Election By Emotion Part 6

THE doctors answer that in the sub-conscious mind of the average American, the government is Dad. A man’s instinctive attitude to authority is formed in his childhood by his relations with his father. That attitude, set before intelligence fully develops, does not become much more intelligent in later years. By voting dry, the drinker gets the paternal protection of the government, which is put in the place of the stern father forbidding the son to drink; and the son proceeds then to drink with a new gusto, because he is outwitting and disobeying his father mischievously, and because the drink has the added sweetness of stolen fruit. Instead of having to control himself in freedom, he has now shifted his responsibility to the paternal shoulders of the government. He has the childish satisfaction of being protected by the father and of evading the protection. When it comes to voting, he still votes dry, because he feels subconsciously that he needs to be protected from his appetite for alcohol. Having voted, he goes out with a good conscience, to get a drink. It is doubtful, therefore, Whether he will vote for Smith—unless he is convinced that the President has no power to do anything about prohibition, one way or the other.

And there is another aspect of the government-as-Dad theory which affects the emotional currents of the present campaign. The ruler of a country becomes confused with the father-image in the subconscious mind. You see indications of it when Washington is called “The Father of his country” and Lincoln is “Father Abraham” and the Czar of Russia is “Little Father” and so on. Consequently, the older and more fatherly-looking man ought to have an advantage over the young and adventurous-looking one in a campaign for the presidency. President Harding in appearance was the perfect father-image, the symbol of grave protectiveness. Hoover’s managers have wisely emphasized his instinctive feeling for children and his impulsive fight to save the starving children in Belgium during the war and the starving children in Germany after the armistice. They are making a father-image out of him. But Smith, with his brown derby on the side of his head and his cigar in the teeth of a broad smile, is an image not of fatherly protection but of genial adventurousness. That picture of him will not gain him many votes.

Source: The Outlook, 17 October 1928

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