President Obama Misunderstands The Psychology of Politics


In order to have a successful negotiation, each side needs to come away from the deal having had their needs satisfied.

What the President does not seem to understand is that the Republican politicians need to be able to tell their supporters that they came away from the deal making a huge cutback in what President Obama originally wanted.

If the President starts out proposing what the Republicans will accept, he robs them of being able to satisfy one of their primary needs from any negotiation.

Knowing what the President wants for a bottom line, he has to propose enough extra so that the Republicans can satisfy their need to cut it back.

This is not arcane psychology at all.  On a much smaller scale we have all probably been involved in a similar situation on a much smaller scale.  When you try to sell a valuable used item such as a car or a house, you need to take into consideration the need of the buyer to feel that they were tough negotiators and successfully got the price down to somewhat lower than what you asked.  (New car salesman understand this very well.)

You may say, “I am not going to play that game, I’ll just set the price low enough that it is fair and it will sell quickly.”  No matter what you do, the buyers are always going to assume that you have padded the price to put in some negotiating room. If you set the price at your bottom line, the potential buyers are going to be very unhappy that they can’t get any concessions from you.  You may fail to sell the house at your reasonable asking price.  If you had taken the psychology of buying and selling into account, you would have asked enough above your bottom line to make the buyer go away happy that he or she knocked a sufficient amount off your initial price.  You could have walked away with a sale that made the buyer and the seller very happy if you had only understood the needs of the other side.

If the President cannot see this, then he is doomed to never make the sale.  Or if he does make the sale, he will have to lower his price far below where he wanted it to end up.  In any case, he won’t arrive at a negotiation where both sides go away happy.

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