Responsive versus Rational Citizenship

I am both relieved and excited to hear that citizens do, in fact, make rational evaluations about political candidates, according to the "on-line" model tested by Lodge et. al. This model provides a sort of scapegoat for Americans who are often accused of being uninformed and disinterested: even if they're too busy to remember specific facts, at least they can hold onto evaluations they've made at some point that were based on rational judgments of relevant facts.

Despite these hopeful findings, if people are unable to recall the reasons for forming political opinions, their ability to hold meaningful political discussions--either with other citizens or in confrontation to an opposing message-- is severely inhibited. Political discussion then becomes a one-way track: from political campaign messages to their recipients, without the beneficial interference of alternative perspectives. Citizens might add or subtract to their mental "tallies," but they are seemingly unable to retain the reasons for these additions and subtractions that could prove useful should opposing information come along. Without these reasons, citizens are more susceptible to emotional campaign advertisements, for example, because they lack the informational resources to fend off contrary emotional claims. Such an advertisement would cause a shift in the "tallies," but for the wrong reasons--without a rational re-consideration of the evidence because they no longer have the evidence to draw from. (And, as Kuklinski and Quirk point out, "in the constant interaction between emotion and cognition, emotion usually dominates.") Responsiveness to political messages, for which Lodge et. al. have found great evidence, is definitely an important factor in political evaluations, but the rationality of this responsiveness seems, to me, much more important in our evaluation of citizen competence.

Moreover, perhaps it is for this very reason that political discussion is so daunting to the ordinary American. Eliasoph's research provides evidence that many Americans do not feel knowledgeable--at least on the "frontstage"--to discuss their political opinions with others, and perhaps this is because they are unable to generate specific reasons for the opinions they possess, however strong. Without compelling facts to support one's opinion--or as Lodge et. al. discover: usually without any facts at all-- any effort to convince someone else to adopt your opinion becomes an irrational appeal based on a gut feeling. Such an appeal dampens one's own feelings of agency in the political arena.