Manolo Quezon is #TheExplainer Newsletter — Issue #41 Weekend thoughts
Some weekend thinking, on looking at messaging and a generational approach to events.
Where we’re at 10/15/2021
Notes: dotted lines connect candidates who feature in multiple slates. The dark lines point to potential alliances or candidacies.
Some thoughts on this chart. First on senate slates: 2019 showed an incomplete slate reveals weakness. The Lacson slate is the first to have more than 12. It makes explicit what used to be implicit: Filipinos don’t vote straight tickets or have complete slates. Weakest: Isko’s.
Large number of incumbents/returnees as shared/guest candidates points to inability of the system to raise awareness. I think this is fundamentally tied to waning reach of news/political programming. Golden age of political TV and buzz was 90s to early 2000’s. Most date to there.
Note Isko slate is still TBA, so it can be argued they’re willing to see how things shape up while negotiating on their own. They are most available to linking up with radicals, for example, because they have the room, and the candidate is increasingly pushing a class line.
Least problematic in terms of broadness of coalition: Ping-TitoSen, most problematic on this score: Leni-Kiko; surprising competitiveness: Pacman’s; most surprising because weak, lackluster, and not even complete: the ruling party. Most obviously waiting-and-seeing: BBM & Lakas.
But honestly, I don’t know how this is even possible: as Leah Navarro puts it, “One important point that many may have missed: Sen. Drilon stated that inclusion in the Leni-Kiko senate slate requires that guest candidates mustn’t endorse other presidential candidates. That’s a no-no.”
What this also tells us: the senate slates without guest candidates, represents the maximum coalition capability of each tandem, for now. Put another way: no one is capable of operating at full strength compared to past candidacies. The entire political class is weakened.
On radical messaging in elections
One thing we haven’t reflected on enough, I think, is how we’ve gone for more than a generation not knowing or seeing a truly majority-making political message is. Because the maximum ever achieved was 40%: what wins is a minority rejected by an overwhelming majority every time.
So it distorts the campaigns that fight it out on the basis not of attracting a majority mandate but rather adding up a minority larger than the next minority: often by tiny fractions. This means especially as things tighten up getting more extreme to attract the smaller fringes.
This then adds to the alienation of the majority except for two temporary trends after each election: by instinct the populace reunites to give the winner a chance while the political class recombines to form a supermajority all the better to maintain the status quo which rewards joining with opportunities for extortion on the new administration. What is interesting is a case could be made that more inclusive or at least conservative appeals end up prospering better than outright radical pitches resorting to class warfare. Ramos and to a certain extent Arroyo made pitches for a more centrist, technocratic — reformist — agenda; Estrada maximized populist appeal but we forget it was also tempered by his own instincts as town gentry to respect, even venerate, the social order. Aquino pitched an appeal diametrically opposed to class division and instead, cross-class solidarity, while the present dispensation understood the upper and middle matter more than generally assumed, electorally, and that furthermore a pitch to those classes would find other classes gravitating to that message, too: a different approach to the class warfare egged on say by Binay in 2016 or to a lesser extent (but more as campaign sank and got frustrated) Villar in 2010. But again the bare bones political math tends to push more polarizing pitches in a bid to grab small increments of voters.
Seeing events through a generational lens
Reacting to this passage from my Wednesday column:
What this taught me is the political giants of our youth define our political instincts well into our old age.
Cleve Arguelles Tweeted,
Boomers as Marcos babies, Estrada & Arroyo as the Gen X’s Marcos, the extreme swing from Aquino III to Dutterte for millennials.
It reminded me of the American historian David Kaiser who relied on an idea put forward by William Strauss and Neil Howe: that different groups age in different ways; that each group, or cohort, usually falls into one of four types. Adapting his framework on looking at history through generational characteristics, here’s how it works adapted for PH in an article I did some years back. Under this framework the two question marks would be Millennials and Gen Z respectively. I must say the framework has held up pretty well. Another framework I tried a decade ago was to define what I considered “Arroyo babies” a generation on which she and her times left a defining imprint.
Taking a cue from David Kaiser
Rogue Magazine: To the Manner Born — Manuel L. Quezon III
Rogue | March 2014
What are the conditions that made yesterday’s babies today’s leaders — and what does that mean for us?
I am an avid reader of the blog of David Kaiser, an American historian very much concerned with tracking the effects various generations have had on the history and politics of his country. In turn, Kaiser has relied on an idea put forward by William Strauss and Neil Howe: that different groups age in different ways; that each group, or cohort, usually falls into one of four types: Prophet, or idealist; Nomad, or reactive; Hero, or civic; and Artist, or adaptive; that each type, in turn, has a different outlook and behavior.
In their writings, Howe and Strauss propose that these four types of generations in turn exist in different mileaux or eras, defined by a generational event or turning: “High,” which comes after a crisis, where individualism is weak, and institutions are strong — people, fresh from a crisis, want to come together; this is followed by an “Awakening,” where those seeking individual or spiritual freedom attack institutions; leading, in turn, to an “Unraveling,” where besieged institutions are deeply distrusted, and individuals are relatively independent of each other; and then there is the fourth turning, called a “Crisis” — when, in the face of the threat of a general collapse, people turn once more to a sense of community, to renewing cooperation and strengthening institutions. Each of these turnings comprises roughly 20 years, and a full cycle of four turnings lasts 80 to 90 years.
Prophets are born near the end of a Crisis, and as crusaders, they are part of an Awakening. In old age, they become elders guiding generations through the next Crisis. Nomads are born during an Awakening, and as alienated individuals, they are pragmatic during a Crisis. Hero types are born after an Awakening, during an Unraveling: generally self-reliant, they are optimists when young, overconfident when middle-aged, and powerful in old age. As for Artist types, they are born after an Unraveling, during a Crisis. Their quiet years leading to adulthood leads them to being consensus- builders who are strong advocates of fairness.
For example, they labeled those born from 1901–1924 as the GI Generation, which was a Hero or civic type. After all, they participated in that great group effort known as World War II, which defined them, and in terms of the USA they provided much of the leadership — Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Bush, Sr. came from their ranks. The next cohort was the Silent Generation, also of the Hero or civic type, who, for example, embarked on the civil rights movement as a logical progression of the freedoms espoused by the GI Generation — but this generation never rose to national leadership. They were followed by the Boomers, of the Prophet or idealist type, who questioned and rebelled against the certainties of the GI and Silent Generations, and from whose ranks leaders like Bill Clinton emerged, with their tendency to either extreme liberalism or conservatism.
The Boomers themselves are now fading from the scene, as Gen X (born 1961–1981), of the Nomad or reactive type, developed as a generation lacking the sense of endless optimism (and entitlement) of the Boomers — a brooding cohort whose life experiences have been on the whole negative when it comes to both institutions and the fulfillment of individual desires, but who seem to have won the respect of their Boomer parents.
I have often wondered if a similar classification — along generational lines, with each generation having its own personality, so to speak — is possible within the Philippine context, and if so, what those generations might be.
Here is how the chart on the opposite page works: a description of the Generation; the characteristics of that Generation (its “Type”); the years in which the generation was born, and what was happening in that era. So Our Founding Father were Prophets (Idealists), born in 1861- 1882, who grew up in a High era, the time of the opening of the Suez Canal, who were active participants in the Awakening known as the Propaganda Movement and the Revolution, and who were the senior leaders in the Unraveling era and elders in the Crisis era of the Commonwealth, War, and Occupation. In this manner, each generation is born into an era, matures and rises to active leadership in the next, and reaches seniority and fades away in the era after that.
Thus in the lifetime of our nation, we have gone through one full cycle and the babies of today will be the ones to complete the next full cycle we’re in.
Another generational approach
The Long View: The battle for the Arroyo babies — Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 00:15:00 02/04/2010
…On one hand, voters with the greatest life experience (if you’re 65 you were born after the war ended in 1945, so your memories go as far back as the Quirino years, probably), or who are contemporaries of the two leading candidates (Aquino falls within the 45–54 bracket, Villar falls within the 55–54 bracket) and those with the least life experience (if you’re 18 now, and thus a first-time voter, you were born in 1992) all seem to have a similar perspective in that they are generally for Aquino. Villar’s constituency, age-wise, seems to be those currently just starting to climb the corporate ladder or who are in middle management [or of OFW age]. Villar’s constituency happens to be the most numerous portion of the population. [See this chart a friend prepared containing age groups and significant dates that molded the attitudes of particular generations].
I have had the chance to give talks to groups of university students lately. Belonging to the 18–24 age group, they comprise 14 percent of the voting population. They are at the tail end of what I believe will come to be known as the Arroyo babies, just as my generation is known as the martial law babies (born during the earlier part of the Marcos administration, 8 to 17 years old when Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, and 11 to 20 years old during Edsa in 1986).
There are the Edsa babies, born from 1977 to 1986, the oldest of whom were in primary school when Ninoy was shot, or in primary school when Cory Aquino left office. Politically, they came of age in the presidential elections of 1998 or 2004.
The Arroyo babies are those who have come of age in time for this election and are first-time voters, as well as those who came of age, politically speaking, in the aftermath of Edsa Dos, and voted for the first time in 2004. That is, those who are 18 to 31 years of age. The oldest were around 22, seniors or fresh graduates, when Edsa Dos took place. Perhaps they felt the disappointment of the post-Edsa Dos years (and the panic of Edsa Tres) most keenly — they didn’t go out into the streets during “Hello, Garci” or NBN-ZTE scandals. The middle includes those who were college freshmen during “Hello, Garci,” and who are 22 years old today, fresh graduates who may not have participated in rallies during “Hello, Garci” but who expressed indignation over the NBN-ZTE hearings.
This is a generation, then, that is basically aware of only two presidents: Estrada and Arroyo. Of this generation, a McCann study in 2007 said: “Teens are watching less TV, listening to less radio, reading less books and magazines, are doing less sports, interacting with friends face-to-face less frequently, and spending less money on traditional consumer items…. thanks to virtual connectivity technology like text messaging and the Internet.”
This doesn’t seem to be a generation that can be swayed one way or another by mass media, in that they probably pay attention to the news only in times of natural disaster but without keeping tabs on political developments. They are, however, a generation that may be swayed, particularly effectively, by advertising because when they do watch TV, the ads can touch them, particularly during prime time.
Manuel Villar, for example, during the whole of 2009 and in the first week of January, poured a tremendous amount of resources into ads targeted specifically at those 18 years old and above, belonging to the socio-economic bracket D and E. In 2009, he had 4,710 TV ads, of which 3,944 were 30-seconders. In the first week of January alone, he had 296 spots. More than half of the ads during both periods were broadcast during prime time, meaning more than 90 percent of viewers got to see his ads at least once a day and those seeing his ads twice or thrice a day in the high 80s.
Of course, saturating the airwaves cost a pretty penny: a conservative estimate puts Villar’s 2009 spending at P640 million, and during the first week of January at about P70 million or P240 million for the whole month (Teodoro, by one estimate spent P29.5 million, and Aquino P7.8 million).
What is equally important is that the Villar ads have not only been relentless, but methodical. And they are working. In a month, Pulse Asia reports that Aquino has gone down 8 points, Villar increased by 12, Estrada lost 7, while the other candidates remain basically unchanged with negligible levels of voter support.
At this point, the two leading contenders are now neck-and-neck going into the official starting line of the campaign. Since every election is about the future, the question then becomes, which of the two leading contenders can lay claim to the first-time voters, the Arroyo babies.
Let me close with two opinions from this age group. One who belongs to the older range of the spectrum puts it this way: “Erap was tried and found guilty, hence his current standing. We tolerated Gloria because nothing has been proven. Hence, same with Villar: nothing has been proven, and he says he cares for the poor, so, vote for him.” Another, more in the middle of this age group, says, “The numbers say that we have resigned and accepted corruption as a fact of life since we became very politically aware in Edsa Dos.”
But as for the tail enders, the first-time voters, their views are the most surprising of all. They are the least touched by the question of ethics as a factor in electing public officials.
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