There she goes again...

Silly me. What I thought a disaster in the recent Democratic debate has become Hillary Clinton's major campaign strategy. She's quoted in the NYT, January 7: "You campaign in poetry but you govern in prose." Senator Clinton and her surrogates have flooded the airways (NPR and MSNBC in my experience) with similar language: talk vs. action, rhetoric vs. reality, and so on. She's crafting a clear choice: eloquence vs. competence.

The poetry/prose distinction dates at least to Governor Mario Cuomo's 1984 Keynote Address to the Democratic National Convention. His second line ran, "Please allow me to skip the stories and the poetry and the temptation to deal in nice but vague rhetoric." Later in the speech, he elaborated, "And in order to succeed, we must answer our opponent's polished and appealing rhetoric with a more telling reasonableness and rationality. We must win this case on the merits. We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship to the reality, the hard substance of things." Sound familiar? Ironically, Cuomo gave one of the most poetic keynotes in the modern era, one dependent on a literary allusion to Charles Dickens and filled with metaphors (I've always loved the extended "wagon train" imagery. Made me feel like Jimmy Stewart had somehow become a Democrat).

Pragmatically, this is a strategy that occasionally works in the primaries but almost never in the general election. In 1984, Walter "Where's the Beef?" Mondale defeated the more eloquent Gary Hart; in 1988, Michael "Massachusetts Miracle" Dukakis defeated the exceptionally eloquent Jesse Jackson. Both went on to devastating defeats in the general election: Mondale lost 49 states and Dukakis lost to the first vice-president to ascend to the presidency since Martin Van Buren. Tick through the modern elections in which a rhetorically skilled candidate who emphasized vision has faced a rhetorically bereft candidate, one who emphasized competence (in some elections, neither candidate was eloquent): Stevenson v. Eisenhower, Kennedy v. Nixon, Reagan v. Carter, Clinton v. H.W. Bush, and Clinton v. Dole. Only Ike won--and Hillary has not defeated Hitler. The distinction is no sure thing in the primaries, either. Think of JFK v. LBJ in 1960, Reagan v. H.W. Bush in 1980, and Clinton v. Tsongas in 1992. One wonders why a Clinton wishes to become a Bush. Maybe Bill has spent too much time at Kennebunkport.

But there's more to it than that. On one level, Senator Clinton does not seem to realize that competence matters only in service to larger goals; Herbert Hoover was, perhaps, the most competent and well-prepared executive to rise to the presidency with William Howard Taft right up there as well. Neither example says much for this theme. The current president has taught us that competence matters, but imagine for a moment a George W. Bush who was more effective in achieving his goals. Things could be worse. Vision does matter. John McCain often speaks  of a "cause higher than yourself." Bill Clinton constantly "put people first." Hillary Clinton does not. On another level, she potentially makes herself the target, both in a general election campaign and in the presidency. If her case for election depends primarily on the personal qualities of competence and experience, then those personal qualities will be the focus of the election. If her success in the presidency rests on the personal qualities of competence and experience, then every defeat or compromise is the result of her personal failures, not the strength of her opponents or the power of entrenched interests or the partisan makeup of Congress or anything else. She's asking for a campaign and a presidency predicated on, for lack of a better phrase, the politics of personal destruction. Certainly, the Republicans will attack any Democrat. But you don't frame a campaign narrative that plays into just such appeals. On yet another level, eloquence matters to a president. It's no guarantee of success, but it's a component, particularly since the advent of the "rhetorical presidency." Even Eisenhower could rise to the occasion. 

Finally, there's a more difficult problem, one that Senator Clinton should understand, but does not and one that's touchy to discuss. One of the great things about rhetoric is this: it's the one resource that's always available to outsiders in American politics. Early woman's suffrage advocates might not have had the vote, but they had Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Southern civil rights advocates might not have had physical force, but they had Martin Luther King, Jr.. Early gay rights advocates might not have had cultural standing, but they had Harvey Milk. Advocates can lack money, organization, respect, and resources, but they can talk. They may have enormous trouble in the contemporary era accessing the public sphere (money does matter), but eloquence often finds a way.

As a result, the comfortable demean rhetorical skill--except when they develop their own champion (i.e., Reagan). Absent that, you get: My goodness, those ladies sure can gab, can't they? Look at how "articulate" he is? Course that doesn't mean he can do anything. Let's make sure someone "solid" is in charge, someone we can trust. America's Last Remaining Timberwolves Fan (ALRTF) once wrote a nice paper detailing just that pattern of media reaction to Jesse Jackson. Even Cuomo's remarks seek to feminize Reagan as rhetoric and masculinize Cuomo as Philosophy ("glitter" vs. "hard substance," the "veranda" vs. the "wagon train," "polished" and "appealing" vs. "rationality"). From this condescending frame, eloquence means that you're not serious. Outsiders often have only eloquence. Ergo, outsiders are not serious.

Barack Obama has money and organization, far more than any real outsider. And Hillary Clinton believes in (I grit my teeth but there's no other word) empowerment. Yet even as we use language, it uses us. Senator Clinton needs to think on that fact. Liberals should greet eloquence with joy, not dismay. After all, the only thing we have to fear from eloquence is fear itself.

Comments

[ALRTF]

If Carter won because he convinced people he could be trusted after Nixon's crimes, then it seems like HRC's competence would be the natural contrast to GWBush and the last 8 years. It's hard to believe that the Democrats could let competence trap them, but you're so right about the rhetoric/substance trope. It's ill-fitting in Obama's case, since his public discourse and his work in politics would seem to display both eloquence and competence. Maybe the reference to "finding my voice in the people" in last night's speech was the moment when she began to talk with more imagination and vision. We shall see.

Before any of the elections are decided, though, we have the 2008 NBA draft. It's the best thing for a wolves fan to focus on this January .... just dreaming of ping pong balls ......