people claim to know politics

Politics is the making of a common decision for a group of people, that is, a uniform decision applying in the same way to all members of the group. It also involves the use of power by one person to affect the behavior of another person. More narrowly, it refers to achieving and exercising positions of governance — organized control over a human community, particularly a state.

Furthermore, politics is the study or practice of the distribution of power and resources within a given community (a usually hierarchically organized population) as well as the interrelationship(s) between communities.

A variety of methods are employed in politics, which include promoting or forcing one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising force, including warfare against adversaries. Politics is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local governments, companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level.

It is very often said that politics is about power. A political system is a framework which defines acceptable political methods within a given society. History of political thought can be traced back to early antiquity, with seminal works such as Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics and the works of Confucius.

A politician, in a general sense, is a public official whose primary role is to create or propose laws that further the general interests of the public. In modern democracies, politicians are elected officials put in office by winning the popular vote, who are the primary creators of legislation that becomes national, regional, or local law. Ancient politicians were often orators and public speakers whose primary role was to persuade the public in certain ways of thinking and living, but who often had no official authority over the actions of the public in response to their ideas. Modern-day totalitarian states or those ruled by powerful monarchies and ruling classes often have politicians who serve a primarily symbolic role as well and have no legitimate authority.

In the US, political system politicians are elected or appointed to create legislation at each increasingly smaller division of government, from national down to state and city political officials. Each group proposes and votes into action laws that govern only the territory that it represents, while the executive branch of government sees that such laws are put into force and the judicial branch is responsible for making sure the citizenry complies with these laws. Many other democratic politicians are part of a parliamentary system such as in the UK, where national political parties like the House of Commons have authority that reaches all the way down to the county and city level.

Careers in politics involve a tremendous amount of social networking and negotiating. Whether a politician is a political leader or not, his or her day-to-day activity involves an attempt to reach a consensus of opinions. Within his or her own party politics, he or she must come to agreement on key social issues with his or her colleagues, as well as appease powerful industrial and commercial interests. Politicians build a power base among these groups to see that their views become law over the opposing views of other politicians. Elected politicians must also attempt to satisfy the demands of the voters about how society should govern itself if they intend to remain in power as well as be a popular voice in the public eye.

The outlook of a politician in moving society forward must therefore be focused on several key concerns of any civilization. These include economics and trade, religious views and moral values of the voters they represent, and the security of a society through its emergency services, military forces, and financial solvency. In industrialized societies, this also includes promoting the higher education of the young, funding research into better technology and advances in science, and providing for an adequate health care and medical system for the people.

Ethical issues such as resolving racism and inequality, and protecting individual rights are also concerns to which people look to politicians for guidance. Problems that develop in advanced societies, such as industrial pollution or contentious foreign relations issues, require that a politician be up to date on what is going on around him or her, as well as far away in other societies. The people a politician represents have an expectation that their day-to-day needs and values are well-understood.

While most of these issues have widely varying views among a population as to the proper solutions, a politician is primarily focused on the needs and values of those people who put him or her in office and not opposing political groups. Any successful politician has mastered the art of synthesizing the views of large sections of the society that he or she represents into goals and laws that most will consider favorable. This gives him or her the image of being a strong leader and visionary that the public will keep in office as long as possible.

The Priming Effect in Political Campaigns

The psychological effect of priming may decide our next President. With little public awareness, this psychological tool of implanting an idea via implicit visual or verbal device is used extensively in political campaigns. The effect of priming is long-lasting and salient, and is surprisingly at least as influential on voters as conscious recognition memory.

Politicians use priming to shape the criteria by which their audiences evaluate them. All politicians have strengths and weaknesses, and they want voters to focus on their strengths. One way to do this is to repetitively mention those very strengths to the audience via speeches and media. For example, if a politician’s economic policy is popular, the candidate can repeatedly mention the economy to establish a positive link between “Candidate X” and “economic policy” in the minds of voters. Then, whenever the topic of the economy is brought up, voters will unconsciously be reminded of “Candidate X.” The key here is that they will evaluate the overall political performance of “Candidate X” based mostly on the aspect they are primed with: the economy. Since the link between “Candidate X” and “economic policy” is positive, voters will look upon the candidate with favor. In other words, by priming voters, a candidate is able to establish a specific criterion for the voters, a reference point by which the voters evaluate his overall performance.

It is important not to confuse priming solely with the intuitive belief that candidates should promote their strengths to voters. With priming, candidates only need to repeat the name of the issue rather than give nuanced information.

A good example of a positive association formed by priming is the presidential race of 2004 between George W. Bush and John Kerry. Throughout the campaign Bush continuously mentioned the issue of terrorism. Primed voters were then more likely to associate Bush with fighting terrorism. Since the Republican Party, which Bush represents, is traditionally believed to be a reliable force against terrorism, he was associated with not only terrorism itself but also “adequate ability in dealing with terrorism.”

Terrorism came to overshadow other issues and thus became the sole issue by which many voters evaluated Bush. Priming is used not only to promote a candidate’s strengths, but also to highlight opponents’ weaknesses. An example of a negative association formed by the priming effect is the 1875 Ohio gubernatorial election in which contending Republican nominee Rutherford Hayes (who won the election and later went on to win the presidential race) primed the Geghan Bill to voters. The Geghan Bill, endorsed by the Democrats, allowed Catholic service in Ohio’s asylums and prisons. Hayes’ exaggerated anti-Catholic scheme, repeated many times to the voters, was meant to overshadow the Republican’s anti-gold standard measure that was widely unpopular among voters. By merely bring up the issue in many debates, the Republicans succeeded in priming a negative attitude towards Democrats.

Of course, the priming effect does not necessarily come only from participating politicians. During Jimmy Carter’s time as president, the media predominantly covered foreign events, such as the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty or the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Voters were primed with foreign policy, and subsequent surveys show that in general, people evaluated the overall performance of President Carter based mostly on his performance in foreign affairs. While Carter saw some success with his foreign policy, this priming hurt him during his reelection campaign, which occurred during the Iranian Hostage Crisis.