Friday, June 29, 2007 Yap: Freakonomics By Januar E. Yap Meanwhile
THE book “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” a collaborative work between journalist Stephen J. Dubner and economist Steven D. Levitt, among other things, dissects the “riddles of everyday life.” The ideas, says its jacket blurb, “turn conventional wisdom on its head.”
It asks questions like why do drug dealers still live with their moms or what do school teachers have in common with sumo wrestlers or which one is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool. Weird, you might say, but Levitt pares down the esoteric to the size of chewable Chiclets with a minted twist. I know of somebody who does that, too, the fun-read “street strategist” Thads Bentulan. But we’ll get to Thads in the future.
“Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work—whereas economics represents how it actually does work,” says Levitt.
There’s an interesting entry in Freakonomics about the old truism that money buys elections. A winning candidate naturally raises the heftier kitty that will drive him home to the winning end. But, asks Levitt, “was it the money that won him the votes, or was it his appeal that won the votes and the money.”
Voter appeal may be impossible to measure, but there’s an exception, says Levitt. The key is to measure the candidate against himself. “Candidate A today is likely to be similar to Candidate A two or four years hence. The same could be said for Candidate B. If only Candidate A ran against Candidate B in two consecutive elections but in each case spent different amounts of money. Then, with the candidates’ appeal more or less constant, we could measure the money’s impact.”
There’s not a few congressional candidates in the US since 1972 who ran against each other in consecutive elections all the time. The theory proves interesting results.
The amount of money spent by candidates, says Levitt, hardly matters at all. A losing candidate who doubles campaign spending only earns a diminutive percentage, while the winning candidate who spends dramatically lesser in the next campaign only loses a negligible percentage. “What really matters for political candidates is not how much you spend; what matters is who you are,” says Levitt.
Who you are, of course, may largely be the job of spinmeisters with a huge claim to enlightenment. In marketing communications, you call that branding, packaging, etc. Integrate your arsenal and project a single image. “One look, one vision,” a marketing adage says; you can’t be sending mixed images to the public.
In the last elections, political newcomer Jonathan “Atan” Guardo was up against the older Antonio Cuenco. You won’t miss the contrast. Atan had the advantage in terms of image. Public perception said he was up against a traditional politician. He had the sticky advantage of “Atan Na Ta!”; my friends’ kids blurt them out in the same breath with Ninja Turtles.
But what happened? Something was amiss. Ironically, the issue of vote-buying was hurled on Atan instead, the newcomer, the supposedly non-trapo.
That sent an inconsistent message, a contradiction to the image he could have banked on. His campaign kitty could have been poured on proper image-building, play up the image of being a fresh new option.
But you talk to any voter in that district and all you hear is that Atan’s camp was giving the bigger doleout. On whether that’s true or not is not the point.
In the arena of campaign, public perception is all. Mayor Tomas Osmeña may have been right when he said, “He (Atan) fell for the trap.” That may mean the kitty being spent on the wrong priorities.
There are not a few things with which to explain a candidates’ loss, but as Levitt would have it, what matters is who you are. In another context, The Dire Straits was right, “money for nothing.”
