Politicians are notoriously fond of “dodging questions.” But why would anyone do this? If a wife asks her husband, “Where were you last night?,” dodging the question is practically his worst possible option. After all, if he won’t answer, her common-sense reaction is to assume the worst.
What makes politics different?
The best explanation, once again, centers on Social Desirability Bias. In plain English: When the truth sounds bad, people bend the truth. When all straightforward answers sound bad, similarly, people refuse to answer. And since politics revolves around sounding good rather than doing good, politicians habitually dodge hard questions. Hard questions like:
- “Who do you respect more – veterans or teachers?”
- “What is the maximum number of American deaths we should pay to defeat Saddam Hussein?”
- “How should we respond if a welfare recipient spends their entire check on the first day of the month?”
- “What is the biggest problem we should do nothing to fix?”
- The classic: “If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”
What makes these questions so hard? It varies. For #1, the problem is that people love both veterans and teachers, so either way it seems like you’re insulting a beloved profession. For #2, a low answer seems cowardly, and a high answer seems callous – and every number seems ghoulish. For #3, “Tough luck” sounds cruel, and “Give them extra money” seems weak. For #4, almost any answer sounds callous and defeatist. #5 famously forced Michael Dukakis to either sound like a wimp or betray his long-standing opposition to the death penalty.
On reflection, generating no-win questions is child’s play. If you’re a successful politician, journalists and detractors never stop asking them. But never fear. Virtually every successful politician knows a work-around. When the only way to win is not to play, politicians do not play.
All of which illustrates a deeper lesson: Politics is theater – a gigantic effort to please ears and warm hearts. Asking hard questions is rarely a sincere effort to acquire information; pseudo-answers to such questions aren’t a sincere effort to provide information. If you think this is all benign, think again. Reality itself poses many hard questions; they’re called “trade-offs.” And the typical politician would rather dodge them than deal with them.
HT: Inspired during my Oslo interview with
READER COMMENTS
Matt C.
Aug 27 2018 at 4:25pm
It’s a straightforward case for why politicians dodge questions. But why do we let them get away with it?
Hazel Meade
Aug 31 2018 at 3:23pm
I blame the Stockholm syndrome. Politicians are like our terrorist captors that we cannot escape from.
Mark
Sep 3 2018 at 8:19pm
I’m more inclined to blame the voters for how politicians behave than vice versa. I admit I’m strange in this respect, but I find politician-hating a little grating. Sure, they’re terrible, but just what the voters ordered (or at least, what they tolerate). If one hates politicians, one should really hate voters.
David Henderson
Aug 27 2018 at 4:29pm
On #5, I disagree with you Bryan. (By the way, welcome back.) I know that tens of millions of Americans disagreed with me and thought his “No” made him sound like a wimp. I know that that answer hurt his campaign and that makes the point you’re making in this post.
By contrast, I found his “No” refreshing and thought it made him seem strong. He was saying, in effect, “I’m not going to play your game, Bernie. I’m not going to let you trigger me.”
AMW
Aug 27 2018 at 5:07pm
I think this is a good time to bring up the fact that Bryan has long dodged Scott Alexander’s challenge to his Szaszian approach to mental illness. My common-sense reaction is to assume that Bryan has no credible response.
JFA
Aug 28 2018 at 8:45am
^ this. Of all the bloggers on Econlog, Bryan seems to be the least likely to engage in criticism coming from the comments. Scott and David do it with style and grace.
Jon Murphy
Aug 28 2018 at 10:42am
Eh…not really sure this argument works. If Bryan engaged others and just ignored Alexander, I’d say you’d have a stronger case. But Bryan rarely (if ever) goes into the comments section. It’s not dodging a question.
JFA
Aug 28 2018 at 2:01pm
I doubt Bryan is unaware of the comments on his posts, and he linked to Alexander’s post (http://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/10/missing_links.html) a few years ago. It seems a strange conclusion that he isn’t dodging the question if he doesn’t respond to anyone. He’s dodging the question because he seems adamant in his views and fails to address criticisms that he is aware of.
Jon Murphy
Aug 30 2018 at 10:57am
That is a possibility, but not a probability. It’s more likely he simply does not, as a choice, get involved in the comments section.
From David Henderson’s post a few weeks ago, would you claim Gary Becker was “dodging the question” on Iraq because he didn’t sign the letter? If you did, you’d have been incorrect.
JFA
Aug 30 2018 at 2:30pm
He is not just ignoring the comments section. He is ignoring criticisms that he has linked to. I wouldn’t say Becker is dodging the question. David asked him privately and Becker gave an answer. Becker said I agree with your analysis but I’m not a signer. On the other, Bryan publicly argues for views that have been (I think) effectively criticized and does not bother to address those criticisms (which he is obviously aware of since he has provided links to them in previous posts). It makes me think Bryan is less good at self-policing his conclusions than he claims.
Alan Goldhammer
Aug 28 2018 at 7:18am
#2 is the wrong question. The correct question at the time was, “Is Iraq under Saddam Hussein of any strategic importance to the US?” This was really not posed and it was the contrived ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that led us into that briar patch.
Hunter
Aug 28 2018 at 12:06pm
The proper answer by Dukakis should have been along the lines of “I would support the death penalty personally administered by me. But, we have the rule of law and make these decisions based on thought and debate and not immediate emotional reaction.”
Robert EV
Aug 29 2018 at 10:27am
Every one but #2 seems easy to me.
1) Depends on the veteran or teacher. Some teachers are wonderful, some teachers are even heroes, some are jaded and just pacing time. Some veterans are heroes who were in the military for the noblest of reasons and risked real sacrifices, some are psychopaths who were just in the military to kill.
3) Change welfare to a weekly payment. That way we can also remove people from welfare on a weekly basis, if they get a good job after the first of the month for example.
4) As a government or as a people? The biggest problem that fixing it would either force us to not fix a larger problem, or that there’s no good way to fix it without making something more important worse. You want a specific answer, ask a specific question; you know my planks.
5) An irrevocable death penalty, being absolutely final, should only be considered when guilt can be proven beyond any natural doubt.
Phil
Aug 29 2018 at 2:59pm
Two thoughts.
A question such as “Who do you respect more – veterans or teachers?” doesn’t deserve an answer. It’s a dumb question. Why must one be respected more than another and how is that even measured?
More to your point, a key reason for dodging questions is that politicians are elected by pointing at problems, not by proposing solutions. Everyone can rally around, “The deficit is too high!” but the politician loses more and more support the more detailed the plan. “Raise taxes” will alienate conservatives who would prefer to reduce the size of government. “Raise taxes on the rich” now also alienates the wealthy progressives. Because politicians are perpetually campaigning, they are far more likely to want to talk about problems and evade the details on how to fix them.
Mark
Sep 3 2018 at 10:32pm
I think your first thought is an important and far too overlooked one.
We should be equally perturbed by the fact that the media (and to some extent voters) insist on asking politicians really dumb and irrelevant questions. It’s irrelevant what occupation a candidate respects more; and of course the murder of a man’s wife or daughter would likely make him fly into a rage and want to torture and kill the person who did it himself, and that’s understandable reaction from one who experiences that, and it’s precisely why the system doesn’t let him decide the verdict and sentence.
Sure, politicians evade questions a lot. But a lot of their evasions are justified, because the question is moronic, and what the appropriate response is “that’s a dumb and irrelevant question, ask a better one.”
Maybe step one to getting better answers from politicians is asking better questions. But then the questions asked aren’t supposed to be good; their supposed to be entertaining or incriminating.
Ron H.
Aug 30 2018 at 4:11pm
#5 Is there a ‘revocable’ death penalty? Seems pretty final to me.
Comments are closed.