An interesting post over at New Scientist’s Short Sharp Science blog reveals something interesting:
Rasa Karapandza and Milos Bozovic of Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, first analysed the 10-K reports produced by 100 companies between 1993 and 2003.
They found that the reports that focused more on the future – using the terms "will", "shall" and "going to" – tended to do worse, performance-wise, over the coming year. Perhaps it isn’t all that surprising, since companies faring badly may tend to focus more on the future to direct attention away from current woes.
But, more strikingly, the pair did the same thing for presidential debates from 1960 to 2000 and found a very similar pattern. Again, the candidate who focused most on the future did worse on polling day. It wouldn’t be so surprising if the incumbent candidate always won, because they might tend to talk less about the future than about their recent record. But the pattern held true for both incumbents and newcomers.
Something in me says this is related to the phenomenon of successful politicians making only few and fuzzy campaign promises, lest they be held accountable for them later. Yet . . . this is supposed to hold true before a candidate is elected president, and regardless of whether he’s running for a second term. So maybe the connection is somewhat indirect: Perhaps successful candidates learn early on in their careers not to talk too much about the future and it’s part of the overall package of being a good politician–the overall package being what helps them win presidential elections, not just the don’t-talk-about-tomorrow part.
I don’t know if the results of the above study are dependable–or how dependable they are–but if the pattern holds in the current election cycle, then this piece of information is interesting:
A transcript of a Republican debate held on 30 January showed that "will", "shall" or "going to" were used 26 times by McCain, 27 times by Huckabee and 32 times by Romney, suggesting that McCain should ultimately win the candidacy.
And, a transcript of a democratic debate held the following day reveals that "will", "shall" or "going to" were used 70 times by Clinton and 71 times Obama, meaning Clinton should eventually win by a nose.
I don’t know about the relative levels of futurism among the candidates in each party, but not the discrepancy between the two parties.
Time will tell.
“Time will tell.”
Or *will* it?
Heh.
C.S. Lewis talks about our perception of the future in “The Screwtape Letters”;
“…we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity…”
“He (God) does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do… we want a man hag-ridden by the Future — haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth… We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.”
This so reminds me of Matthew 6:31-34: 31
“Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’
32″For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33″But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
34″So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
I think it presents an interesting look at the philosophy behind the Deomcratic party and the Rebulican. The Democrats to focus us more on way down the road, rather than on what is being done to us today. Where as the Rebulican party looks more to what can we do to fix things now and let tomorrow be tomorrow.
There are pluses and minuses to both – obviously looking to today with an eye on the future (as in don’t spend us into debt that will affect us in 20 years) – to don’t tax us to death for policies that won’t make a hill of difference, or make people rely on the government to prop them up.
Question, and I’m not very politically savvy, but when Bill Clinton was running for re-election, how much did he focus on futurist ideas? If the Dems are focusing on them right now, how much of that is because there’s not a Democrat in the White House and how much of it is because of any tendency to speak pie in the sky type of things.
I think looking at the relative speech patterns of incumbents seeking re-election would probably be valuable data for a variety of reasons.
Of late it seems like they’re looking more to giving us our problems today and letting tomorrow try to fix it.
Of late it seems like they’re looking more to giving us our problems today and letting tomorrow try to fix it.
I believe you may be mistaking the Republican party with that of the Democrat — what with Hillary’s pandering which presently includes a top-on-her-list presidential act that would call for mandatory troop withdrawal 60 days subsequent to her taking the reins of the Office.
Talk about “giving us our problems today and letting tomorrow fix it”.
And you expect me to believe that’s a bad thing?
Oh heck…why worry about the future anyway since it’s all over on 12/12/12 right? Spend now and let the future blow all our debts away…
(sorry…got lost in a conversation with a relative on this topic and then came and read the blog for a dosage of reality…couldn’t help myself…please forgive me)