Political Speaking

Paul Greenberg writing at Townhall.com asks:

Whatever happened to the once strong, vital, unique American language?

It hasn't been seen in some time. It's been completely obscured by the thicket of "you knows" and "whatevers" and other verbal tics that now cover the language like kudzu.

In recent years, a tumorous mass of text-message techno-lingo has only added another layer to the overgrowth. Sometimes you wonder if there's still a language somewhere underneath all that mess trying to get out - or if it has simply rotted away. And with it, any hope of coherent thought.

Sounds dire and Greenberg points to a couple of potential causes of the problem, drawn from teh work of others. Then Greenberg gets to something that should trouble us all--and does:

Tom Shachtman was getting warm when he blamed the decline of American eloquence on the "marketing mentality." Instead of trying to elevate American discourse, political consultants lower it, Rather than leading public opinion, their candidates are told to reflect it.

The clear and concise Barry Goldwater lost his presidential election - big - and the lesson was not lost on the country's political hucksters: Never let 'em pin you down. Now the aim of political rhetoric is called positioning or triangulation or anything but clarity.

These days the successful political leader is told to avoid specifics and traffic in generalities, the vaguer the better. The object of political speech becomes a kind of glib opacity, to make a speech rather than say anything.

The occasional, premeditated sound bite may then be added to give the consumer the illusion of solidity, the way gravel may be added to chicken feed.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the magisterial arbiter of American eloquence, has noted that "leadership often requires telling the citizenry truths it does not want to hear," and that "one test of the maturity of a people is a willingness to act on facts requiring sacrifice."

Such a definition of leadership might strike modern political operatives as suicidal. They know that the way to win an election is to muffle unpleasant truths, and soften hard principles.

Besides, clarity is hard work. It's so much easier to fuzz the message, and just write around any inconvenient facts that may disrupt the smooth flow of currently fashionable platitudes. See the average American editorial.

This campaign season has been fraught with soundbites and it is not just the media or the candidate advertising that is generating it. The very format our of political discourse has taken on the soundbite syndrome. Every press release, every floor statement, every speech is set up to capture two or three soundbites. Instead of talking about issues, we are issued statements and soundbites. Instead of solutions, we get two or three glib sentences about the importance of an issue.

I am not necessarily looking for a 20 minute discourse on economic or military policy, but I would like to see and hear, preferably extemporaneously, 500-1000 words on an issue that displays and understanding of the matter and a potential solution or course of action. But we don't get that, in part because we have allowed our candidates to be packaged. Each candidate can be easily summed up in one sentence or a phrase, Giuliani is "American's Mayor" or Baracka Obama as "the first black man with a shot of winning." Neither man can be neat summed up nor can any of their competitors.

Greenberg is right, the political discourse has gotten fuzzy, but it is not the fault of the candidtes--it is our fault for letting them get away with it.