Watch out for appeals to your unconscious racism in this election

Yesterday I saw an interesting talk by Drew Westen, the author of The Political Brain. If I can do him justice, I came away with an increased appreciation of the fact that we make decisions based on our emotional responses to political parties and candidates as well as (and perhaps more than) our conscious analysis of the risks and benefits they offer the country in the current circumstances.

I was especially impressed by his demonstration that political advertising has an impact on our emotional response due to visual and other cues in addition to the more rational impact made by the explicit verbal content. The people who produce television and radio adds for commercial products are aware of this, and work very hard to make you feel you will be more attractive if you buy their product. The national political campaigns no doubt are trying very hard to employ those people to make their advertisements who will deliver the most votes.

Westen really made an impression on me showing how much some anti-Obama adds triggered unconscious racism. If you don't like the appeal to racism by McCain supporters, be conscious of the subliminal content in those adds, and fight against their attempt to unfairly manipulate your decisions!

This is what Josh Marshall says about the attack add the McCain campaign issued on Obama and education (I won't link the add, since even recognizing its bias it might leave a bad residue as well as a bad taste):

(T)oday McCain comes out with this rancid, race-baiting ad based on another lie. Willie Horton looks mild by comparison. (And remember, President George H.W. Bush never ran the Willie Horton ad himself. It was an outside group. He wasn't willing to degrade himself that far.) .......This is ugly stuff. And this is an ugly person. There's clearly no level of sleaze this guy won't stoop to to win this election.