Don't Talk Like a Twit

By Jonathan Rowe, YES! Magazine. Posted December 12, 2003.

I was hitchhiking around England in the spring of 1983. It happened to be the middle of an election campaign: Margaret Thatcher was running for re-election against a professor named Michael Foot, who represented what was called, with wonderful British aplomb, Labour's "Radical Tendency."

Polls find that voters support progressive issues. So why have Americans been voting for such conservative candidates? Because conservatives are speaking their language

Somewhere north of London I got a ride from a lorry driver. The man looked as though he had stepped out of a Labour Party poster from the 1930s: gaunt frame, missing teeth, and wool snap-brim cap pulled down to the eyes. I expected a Labour speech, but got something different.

Yes, Foot was for policies that would benefit workers: progressive taxes, social safety net, all that. Thatcher, the hardest of Tories, was against all these things. But Foot was also for unilateral nuclear disarmament, and this, plus his general demeanor, sent off an aroma that this driver could not abide. "What a twit he is," he said, in an inflection I cannot begin to duplicate, especially in print. "Ya goot ta be toooof."

You got to be tough. It's a rough world out there, and this Foot was a wimp.

I have thought of that conversation often over the years, as I have watched Democrats and progressives flounder in the face of a Republican assault. I think of it in particular when I hear them talk. The president's tax cut package was "risky" and "ill-advised." Risky? Since when are we Americans afraid of risk? Ill-advised? That's the way lawyers talk, and we know how people feel about them.

Recently, President Bush, in a typical display of armchair bravado, declared of the guerilla fighters in Iraq, "Bring 'em on." Here's a man who avoided service in Vietnam, talking tough and leaving it to others to walk his talk. But how did the Democrats respond? The President showed "tremendous insensitivity," said Howard Dean. John Kerry called for more "thoughtfulness and statesmanship."

Worthy sentiments all. But these Democrats were letting Bush have the Clint Eastwood role while they played Marian the Librarian. Listen to Democrats and progressives these days and you often hear a neutered language that is part Ivy League policy salon, part Beltway operative, and part sensitivity training class. A favorite term of disapproval is "inappropriate," which means, essentially, ill mannered. We talk propriety while they talk right and wrong.

Might this have something to do with the fate of our causes politically? Polls say that a lot of Americans agree with the progressive end of the spectrum much of the time. Most are concerned about such things as the natural environment and the commercial assault on their kids. They support public schools, and they think corporations have too much power. A recent poll of attitudes toward U.S. institutions found Americans put big business and HMOs at the bottom of their lists. The opposition to Bush ought to be doing much better than it is. Yes, money is a problem. But just maybe something is getting lost in the translation.

There are two ways to think about political speech -- any speech, in fact. One is self-expression, the other is communication. Self-expression starts with me and what I think. It wants you to hear what I have to say, in just the way I want to say it. Communication, by contrast, starts equally with you. It asks not just what I want to say, but also what you are going to hear.

What we hear probably has less to do with a checklist of issues than with style and character. Voters ask themselves, "Is this person pretty much like me? Do I hear echoes of myself -- my annoyances and irritations, my sense of right and wrong, my concerns about my family and the world?" Ronald Reagan perhaps was not the brightest bulb in some respects. But his sense of audience was exceptional, as was his ability to situate himself in the living room of the mind. Bill Clinton had these qualities too, which is why he infuriated -- and threatened -- the Right so much. He was claiming space they thought was theirs.

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