An ongoing theme in this class (one of them anyway) is whether the general public has the disposition necessary to be the basis for a system of government. My 2301 winter students will slog through Federalist #10 this week and consider this question and how the constitutional system is designed to compensate for the deficiencies of the public.
Here is the latest example. Andrew Gellman points to two well reasoned, well supported arguments that hold (1) that the public does not really care about the gap between the rich and the poor and (2) that it does.
A vast majority of Americans — including half of all self-identified Republicans — think there is “too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations.” And a solid majority believes that “the country’s economic system unfairly favors the wealthy.” On the other hand, close to 60 percent of Americans do not see the country as “divided into haves and have-nots” and over 60 percent see “big government” as the biggest threat to the country in the future. What gives?
What seems to give is our ambiguity about certain issues compounded by the fact that public opinion polls ask questions that attempt to simplify issues, perhaps a bit much. Two questions, worded differently, which attempt to determine how people think about a specific item, can come up with two different opinions. Neither is wrong necessarily, we are all internally conflicted.
As we begin to dig into elections, parties and political conflict in general, we will see how these internal contradictions influence how political campaigns are organized and how people can be persuaded to see the same things in different ways.
