Don't laugh: saying the same old thing works

The Repulican Party released a new campaign document this week called 'A Pledge to America'. It is nothing more than the usual boilerplate Republican rhetoric, as demonstrated by John Stewart's cleverly edited segment showing House Republicans using the exact same words in years past. That repetitiveness is what makes it an effective propaganda tool.

The last time the Congressional Republicans made such a fuss about a document rollout was in 1994, when they launched their 'Contract with America' en route to taking over both houses of Congress for the first time in decades. Like the Pledge, the Contract also parroted earlier material, specifically President Ronald Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address, its main source. The joke, unfortunately, is on the Democrats, who, year after year, fail to articulate a consistent message.

It is easy to make fun of the Republicans' rhetorical recycling, but nothing wins campaigns like memorable catchphrases and the appearance of consistency. The content of that consistency is almost irrelevant. Many people will vote for the candidate about whom they can say 'I know what he stands for' even if what that candidate stands for is inimical to a voter's self-interests. That was one big reason that people found it hard to pull the lever in 2004 for John Kerry, the presidential candidate who had trouble getting a consistent message out: people went with the known rather than the unknown, even if they knew that the known was quite bad. It also worked for the guy who said little more than 'Hope' and 'Change' in 2008.

The Democrats' biggest problem is not that they think too much but that they do their thinking in public. Yes, the problems we face are complicated, but most voters don't want to be reminded that their leaders are full of doubt and circumspection. I, for one, am a big fan of doubt and circumspection, but it doesn't sell well on the national stage.

Self-fashioned thoughtful types can go on laughing at the Republicans' same-old, same-old tactics, but they work. If ever the Democrats started using Republican tactics to sell Democratic policies, the Republicans would be finished.

keep going

Hillary Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention last night may prove to be an important event in party history. She has given spotlight speeches before, yet they were always utterly forgettable. Bill Clinton or Barack Obama can give a speech, and their phrases instantly enter political discourse and stay there for years: the bridge to the twenty-first century; there are no red states or blue states; a skinny kid with a funny name. Do you remember a word of her 2004 convention speech? Me neither.

H. Clinton's speeches have always struck me as litanies of complaint without anything catchy and hopeful, a key ingredient. My favourite instance of the catchy and hopeful hook to the end-of-the-world speech is Al Gore's trope of the Chinese translation of 'crisis', which even has its own Wikipedia entry. I always thought it was Al Gore who first said that the Chinese word for 'crisis' is formed by two characters meaning 'danger' and 'opportunity'. Apparently, John F. Kennedy said it way back in 1959. I feel cheated.

Last night, practically everything that H. Clinton said was memorable: we can't have four more years of the last eight years; no way, no how, no McCain; the Twin Cities joke. I could not help but think it was B. Clinton's speech. When it comes to most things, she is probably smarter than he is, but not when it comes to rhetoric. Her mind does not frame her thoughts into rhetorical figures the way his compulsively does. (He did seem to be smiling a bit too proudly during her speech; didn't he?)

Whoever wrote it, I was relieved to see the force of her argument to her supporters that they must support Obama because this is about more than her. I expected calls for party unity and so on, but what she said was what those of us not enthralled to the Clintons needed to hear: that it was not about her but about the larger cause.

If my suspicion is right that this was a Bill speech, at least in spirit, then I have to think he is going to trot out an even grander speech for himself tonight. Finally, for the first time in this campaign, I am looking forward to a speech by Bill Clinton. Perhaps he may even restore the family name.

you can have him, we don't want him

Prediction: if John McCain becomes the Republican nominee for president, his running mate will be Senator Joseph Lieberman (CfL-CT). I have been saying this privately since last year, but today's report in the News-Times of Connecticut that Lieberman will 'quite possibly' attend the Republican convention suggests that he is already laying the groundwork.

It would suit McCain's empty 'maverick' brand to choose a running mate from the other party—if by 'other party' one means the Connecticut for Lieberman Party. To people who don't follow politics closely, it would probably look like a bold move to bring the two parties together and overcome the partisan rancor that supposedly accounts for government dysfunction. How strongly could conservatives object to a running mate as hawkish as Dick Cheney and as committed to the culture wars as Pat Robertson? And he would certainly add votes from Connecticut South, also known as Florida.

For Lieberman it would be a return whence he came. It's worth recalling the circumstances of his election to the Senate in 1988. Lowell Wiecker, the Republican incumbent, was a true maverick. Here is the first paragraph from the New York Times's coverage of the campaign for September 30, 1988:

'At a Free South Africa conference here last weekend, a crowd of liberals applauded the arrival of the senior Senator from Connecticut, Lowell P. Weicker Jr. They nodded when the rambunctious Republican from Greenwich reminded them that he was the first, and so far the only, Senator to be arrested at an anti-apartheid demonstration.'

The headline was 'Foe Slowed by Weicker's 2-Party Appeal'. Foe indeed.

It is hard to see how an anti-abortion, anti-gay, pro-war candidate like McCain can claim the mantle of maverick. A sitting Republican Senator arrested for civil disobedience outside the South African Embassy? Now that's what I call a maverick.

Lieberman squeaked by with a margin of victory of 7,000 votes out of almost 1.3 million cast (NYT, November 9, 1988), or 49.7% to 49.0%, and the endorsements of William F. Buckley and other Republicans who found him more conservative than their own party's candidate. And Republicans did the same thing to re-elect Lieberman in 2006 after he lost the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont.

Whatever happens, the Democrats will surely pick up more seats in the Senate this year, at least six say I, and won't need the CfL Senator from Connecticut to caucus with them anymore.

One last point: earlier tonight I was watching Christopher Dodd, Connecticut's Democratic Senator, on C-SPAN2 filibustering against retroactive telecom immunity on the Senate floor. Dodd's father was a prosecutor at Nuremberg, and Dodd fils, invoking his father's legacy, has taken a hard line against abuses of power by the Bush administration. That doesn't make him a maverick, but in an age of wanton abuse of power and equally wanton cowardice by the opposition party, it does make him a hero. I'll take the hero over the maverick anytime.