Bernie, Hillary, Logic, and Emotion

 by Bernie (not that one) Mayer[1]:

Hillary may be logical, but where is the passion? 

Bernie takes it to the establishment, and we may really like the way he “tells it like it is”, but his plans and promises are unrealistic. 

That just about sums up the majority of critiques of both candidates and their campaigns. Well maybe not quite, but this is at the heart of a lot of what has been written about the Democratic side of this primary season.

Hillary, we are told, offers a dispassionate, detailed, analytical and incremental approach to change, but not an inspiring one.  Many go further to accuse her of being too “calculating” and offer as evidence the many positions she has taken over time that seem to have changed as the political climate has changed:  the Iraq War, gay marriage, or the Trans Pacific Partnership, to name a few.   

This raises two questions—what is wrong about being analytical, dispassionate and flexible?  And isn’t “calculating” a pretty gendered way of labeling a necessary element of the political process?  After all, thinking things through in terms of the political consequences and acting accordingly is something politicians must do.  Lincoln had to calculate when he could sign the Emancipation Proclamation and how far it should go. And FDR had to make a political decision about how overtly he could side with the British and commit to defeating the Nazis - before Pearl Harbor gave him his smoking gun?   

I don’t think the meaningful question is whether Hillary is too “calculating.”  That really is a gendered stereotype.  The real concern is whether she has a firm commitment to a set of values and principles that are the guiding forces behind her political calculations.  We want to know that our leaders decision making, their “calculating” if you like, is firmly grounded in a set of values and guided by a clear moral compass. 

But we also want them to be effective.  And we don’t assess this through what they say alone—we are also affected by how congruent what they say is with the emotional energy behind it. Here is where Hillary has a real weakness as a candidate.  She does a good job of conveying her thinking, her plans, her proposals, and her willingness to work very hard, but her emotional energy does not come through.  Put simply, she does not convey passion. 

But this is also part of her strength.  The paradox here is that her lack of passion is the reason many of her supporters trust her commitment.  In an April 2 article in the Washington Post, Stephanie McCummen quotes a Hillary supporter at a rally as saying:  “They always say she’s not emotional enough.   I like Bernie — my heart is where his heart is, but my head is where Hillary’s is.   She’s more logical.  She has more structure and organization to her ideas.”

Bernie’s supporters feel like someone is finally talking to their experience, putting forward ideas that answer our most significant problems, and sticking it to the powers that be who have created the mess that we are in.  He is not “too clever” to say what he really thinks, and he does so with passion.  He does not compromise for the sake of political expedience, but says what he believes. He has taken this same approach throughout his entire career.  In her statement explaining why she decided to support Bernie Sanders, even though she has long argued that only grass roots organizing, and not electoral politics, will bring about real change, folk music legend Joan Baez said:  “Why am I not spending my time trying to woo Bernie into grass roots organizing? For the moment I'm going with my heart, which I mentioned, he has won. I am not sold on "the system" and never will be. I’m sold on the guy from Brooklyn.” 

Bernie touches people in their hearts. He excites people.  He stirs their emotions.  But he is also criticized for relying too much on emotions, for not being realistic, for counting on a vaguely defined “political revolution” to bring his proposals to fruition, and for not laying out how this is actually going to happen.  Bernie’s call to action may be stirring, the argument goes, but it is anything but logical, rational, or achievable.

So - we seem to have a struggle between logic and emotion, principle and compromise, realism and optimism.  Bernie stands on principle, is optimistic about the possibility of fundamental change, and stirs his followers’ passions. Hillary is logical, understands the necessity of compromise, and above all is a realist. 

Conflict practitioners know these dilemmas very well.   We deal with the tension between these approaches to conflict every day of our working lives.  These are in fact three of the paradoxes that I discuss in my most recent book The Conflict Paradox: Seven Dilemmas at the Core of Disputes.  I argue that our essential challenge in conflict is to move past the polarized way in which we understand our choices.  And that is exactly what an effective political leader must do.   

Without compromise, we can’t further our principles - and principles form the map that guides us as we consider compromise.  Optimism that is not realistic is false and brittle, but realism without optimism is sterile and empty —why would anyone worthy of our trust want to be in the political arena if they did not think they can do something worthwhile?  And separating logic and emotions only makes sense metaphorically—in our lives and our experiences they are intricately intertwined.  As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has said:  “Emotions are enmeshed in the neural networks of reason.” 

Successful political leaders, and successful candidates, have to find a way of showing the reason underlying their emotional appeal, and the emotional energy driving their logic.  They have to demonstrate their capacity to compromise in a principled way and to evince optimism that is infused with realism.  Look at the most powerful speeches of Obama, of Lincoln, of Franklin Roosevelt, or of any of our most effective leaders.  Beneath the stirring call for change they each promote is a reasoned path to attain it.  Dr. King had a dream—and a plan for making it a reality.

So here is a prediction. The candidate who does the best job of bringing into their message both sides of each of these polarities will be the winning candidate.  This means that the winner will be the candidate who is able to connect to whichever side of these polarities they are least comfortable or natural with. This means that either Hillary will have to do a better job of engaging our emotions as well as our reason, or that Bernie will have to do a better job of showing the logic and rationality behind his strongly held and emotionally appealing positions. Only then will a truly powerful candidate and effective leader emerge.