Managing the Message: Why Bother?

I must have started this entry about a dozen times because there were so many angles I wanted to explore before realizing that one of the joys of blogging is that since most likely no one besides my immediate family is reading this, I can ramble on as I choose, at least until Epicurus makes fun of me.That tells you something about this entire topic. I'm writing plainly because I have no expectation of an audience. Most politicians do, and the most successful of them have learned that a) there is always an audience, and b) there is always a message to send.

I've been fascinated by the use of language in political debate for a long time. Perhaps the most specific instance I can think of is when I worked briefly with a group discussing strategies to implement the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Each word promised no more and no less than the Act's drafters intended it. What it meant to the rest of the country was "welfare reform." (All kinds of fun slogans came too, including the perky 'a hand up, not a hand out'). What it meant for me and other low-level government folks was we didn't work for an employment and training agency anymore but instead a "workforce development" agency. Hmm. Reminded me of a joke a professor in college told about St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad/St. Petersburg, which, told with more flair and a Russian accent amounted to the "more things change, the more they stay the same."

This section was kicked off by an interview I heard on NPR with Frank Luntz, political consultant and message strategist extraordinaire. Luntz is perhaps most famous for replacing "estate tax" with "death tax" in the popular debate, and in this interview defends it on the grounds that he was clarifying - and not directing - debate. Now, I admire Luntz as a consummate artist with words. This switch of phrase has to go down as one of the most successful in modern political history. As Luntz himself says, it's all about associations: "estate" conjured up visions of the wealthy; "death," well, that conjures up visions of us all paying our pennies across the River. Millions of voters, who would never have to pay the tax, became convinced that this was a means of exploitation by the government of their hard work to leave something to their children. And now we know what happened to Kansas.

I've no desire to rail for or against the tax here; instead the Chorus wants to focus attention on the words our politicians use to explain themselves, their policies, and as so aptly noted by Epicurus here already, their mistakes.

Look at "surge" versus "escalation." I'm a little surprised it took the Democrats so long to get around to creating an answer (someday I'd like to see the Democrats present a message, rather than run away from one, but the rant on how "liberal" became a dirty word has to wait till I've had more coffee).

Plenty of folks have already noted "escalation" in the context of the Vietnam War, a parallel the Administration must have seen coming (in rhetoric if not reality - how will they define success in Iraq? If folks can think of Iraq without thinking of Vietnam). I'm a little surprised at the choice of surge. To me, surge implies a destructive force (a storm surge say), and I would have thought that the last parallel a post-Katrina administration would want. Grant you, surges recede, and at this point, I can't think of anything better (I invite folks to send their favorite alternatives) that doesn't trap them into a one-shot deployment of more troops.

(Out of curiosity I looked up "surge" in the online Merriam-Webster thesaurus: noun, example "a moving ridge on the surface of the water." Illustration? " A huge surge nearly capsized the boat and drenched the hapless fishermen." Perhaps the Administration can take heart - the word "nearly" has an awful lot of play in it.)

Look at the "war on terror." Lots of people have noted that this is a great phrase to choose if you want to a) imply a need for constant military readiness or engagement, b) do not want to confine yourself to one specific enemy, since you can't fight an emotion anyway, c) want to invoke patriotism and executive war powers, and d) want to create an us vs. them mentality wherever it would be convenient - between parties, between voting blocs or between countries. Masterfully done. And there's no danger of failure. How can you win or lose a war on terror? The "Axis of Evil" by contrast presents nothing but specifics: we know what an axis does - serves as the central point for moving bodies; we knew who was in it (a very funny Saturday Night Live sketch captures the point better than I); we knew what it was doing - bad things, say, funding terrorists and nuclear weapons. You'll notice that we don't use that anymore, and I'm convinced it's not because the Administration thinks there is no Axis of Evil.

The point is not to look only at what politicians say, but what they don't say, what they stop saying and what we want them to say. Whether it's global warming or climate change, the fact remains the weather is doing funky things, but the phrases themselves carry explanations as to why and ideas on what humans can do. It's worth it when the stakes are high to find the words that work.