Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Speaking
I've been reading a lot of articles lately on Bush's speaking styles -- his vernacular, the language he uses, his choice of words, his delivery ...it's quite frightening, because I believe this is one of the reasons why the polls are the way they are -- because he has the capacity to lie so blatantly, so pathologically, and provide viewpoints so thoroughly out of context that the blind and uninformed lap it up like so many desert-parched fanatics. And Rove has managed to turn these strengths against Kerry's nuanced, more intelligent albeit occasionally meandering style. Americans don't seem to appreciate nuance these days, prefering to take in one-line sound bites ("I was honorably discharged." "The world is safer." "You are with us or against us." End of story.) and deriding complexity and thorough thinking as an indication of someone who "flip-flops" and is "wishy-washy." I fear for November.

Here's Ryan Lizza:

The key to Bush's success is that, on the stump, he is a master at turning his simple speaking style into a political virtue. Indeed, if you listen to him carefully, much of Bush's case for a second term rests on the idea that he speaks more clearly than John Kerry. "Now, when the American president says something, he better mean it," Bush says at almost every stop. "When the American president says something, he's got to speak in a way that's easy for people to understand and mean what he says." Bush is obsessed with his plainspoken image. If he accidentally uses what he regards as a complicated word, he catches himself and defines it for his audience. "You ask docs what it's like to practice in a litigious society," he tells the crowd in Muskegon. "That means there's a lot of lawsuits. I'm not even a lawyer, and I know the word 'litigious.'" Later, speaking about a health care proposal, he says, "It's commonsensical. In other words, it makes sense to do it this way."

[...]

... Speaking about an important local issue at one stop, Bush says derisively, "Earlier this year, my opponent said a decision about Great Lakes water diversion would be 'a delicate balancing act.'" Bush pauses and gives the crowd a can-you-believe-it look. "That kind of sounds like him, doesn't it? My position is clear: My administration will never allow the diversion of Great Lakes water." Never mind that Bush and Kerry have the exact same position on the issue--neither favor redirecting water to needy states.

In fact, the genius of Bush's fetish with speaking clearly and plainly is that it makes it much easier for him to get away with saying things that aren't true. In the Bush campaign, simplicity is equated with veracity. One of Bush's favorite rhetorical devices is the straw man. When he speaks of terrorists, he pretends that there is some dangerous faction of Democrats that wants to sign a treaty with Al Qaeda. "You cannot negotiate with these people," he defiantly tells the Muskegon Republicans. "You cannot hope for the best from them. You cannot hope they'll change their ways." Sometimes Bush just assumes that some argument he finds ridiculous has been made. "I suspect someone probably said that these people can't be free," he says about Afghanistan at one stop. To the powerful voices allegedly advocating the transfer of U.S. sovereignty to foreign powers, he declares, "I will never turn over America's national security decisions to leaders of other countries."

Here's Philip Gourevich, who I've quoted earlier:

Bush has created a language of his own-as austere and strange as that of David Mamet or Samuel Beckett, with whom he shares a taste for speaking in spare absolutes that can sound simultaneously profound and absurd. "The world changed on a terrible September morning, and since that day we have changed the world," he said, and, as he enumerated the changes, he kept returning to a refrain: "And America and the world are safer." In Iraq, he said, "I saw a threat." September 11th had taught him not to let a threat materialize. Congress and the U.N. agreed with him that Saddam Hussein had to be brought to heel. "The world spoke," Bush said. Saddam remained defiant. America acted. "Knowing what I know today, I would have made the same decision," he proclaimed, and with that he launched into an attack on Kerry's shifting positions on Iraq.

But perhaps the most fascinating of the recent articles I've read recently is James Fallows excellent Atlantic article comparing the debate styles of both Shrub and Senator Kerry. In it, Fallows takes as a starting point footage of the Bush-Richards 1994 debate for the governorship; and for Kerry, his experience as champion debator during his college years.

This spring I watched dozens of hours' worth of old videos of John Kerry and George W. Bush in action. But it was the hour in which Bush faced Ann Richards that I had to watch several times. The Bush on this tape was almost unrecognizable-and not just because he looked different from the figure we are accustomed to in the White House. He was younger, thinner, with much darker hair and a more eager yet less swaggering carriage than he has now. But the real difference was the way he sounded.

This Bush was eloquent. He spoke quickly and easily. He rattled off complicated sentences and brought them to the right grammatical conclusions. He mishandled a word or two ("million" when he clearly meant "billion"; "stole" when he meant "sold"), but fewer than most people would in an hour's debate. More striking, he did not pause before forcing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent mangled new ones. "To lay out my juvenile-justice plan in a minute and a half is a hard task, but I will try to do so," he said fluidly and with a smile midway through the debate, before beginning to list his principles.

And here - the crux of the article:

Sitting through the videos of Kerry's old debates and interviews produced an effect I hadn't remotely anticipated: I was sorry when they were finished, because it was a treat to see this man perform. With Bush, I developed new respect for the power of his determination to stick to his main point. But this is not something you want to watch. Kerry under pressure was engrossing in a way that reminded me of a climactic courtroom scene in a Scott Turow novel, in which a skillful prosecutor eventually traps an evasive witness. You could see him maneuvering, thinking, adjusting, attacking, applying both knowledge and logic, and generally coming out ahead. John Kerry's formal speeches often seem to illustrate the main complaints about his style: that he is pompous-sounding and stiff. But these debates mainly make you think, This man knows a lot, he is fast, and he has an interesting mind. Kerry was usually effective without being ugly or unfair. Kerry's lightness of touch, compared with Bush's relentless plodding, is a surprise considering what we all know about their backgrounds: Bush never thought of becoming President until a few years before he did; Kerry thought of it in prep school.

The contrast in speaking styles is complete on nearly every axis, and it illustrates the larger contrasts of character and background that these men bring to this race. Bush is best when prepared and worst when surprised; Kerry is best when forced to react and worst when given too much time. Bush is best when insisting on his two or three main points, Kerry when recognizing the nuances of any particular issue. Two different concepts of leadership, in addition to two political views, are at stake in the campaign-and the clash of personalities will be more interesting than the differences over policy in the debates.

Kerry's got his work cut out for him...

posted by claudine |Added at 11:39 AM| | politics, speaking styles