Politics and simplicity
Shankar Vedantam, in the Washington Post, cites an analysis of Presidential speeches:
The study found that in the first three years after a new president takes office, his speeches displayed higher levels of complexity compared with addresses in the fourth year in office. In the first three speeches, presidents were more likely to acknowledge other points of view, potential pitfalls and unintended consequences. In the fourth year, however — as they were about to run for reelection — the complexity of their speeches plunged.
“Low complexity wins elections,” said psychologist Lucian Gideon Conway III of the University of Montana at Missoula, who published his analysis of the presidential speeches in the journal Political Psychology. “People like simple answers, and someone saying, ‘I don’t have all the answers and here are five possibilities’ is a hard sell compared to someone who says, ‘I have a plan and it is going to work and my opponent is completely wrong.’ “
I would add a couple of observations. First, advertising is aimed at the subconscious mind, not the conscious, rational mind. Nuance is lost on the id. Second, most of the communication between politicians and voters is via television, a medium that encourages short attention spans. A message has to be simple to fit into a ten-second sound bite or a thirty-second commercial.