This technique of dreampolitik is not a new one. Walter Lippmann, political journalist and adviser to nearly every American president from Teddy Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, outlined this practice back in 1922 in his masterwork Public Opinion. He called it the ‘manufacture of consent’. The procedure is simple: in order to organize the myriad and often conflicting desires and interests of voters in a popular democracy, savvy leaders learn to mobilize symbols with which people can identify. The broader and emptier the symbol the better, as it makes for a bigger tent within which to fit a greater number of people’s individual dreams. The trick is, as Lippmann wrote, to ‘siphon emotion out of distinct ideas’ and then channel all that emotion into a unifying symbol. That symbol – and all its new followers – can then be re-linked to a party, platform or politician. By owning the symbol, you own the people’s fantasies, and if you own their fantasies then you own their consent.
Yes, I am going to a conference where Duncombe is the main guest speaker in ten days and, hopefully, meet him as well. I am unusually excited about this because of how he brings together media analysis, story telling and politics. But more importantly, how he insists on a concept that seems very outdated in contemporary politics: dreaming and, more precisely, dreaming of a better future.
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