It seems clear that we want politicians to honestly talk about what they’re intending to do with the policies that they’re actively trying to change (especially if they have a reasonable chance of enacting new policies before the next election). That’s how voters can know what they’re getting.
It’s less obvious how this should apply to their views on things which aren’t going to be enacted into policy. Three lines of thinking that point in the direction of maybe it’s good for politicians to keep quiet about (many of) their unpopular views:
It can be hard for listeners to tell how likely the policy is to be enacted, or how actively the politician will try to make it happen. I guess it’s hard to fit into 5 words? e.g. I saw a list of politicians’ “broken promises” on one of the fact checking sites, which was full of examples where the politician said they were in favor of something and then it didn’t get enacted, and the fact checkers deemed that sufficient to count it as a broken promise. This can lead to voters putting too little weight on the things that they’re actually electing the politician to do, e.g. local politics seems less functional if local politicians focus on talking about their views on national issues that they have no control over.
Another issue is that it’s cheap talk. The incentive structure / feedback loops seem terrible for politicians talking about things unrelated to the policies they’re enacting or blocking. Might be more functional to have a political system where politicians mostly talk about things that are more closely related to their actions, so that their words have meaning that voters can see.
Also, you can think of politicians’ speech as attempted persuasion. You could think of voters as picking a person to go around advocating for the voters’ hard-to-enact views (as well as to implement policies for the voters’ feasible-to-enact views). So it seems like it could be reasonable for voters to say “I think X is bad, so I’m not going to vote for you if you go around advocating for X”, and for a politician who personally favors X but doesn’t talk about it to be successfully representing those voters.
Three lines of thinking that point in the direction of maybe it’s good for politicians to keep quiet about (many of) their unpopular views.
Note that the linked podcast is not merely arguing that politicians should keep quiet about their views, it’s also arguing that their fellow partisans in e.g. think-tanks and opinion sections should also keep quiet, because people can tell that the politicians secretly believe what the think-tankers and opinionists openly say. I think these arguments don’t imply that those think-tankers and opinionists should keep quiet.
It seems clear that we want politicians to honestly talk about what they’re intending to do with the policies that they’re actively trying to change (especially if they have a reasonable chance of enacting new policies before the next election). That’s how voters can know what they’re getting.
It’s less obvious how this should apply to their views on things which aren’t going to be enacted into policy. Three lines of thinking that point in the direction of maybe it’s good for politicians to keep quiet about (many of) their unpopular views:
It can be hard for listeners to tell how likely the policy is to be enacted, or how actively the politician will try to make it happen. I guess it’s hard to fit into 5 words? e.g. I saw a list of politicians’ “broken promises” on one of the fact checking sites, which was full of examples where the politician said they were in favor of something and then it didn’t get enacted, and the fact checkers deemed that sufficient to count it as a broken promise. This can lead to voters putting too little weight on the things that they’re actually electing the politician to do, e.g. local politics seems less functional if local politicians focus on talking about their views on national issues that they have no control over.
Another issue is that it’s cheap talk. The incentive structure / feedback loops seem terrible for politicians talking about things unrelated to the policies they’re enacting or blocking. Might be more functional to have a political system where politicians mostly talk about things that are more closely related to their actions, so that their words have meaning that voters can see.
Also, you can think of politicians’ speech as attempted persuasion. You could think of voters as picking a person to go around advocating for the voters’ hard-to-enact views (as well as to implement policies for the voters’ feasible-to-enact views). So it seems like it could be reasonable for voters to say “I think X is bad, so I’m not going to vote for you if you go around advocating for X”, and for a politician who personally favors X but doesn’t talk about it to be successfully representing those voters.
Note that the linked podcast is not merely arguing that politicians should keep quiet about their views, it’s also arguing that their fellow partisans in e.g. think-tanks and opinion sections should also keep quiet, because people can tell that the politicians secretly believe what the think-tankers and opinionists openly say. I think these arguments don’t imply that those think-tankers and opinionists should keep quiet.