by dsantoreAnother American presidential election brings with it familiar debates – arguments about idealism vs. pragmatism, the liberal media bias vs. the conservative media bias, values vs. issues, style vs. substance. It calls to mind a line of discussion carried over the past several months by a couple of the thinkers-that-be at the New York Times. Judith Warner and Stanley Fish, each of whom write regular opinion pieces for the Times’ website, have been pursuing the question of whether citizens do well to consider politicians’ personal character and personality or their policy positions and political acumen. Warner and Fish (Fish is a professor and a renowned ‘public academic’), in the end, make a similar case: that the more we focus on whether we would like to share a cocktail with a candidate, the less we are focused on what really matters. This is not a new idea, but the commentators’ arguments go further, pushing us to think about what sociologist Richard Sennett and other social critics lament as the injection of psychological drama into public life. Perhaps there is analytical life yet, in these seemingly tired political debates!
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Stanley Fish on politics and personality