The News & TeleGraff

I'm slowly exploring the world of Podcasting—listening to radio and audio programs on my iPod—and this weekend, I listened to Malcolm Gladwell's keynote address at the October PopTech conference. Best known as the author of "The Tipping Point" and a writer for the New Yorker, he spoke about his upcoming book, "Blink," which examines human nature and decision-making. His thoughts gave me a lot of hope for a more progressive vision in this country—particularly that we should not be afraid to take aggressive stands and go out on a limb. His points were three:

• People's opinions are remarkably unstable.
  
• People pick up cues unconsciously. We can't explain how or why we do certain things and prefer certain other things.
  
• Asking people to think about and articulate their preferences changes them—but not really.

Gladwell basically argues that you can't actually trust people's opinions on things that they don't really understand. There's a visceral level of preference that people are unable to articulate, and thus, when pressed, they say they want something less sophisticated than their actual preference—because they know how to express something less sophisticated. Additionally, when confronted with new ideas outside the normal realm of people's worldview, they often just say they don't like something or that it's "ugly," because they lack words to describe it otherwise. He uses three main examples—the Herman-Miller Aeron chair, which went on to become the best-selling chair in the history of office chairs, despite nearly unanimous market research that it was "ugly" and unpopular; New Coke, which Coke's marketing tests showed beat old coke by 55 to 45; and a university study involving poster choice that found that when asked to explain a person's choice of posters, people took posters that made them unhappy.

The lesson of all three: If you provide people with exactly what they say they want, they are often quickly grow unhappy with it because, fundamentally, it wasn't what they actually wanted—merely what they were able to articulate that they wanted.

While the talk was aimed at marketing officials, it had a lot to do with issue framing and reminded me of our conversation on Friday. Democrats "liked" Howard Dean, but weren't able to articulate why, so when pressed they said they liked John Kerry because he was "electable." So they got John Kerry and then the punditry wondered why people weren't really happy with him.

Fundamentally, this goes to one of the deep-seeded problems in the Democratic Party: The Party establishment tries to focus group everything and strives to give the electorate EXACTLY what they say they want—in a candidate, in a message, in an issue, etc. The Party tries to create the best Frankenstein it can in a focus group vacuum, and then it turns around and expects it to magically catch on. Then, time and again, we sit around wondering how on Earth we could have not succeeded in capturing lightening in a bottle. Then, we give people what they say they want and wonder why it's not catching on and why people are frustrated with their choices. Gladwell's argument tells us it's because, simply put, they're looking for something more sophisticated than they're able to articulate. If you attempt to focus group an uneducated audience than you're going to end up with an uneducated answer and solution that will fail. It's sort of like the old computer programming maxim: Garbage in, garbage out.

Unfortunately, I fear progressives aren't doing anything of the kind. We're simply trying to figure out how to talk to people like Republicans. We've all read Thomas Frank's book, and gone back to the focus groups that got us here in the first place.

In thinking about how to forward a progressive agenda, we should instead listen to Gladwell's advice: Stay away from simple answers and instead not be afraid to offer sophisticated solutions that people may initially react to as "ugly." By going out on a limb, with a comprehensive agenda that's actually progressive and forward-thinking, we can forge a new forum of discussion and win more people over in the long-term without offering what we know are intellectually bankrupt ideas and slogans that probably would fall short in the public sphere anyway.

The public may not be initially on our side because our ideas might be "ugly," but that's not because they're wrong—it's because they're advanced enough that people lack the vocabulary or knowledge to discuss them in greater detail. Given time and resources, people will come around and become strong adherents to the ideas simply because they'll be happier with them in the long term. Sophistication is not a bad thing.

I know this all goes against traditional political messaging and branding ideas, but look at where that school of thought has gotten us....

(Anyway, here's the link to Gladwell's talk as an MP3. I highly recommend that you take a half-hour and listen to it.)