Try as Becky might, it’s unlikely that autism — or vaccines — will be an issue in the general election, says Mark Petracca, chair of the political sciences department at UCI.
“Politicians know what the issues are, because this country is compulsive about polling itself on a daily basis, asking Americans what the most important issues are,” he says. “In these campaigns, autism isn’t on that list. It’s not among the most important issues that Americans have identified as an issue that they care about. That doesn’t mean that someone can’t begin to talk about that issue. But we know the major issues: A) the economy, B) the economy, C) the economy. Then the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, terrorism, nothing you wouldn’t have thought of.”
That doesn’t mean it can’t somehow be propelled onto that list. Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube became a major political issue that nobody saw coming, and Mark Foley’s instant messages thrust ethics into the spotlight before the last Congressional elections. If something happens to jerk the public’s attention toward it, the candidates might spend some time talking about it, he says, “and the headlines will force the candidate to take a position.” (Perhaps a teenager being banned from his own church?)
So how did autism make it’s brief, unexpected cameo in the primary campaigns, when John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all acknowledged the controversy over the ingredients in childhood vaccines?
“The way it was being used was an example of a larger phenomenon: access to good science. It was being used as something that is a headline issue, the importance of having good science to help us in our mission of gaining health care,” Petracca says.
Mentioning the issue, but not making a campaign plank out of it — or even taking a strong position — is “the smart political thing to do,” he says. “It allows someone who is listening for it to say, ‘Aha! There, we got that person interested in what I’m interested in. If they said something you agree with is almost beside the point.”
