On his book Presidents and Parties in the Public Mind
Cover Interview of March 20, 2019
A close-up
At the heart of the book are the data. A look at chapter 3
would be a good way to get a feel for my approach. The material in this chapter
was the first I analyzed, and the graphic depictions of the relationships
between attitudes toward the president and parties, variously measured, make
these relationships very clear. Specifically, the figures on pp. 35-39 and
48-50 will let readers know what excited me about the project in the first
place. I also recommend looking at the section on party competence (pp. 63-71),
especially table 4.1 on p. 67, which shows the remarkable consistency with
which presidential performance has shaped party reputations for dealing with the
most important national problem across every administration from Truman’s to
Obama’s. Readers interested in generational imprinting of partisan attitudes,
which bears on how Trump might shape the future party coalitions, should look
at chapter 7 (p. 144-150) and chapter 9 (pp. 198-208).
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
A close-up
At the heart of the book are the data. A look at chapter 3 would be a good way to get a feel for my approach. The material in this chapter was the first I analyzed, and the graphic depictions of the relationships between attitudes toward the president and parties, variously measured, make these relationships very clear. Specifically, the figures on pp. 35-39 and 48-50 will let readers know what excited me about the project in the first place. I also recommend looking at the section on party competence (pp. 63-71), especially table 4.1 on p. 67, which shows the remarkable consistency with which presidential performance has shaped party reputations for dealing with the most important national problem across every administration from Truman’s to Obama’s. Readers interested in generational imprinting of partisan attitudes, which bears on how Trump might shape the future party coalitions, should look at chapter 7 (p. 144-150) and chapter 9 (pp. 198-208).