Policy and Vision

It’s not often that I fail to make a point. But my last essay on this forum failed miserably. Out of 27 comments, only one seemed to get my point. So I’m trying again.

The point was the difference between a policy and a vision. The vision is the goal, the end, the desired result. The policy is the means of getting there.

One of the reasons why progressives have been losing to so-called “conservatives” for over forty years is that conservatives have campaigned on visions while progressive have campaigned mostly on policies. (Another reason is that conservatives have recognized the power of words and redefined them, while progressives, being virtually oblivious to language and focused on substance, have suffered grave defeats on the field of what I call “applied philology.” But that’s another story.)

If you want to get votes, the best way is with a vision, not a policy. Why? There may be more than one way (policy) to reach the vision. There usually is. As the old saying goes, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

Some voters may like one way more than another. Some may hate a particular way and suspect you of promoting it even if you aren’t. So if you campaign on specific policies, rather than a universally desired vision, you inevitably lose some voters.

That’s pretty much the case with “gun control” as a policy. Republicans oppose it as “taking away our guns.” But there are other ways to reduce random massacres, including voluntary buybacks of automatic weapons, more careful gun-purchase rules, “red flag” laws, laws requiring guns to be secured while not being lawfully carried, and laws for treating mental illnesses that could lead to violence or goad police to commit violence. So if you describe your policy as “gun control,” you’re going to attract fewer voters than if you describe your vision as “a slaughter-free America.”

A second reason for promoting visions is that policies for getting there inevitably differ and must be negotiated in the process of realizing the vision. Even under the best of circumstances, you may start out with a policy of something like Medicare for All and end up with “Obamacare.” If you promote only the vision—giving more or most people affordable health insurance—you attract more voters, without getting bogged down in the details and attracting opposition to some.

My second major point about visions is that they’re best expressed in easy-to-recall slogans. Progressives don’t like to do this because they have a hard time abandoning their intellectual snobbery. They think slogans are “for the masses.” But that’s exactly right. Isn’t the whole point of elections to get “the masses” to vote for you?

A gruff, abrasive commenter to my failed story—most likely a troll—accused me of being from “marketing.” I partially took the bait, trying to explain why a having a vision is not really “marketing.” But in a sense it is marketing, and that sense is important for politics.

A big reason why Republicans have won many elections that they shouldn’t is that they are and remain, despite their current “populist” guise, the party of business. So they have access to all of the resources and skills of modern business, including advertising, marketing and sloganeering. They have used those skills over the last forty years to win many elections that they shouldn’t have won, at least if the voters truly understood what they were up to.

How did they do that? One way was with slogans, the same way their backers sell even marginal, defective and dangerous products.

I’m 79 years old. I’ve never smoked. Both my parents died of smoking-related illnesses, my father at the early age of 57. Since adulthood, I’ve been highly sensitive to smoke, so much so that I’ve moved my home several times to get away from it.

Yet I can’t forget the advertising slogan for a cigarette brand: “Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco: LSMFT.” I first heard it on TV in the early fifties, over 70 years ago. Absent senile dementia, I’ll probably take that slogan, involuntarily, to my grave. And I can still sing, in tune, the 1960s jingle for Brylcreem, a type of hair cream that I never even used. (I just looked it up on the Web and was astonished that it’s still sold, probably a new cream under the old name.)

That’s the power of slogans and jingles. They work. They work to sell products and services, even substandard and defective ones. Good ones stay in people’s minds for decades. They’ve worked for over a century, and their concoction and use occupy a large part of our American economy—the part including advertising, promotion, marketing and “public relations.”

So why would one party fail miserably to use these effective methods of promotion and persuasion while the other party consistently outperforms it by doing so? Intellectual snobbery trumps (pun intended!) pragmatism? You tell me.

Take the slogan “Make American Great Again.” It’s a great slogan, in part because it presents a positive vision without much substance. I venture to guess that everyone who votes in this upcoming election will, absent senile dementia, remember it for the rest of their lives. Why don’t the Dems have anything similar? because they’re too lofty? too smart? too proud? Would they rather be proud than president?

I hope I’ve made my points this time. They’re pretty simple. However pragmatic, even brilliant, it may be, a policy is not a vision. It’s always subject to objections and quibbles and later negotiation in realizing the underlying vision. Visions are invariably more attractive and easier to understand and follow, because they don’t have to sully themselves with means and methods.

And if a vision lends itself to a catchy, attractive and memorable slogan, so much the better. A lot of people who don’t spent their lives working with verbal abstractions vote, and the party that attracts most of them will probably win many elections it shouldn’t, just like the GOP.

I’ll close this short essay with a table. On the left are policies that most progressives support. Each of them at least hints at means that some voters may find undesirable. On the right are the corresponding visions, which are more general and don’t get into means.

You, the reader can decide in each case under which mantra—policy or vision—you would rather run. If most of your choices are in the right-hand column, you may want to consider adopting some of Republicans’ election-winning means, unless you’d rather be “pure” and lose.

There are still 95 days to go before a less effective approach could forfeit our democracy.

Policy	Vision
Gun Control	A Slaughter-Free America
Abortion Rights	Bodily Autonomy for All
Restricting Immigration	Taking the Best
Reforming Police	Treating All Suspects the Same
Tariffs on Imports	Giving American Workers a Chance
Raising Minimum Wages	Giving Workers a Voice through Unions
Deterring Aggression	A World Without War

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