Until he was killed when his single-seat lightweight aircraft crashed, Joseph Overton was a Fellow at The Mackinac Center for Public Policy. A policy analyst, he described the range of topics acceptable to mainstream thinking as the window of discourse. Overton developed a visual method of visually displaying policy positions along a political spectrum. He called it the Window of Political Possibility. Only after his death did the Center for Public Policy rename it the Overton Window.
What Is the Overton Window and What Does It Have To Do With Think Tanks?
Joseph G. Lehman, president of the Mackinac Center describes things this way
“Ideas become policy only after they move from being unthinkable notions that cannot become law to becoming popular ideas that elected officials are eager to ratify into law. This can take days, years, or even longer.”
“Secondhand dealers in ideas,” was Austrian Economist F. A. Hayek’s term for think tanks
Their purpose is to turn unthinkable notions into popular ideas, ideas that are politically impossible until they become politically inevitable. When it moves, the window of public opinion includes some ideas and to leave others behind.
The primary goal of most think tank research, analysis, testing, and debate is to shift a window’s position by informing, influencing, and shaping public public opinion.
What is a think tank?
A think tank is group of political and social scientists and others that do research for hire and recommend particular strategies that benefit its clients. Think tanks provide information, ideas, and advice attuned to the climate of public opinion, that which resides inside the Overton window.
Wellesley University puts it this way
”Think tanks are organizations that generate policy-oriented research, analysis, and advice on domestic and international issues that enable policymakers and the public to make informed decisions about public policy issues.”
Regular readers recognized this in the last line above
When Wellesley said informed decisions, what they really meant is decisions that favor the policies that think tanks recommend. Those with darker outlooks say some think tanks are so powerful that they’re pulling the strings of government to their advantage in power, money, or both.
Many of us have heard of at least a few of the most influential think tanks
Here are some, not all, of the most well-regarded for the rigor of their research:
Not many of us know that RAND was instrumental in shaping Cold War defense policy for the United States in the 1950s and 1960s
Even less well-known is how it was Rand chief strategist Herman Kahn who coined the term “mutually assured destruction.” Kahn was such a rabid advocate for what he called “a winnable nuclear war” that Stanley Kubrick used him as the model for his bizarre character Dr. Strangelove. Brittanica says Kubrick’s film was “deemed culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” to America’s film heritage. Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was among the first films selected in 1989 for inclusion in the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
Academic Influence says some think tanks are broadly transparent about their sources of funding and support
True, but others guard this information carefully. As to transparency, their names deliberately do little to enlighten the public about their goals or focus.” Isn’t Cato Inspector Clouseau’s manservant? Or was it Kato, the Green Hornet’s crime-fighting sidekick. See what I mean?
The climate of public opinion is beliefs shared by most people
At the ends of the spectrum are areas that are so off-limits to candidates trying to get elected that they must be considered unthinkable. As these positions move closer to the center, away from unthinkable and radical, they become acceptable. One step closer and they’ve become sensible, then another and they’re popular. When something is popular long enough, it becomes policy.
The window moves in response to public sentiment, illustrating how ideas come in and go out of fashion
When the United States was first established, many Americans were pro-slavery. Over the next 90 years, the idea of enslaving human beings moved away from popular, went right past sensible and acceptable, and those damn radicals kept it up until it became unthinkable and slavery laws were finally repealed.
The same thing happened with Prohibition
Activists for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League drummed up enough support through their marches and demonstrations to convince lawmakers to make a new law banning all manufacture and sale of alcohol.
You see, not only did teetotalers not want the demon John Barleycorn to touch their lips, they also wanted to regulate the morals of everyone else
Prohibition was one of the greatest policy failures of all time because it caused more problems than when alcohol was legal
It was finally repealed after it had provided the ideal environment for sophisticated criminal enterprise and governmental graft. Millions of people wanted to drink and ignored the law to do so, in spite of the dangers of unlicensed alcohol. It took 13 years, but the window shifted back.
Take Vietnam
Nearly everyone was for it as long as they weren’t the ones going over there. We now know that American politicians and generals told us lies about how we were winning the war by killing the enemy and converting hearts and souls among the South Vietnamese people.
David Halberstam (The Making of a Quagmire and The Best and The Brightest) and Neil Sheehan (A Bright and Shining Lie) won Pulitzer Prizes. Both were for their reporting on and writing about the Vietnam war. When enough reporters and journalists told us the truths behind those lies, Americans finally conceded the defeat that had been inevitable all along.
Drunk driving was tolerated for a very long time
Liquor stores in Florida have had drive-thru windows since the invention of cars. People ordered their favorite cocktails, the bartender mixed them and served them to people who drank them as they drove down the street.
Florida did not institute a law against open alcoholic beverages in vehicles until 1988
It’s the Tourist State, you know. By that time, MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) had lobbied long and hard enough to get the legal level of intoxication lowered and the drinking age raised. The Overton Window shifted, didn’t it, and now the penalties for driving while impaired are the harshest they’ve ever been.
Overton’s window of discourse moves with the times
As societal norms and values evolve, the window gets bigger and smaller and moves up and down. Politicians who align themselves with ideas that are outside the window do so at their own risk, because it usually takes a lot of money and time to change a negative to a positive in the minds of the citizenry.
The idea is that our collective attitude toward an idea or a concept or a government policy is to a great extent informed by what we’re told about it
That’s the job of think tanks. Our job as well-informed citizens is to go beyond what we’re being told.
This idea of a moving window of acceptability applies to social norms, too
Just change “policy” to “mainstream thinking and behavior.” Tattoos provide a timely example. Not that long ago, the only people with tattoos were sailors, tough guys, criminals, assorted ne’er-do-wells, and those somewhat questionable tattooed ladies in the sideshows. Now they’re so mainstream that grandmothers get them. How about that for a moving window?
It’s amazing how few people get tattooed without first checking into the inevitable degradation of the artwork into muddy illegibles as skin droops and colors degrade and bleed into surrounding areas.
Ponderables
- Where do you see the window of societal acceptance moving next?
- What do you think will become the next normal?
Bonus
Meet the Moment grabs snatches of political discourse in real time
It asks What Ideas Are Acceptable in Your Country? Their live site uses the parameters of the Overton Window to track the range of ideas that are politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It’s updated daily, giving you the current political climate in any country that interests you.
Thousands of what they say are real-time conversations from news headlines, social media, political posts, and discussion forums are dumped into a software package
It’s very cool how the colored dots scroll by like the paper rolls in the old Look ma, no hands pianos people played by pumping pedals with their feet. You can check on what’s being discussed in real time regarding the economy, the environment, technology, healthcare, the housing crisis, and more.
