Hearts before minds, he tells Democrats

"Positive and negative emotions are not the flip side of each other," Westen told his Washington audience. "They are neurologically distinct, and that means you've got to control four things: positive feelings toward your candidate, negative feelings toward your candidate, positive feelings toward your opponent and negative feelings toward your opponent. So if you just go negative -- or positive, as the Kerry team decided to do -- you are ceding half the brain to the opposition.

"Similarly, when you refuse to dignify an attack, it gives the other side exclusive rights to the network of associations that constitute public opinion and particular feelings -- which is what decides elections."

Robert Shrum, Kerry's chief political strategist, who comes in for a drubbing in Westen's book, has admitted he erred in not responding fast enough to the Swift-boat campaign. However, he takes issue with Westen's thesis that Democrats don't know how to appeal to voters' emotions, calling Westen's research "pseudoscience."

"I tend to be skeptical of people who think the future of the Democratic Party resides in retooling its language," Shrum said.

Some who have heard Westen speak are waiting to see whether his advice can make a difference when it matters -- during a campaign.

"Beyond diagnosing past failure," Molyneux said, "if he can get out ahead of things and start talking about the economy and healthcare and Iraq ... or if he says, 'This is how John Edwards could move out of the second tier that he seems to be stuck in at the moment,' and if that advice works, that's what catapults you to a higher level."

(Recently, on the Huffington Post, Westen suggested that Barack Obama's dip in the polls after two lackluster debate performances resulted from a "turn to the cerebral," and that the Illinois senator risked drowning in "the dispassionate river" when "what Americans want most from their presidents is strength and warmth." Obama has the right kind of electricity, Westen wrote, "but he isn't using it.")

At the conference, Westen said Democrats had been so flummoxed by so-called wedge issues -- abortion, gun control, gay marriage and immigration -- that they finesse them to the point of seeming unprincipled.

Take abortion, Westen said -- an issue on which about two-thirds of Americans say they believe there should be a middle ground.

"You would never know that," said Westen during an interview, "because most Democrats run from abortion like the plague. Their strategists tell them to speak quickly and move on."

That void, he said, allows the GOP -- thanks to many years of well-funded think tank research and experts like Luntz -- to evoke and capitalize on the emotions that drive voters' decisions.

"You can't take things off the table, which is a standard Democratic practice," said Westen. "I mean, if your opponent is running on the relentless war on terror, scaring people, and you want to run on prescription drugs, those drugs better be Valium, because otherwise you are going to lose."

robin.abcarian@latimes.com