourselves:

What did my elephant notice — and what might it have missed?

• If your first instinct is compassion, what incentive problem might you be overlooking?
• If your first instinct is personal responsibility, what structural barrier might you be overlooking?
• If your first instinct is freedom, what harm might require collective rules?
• If your first instinct is protection, what freedom might your solution unnecessarily restrict?
• If your first instinct is change, what existing institution might be valuable enough to preserve?
• If your first instinct is stability, what isn't working well enough to deserve preservation?

That's not asking you to abandon your values.

It's asking you to use the other person's instincts as another set of eyes.

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Why We Need Political Diversity

A thriving community doesn't just have to tolerate these competing instincts. It actually needs them.

We often treat political differences as obstacles:

If only those people would get out of the way, we could finally fix things.

But what if some of those differences serve a purpose?

• The person asking, "Who is being left behind?" matters. So does the person asking, "Who is going to pay for this?"
• The person asking, "Why can't we change this?" matters. So does the person asking, "What could we accidentally break?"
• The person asking, "Who needs protection?" matters. So does the person asking, "Who gets to exercise that power?"
• The person asking, "What do we owe one another?" matters. So does the person asking, "What should people be responsible for themselves?"

The goal isn't to eliminate those tensions. The tension is useful.

The challenge of self-government is figuring out how to use those competing instincts to make better decisions instead of turning them into evidence that the people who see things differently from us are stupid, selfish, dangerous or evil.

Because your elephant may see something mine doesn't.

And mine may see something yours doesn't.

The community needs both of us to look.

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Keep Exploring

Understanding what Democrats and Republicans generally believe is only part of the picture. Political parties organize those beliefs into governing coalitions, political labels can blur important distinctions, and campaign rhetoric can turn legitimate disagreements into judgments about people's motives or character.

👉 Next Article >>  How Can We Work Together to Build Thriving Communities?

👈Previous Article >> What Do Democrats and Republicans Believe—and Why?

Understanding what Democrats and Republicans generally believe is only part of the picture. Political parties organize those beliefs into governing coalitions, political labels can blur important distinctions, and campaign rhetoric can turn legitimate disagreements into judgments about people's motives or character.

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