The Overton Window

The Overton Window is the range of political policies that are acceptable to the mainstream population at any given time. The Overton Window was named after an American political policy analyst, Joseph P. Overton. It refers to the importance of not getting too far on either the liberal or conservative fringe. It has other applications that I have seen that apply to a broad range of topics including scary movies, acceptable dress, seat belt laws, and the current crisis of the unvaccinated. I don’t know why we don’t hear the expression more often. Today we hear of the radical right and the socialist leftists.

In essence, the Overton Window relates to what constitutes acceptable behavior and the range in which it exists, and most importantly what is acceptable to the mainstream population.

I remember going to the Riant Theater when I was a teenager to see the Saturday evening horror movie special. We always went as a group of boys and girls who were friends. When the monster appeared on the screen like The Thing, Frankenstein, or Invaders from Mars, we would all drop our popcorn and dive behind the seats pretending to pick it up until the monster left the screen. We would run home, have nightmares, and return again to be scared the next Saturday night.

That was acceptable fright. If time travel allowed me to come to present day and see The Halloween Series or the Chainsaw Massacre, I would be scarred for life. We have gradually broadened what is acceptable to scare us. Our Overton Window has really widened.

Deborah Tannen, Georgetown University Linguist, captured every parent’s admonition as her daughter is leaving the house on a date with the title of her book, You’re Wearing That? The Overton Window determines acceptable dress in the mainstream population with varying degrees of interpretations of “acceptable.”

People have forgotten the controversy over the legal requirement to wear seat belts. It turned out to be a tempest in a teapot, didn’t last long, and it became second nature for people to do what the government told them would save their lives. Again, our Overton Window of accepting government guidance to save our lives was pretty narrow.

Then came Trump! He established the Overton Window after he was elected. He was as surprised as anyone. But he made a statement that “he could shoot someone on fifth avenue and no one would arrest him.” His “anything goes” political and personal actions widened that Overton Window to the extreme and ushered in an extreme culture. There was no check on his outrageous unethical personal and political behavior. He was the Teflon president who thumbed his nose at any rules or concern for anyone but himself and was never held accountable. He had read the mainstream population with the intelligence of a rocket scientist. Even though he lost the last election, 70 million people voted for him and many continue to believe that he did win.

His key population known as is base was white non college educated people who felt left out of the political game. Others may never have heard of the Overton Window, but Trump knew its lesson. Just how much will mainstream Americans tolerate? A lot but he has forgotten about other groups whose window is narrow in interpreting “the acceptable.”

Remember the cliché, “give him an inch and he will take a mile,’ is classic Overton Window thinking. Parents and teachers deal with this every day. “I don’t care what your friends’ parents allow you to do, you are not doing that here.” My house. My rules. Overton Window.

When many of us went to school, the last thing we ever wanted was our parents to show up at school to meet with anybody. Talk about widening the Overton Window. Now the parents are brought in by the kids and there may be a lawyer in tow. Have you watched some of the riots that pass as school board meetings regarding Critical Race Theory? Have you seen the parents on the sideline proclaiming, “Give my kid more playing time. She is the best on the team?”

If January 6 occurred even a dozen years ago, the President and enablers would be in jail along with the terrorist attackers of the police. The four heroes who testified at the recent Insurrection Commission meeting were like a solemn bell tolling to close that Overton Window to revisit what we are going to allow as acceptable behavior as a nation. No one could have done it better.

I think that the final verses of John Donne’s poem from which Hemingway chose the title of my favorite work of his describe what the Overton Window should look like. It says what the mainstream population needs to say as a daily prayer to narrow what is acceptable and ethical as we are at a political and personal crossroads.

Each man’s death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.