Oratorical Animal

Rhetorical Violence and Planned Parenthood

I have hesitated thus far to comment directly on the murders in Colorado Springs because we have not had much information. In fact, I found the rush to make political points by those on the right and the left over this past weekend disturbing. But I'm crowding into the fray today at least partly because the debate is addressing an issue that has long troubled rhetoric scholars: Can speech incite violence?

At the extremes, of course, most everyone would acknowledge that when Don Corleone orders a hit, then speech leads to violence. Beyond that, we struggle often with these issues, including a wonderfully disturbing conference on symbolic violence at Texas A & M University a few years ago. As a rhetorician, I tend to focus on the particular and shy from the general. That is, I do not believe that speech always leads to violence or never does so. It's a terrible mistake to say that because all or nothing statements do little to illuminate our muddy communal life. So, how might we think about the particular?

First, I'd urge everyone to ask the right question for the right circumstance. In this case, abortion providers in general and Planned Parenthood in particular have long suffered violent attacks. So, in this case, it's not whether rhetoric has led to violence because the violence predates recent inflammatory statements and controversies (such as the faked videos). Rather, does the rhetoric enable and sustain a continuing campaign of violence against women's health workers?

Second, I'd argue that an answer requires a good deal of evidence and argument, certainly more than we have seen thus far. I say that because a "yes" implies (hell, says) that people ought to stop talking the way that they talk and that requires, to borrow a legal term, strict scrutiny. I'm no fan of social pressure against speech--quite the opposite--but I am a fan of honesty. For liberals to answer this question with a yes means that pro-life folks truly need to moderate their rhetoric and that, in fact, there's a strong case to be made that the common good requires it. To shy away from that conclusion, or to say yes, and then deny the obvious (oh, no, I don't mean THAT) is dishonest.

Third, what might such evidence look like? I think it has to be multivariate, again to borrow a term. We'd have to see violence and symbolic violence in a variety of ways at a variety of levels, always intertwined. Here's my case for that.

On a physical level, there have been 8 murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, 182 arsons, and literally hundreds upon thousands of stalkings, attacks, arrests, and so on and so forth since the late 1970s. On a daily discourse level, that is, in terms of everyday, consistent interaction, we know that harassment, fury, and violent language is unceasing for those who work at women's health centers and abortion providers. On an electoral and legislative level, we know abortion opponents (and, increasingly, birth control opponents) use language that dehumanizes and scapegoats health care providers. In particular, as Ed Kilgore argues in the link, Holocaust and slavery analogies facilitate violence. After all, the GOP candidates recently spent some time trading barbs about whether they would kill baby Hitler. Most, Jeb Bush in this link, would happily do so to prevent all of the deaths. So, it's not hard to follow the chain of logic that leads to the murder of health care providers.

I think, then, there's a considerable level of evidence to suggest that people ought to take some care. Too often, as Kenneth Burke has taught us, we try to take our language to the end of the line, to seek perfection, in the sense that humans wish their reality to match their words. When we call someone Hitler, a Nazi, a murdering whore, then this perfection principle suggests rather strongly the next action in the sequence. As conservative Christians understand, no one is perfect; we are all sinners. Such humility should characterize our public debate as well.

 

 

 

Netanyahu's Rerun: Meet the New Speech. Same as the Old Speech.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed Congress today, in the absence of 50 or so Democratic members. They boycotted the speech because it is unprecedented for the House Speaker to invite a foreign leader to the podium to attack an American president. Despite some honeyed words at the start, that's precisely what Netanyahu did. Plus, the address offers yet more troubling evidence that the Republican Party has yet to kick the neocon habit that has brought the US nothing but grief. Space precludes a full analysis, as does the fact that I have a day job, but let's look at three major rhetorical/ethical problems.

First, Netanyahu consistently and deceitfully moves between questions of fact, value, and policy. In public argument, we distinguish between the kinds of issues we're debating because, otherwise, our arguments fly past one another and solutions don't meet the needs we've identified. Questions of fact deal with reality: Is Elvis dead? Questions of value deal with morals: Is abortion ethical? Questions of policy deal with choices: Should we cut taxes to spur the economy? A serious problem results when speakers jump without distinction between them and it's an ethical problem when they assure audiences that they're addressing one while relying on another.

Netanyahu is nastily slick. Sometimes, he claims as fact that which is not fact; he asserts that anyone can Google what's in an agreement that has yet to be made. On one level, everyone knows the details of a secret negotiation are not likely to be public and, if they are, they're likely to be biased leaks and wrong. On a second level, we know he knows that, so he's falsely implying special knowledge of the negotiations (from briefings) and assuring us of an authority he does not in fact possess. He's lying.

More often, he poses a question of policy--Is this a good deal?--and answers it as a question of value--Iran is evil, so all deals with it are bad deals. This is dishonest on both an ethical and a practical level. Ethically, Netanyahu consistently lies to the audience about the nature of his claim--he's the hard headed realist making a practical judgment. He's not. He argues that Iran is so evil that any agreement would be bad. That is a values, not a policy argument. He tries to make it one with the implied link that one cannot make a policy agreement with irrational actors; they will not or cannot keep it. But, in doing so, he presents as a consensus the judgment that Iran is irrational when that is simply not the belief of most Israeli and American experts. They think Iran will abide by agreements. Jonathan Chait notes, "That’s why the Bush administration’s 2007 National Intelligence Estimate said Iran is “guided by a cost-benefit approach.” It’s why Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in 2012 that “we are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor.” It’s why Benny Gantz, then head of the Israel Defense Forces, declared the same year that “the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people.” It’s why Meir Dagan, the longtime head of Israel’s intelligence agency, called the Iranian regime “rational” in an interview with 60 Minutes. And it’s why Ron Burgess, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress that “the agency assesses Iran is unlikely to initiate or provoke a conflict.”  Netanyahu wishes to transform a question of policy--How can we best forestall an Iranian nuclear weapon?--into a question of value--How can we best signal our moral repugnance at the Iranian regime?

Second, that leads to a serious plan meet need problem. We assume the plans offered in speeches meet the need identified. President Obama thinks a negotiated agreement, if we can get one, is the best way to forestall an Iranian nuke. Netanyahu thinks....what? Moral disapproval? A "better deal"? He pulls a trick popular among politicians and others forever--he sets conditions he knows the other party will not accept. He then points the finger and claims the failure is their fault. That's all well and good, but, to coin a phrase, failure is not an option. The status quo will result in an Iranian bomb, a fact that is distinctly absent from Netanyahu's speech. So, if Netanyahu believes that the Iranians are so evil (more evil than the Soviets?) that no agreement is possible, then his alternative is....? It can only be war. And even a military strike, by all estimates, will set back the Iranian bomb for less time than what's rumored to be a ten year deal. This is a strategically and ethically bankrupt speech.

That makes it quite attractive to contemporary American neoconservatives. Matt Yglesias best characterized neocons with his "Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics." The Green Lantern corps is a fictional intergalactic peacekeeping force in DC comics. Each member gets a green power ring that can, basically, do anything. It is limited only by the willpower and imagination of the wearer. Yglesias writes,

"A lot of people seem to think that American military might is like one of these power rings. They seem to think that, roughly speaking, we can accomplish absolutely anything in the world through the application of sufficient military force. The only thing limiting us is a lack of willpower. What's more, this theory can't be empirically demonstrated to be wrong. Things that you or I might take as demonstrating the limited utility of military power to accomplish certain kinds of things are, instead, taken as evidence of lack of will. Thus we see that problems in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't reasons to avoid new military ventures, but reasons why we must embark upon them."

The Republican/Netanyahu solution is clear. Contrary to everything the military has said, we can simply destroy Iran's nuclear infrastructure and we can do it with no consequences. All we need is the willpower. Just like Iraq the first time. And the second time. Now the third time.

This is based, as Netanyahu's speech implies, but does not argue, on an analogy to 1938. If only the democracies had stood up to Hitler at Munich, then all would have been well. They simply lacked any Churchillian backbone. They appeased.

Really? Well, how would that have worked? Would Hitler have backed down, as he did in the face of war on September 1, 1939 (sarcasm)? Were the Allies ready for war in 38? Would they have done any better than they did in 39 and 40? If Hitler had "backed down," would he have stayed in power? How would that have worked? Needless to say, the limits of historical analogy never occur to these people.

For the neocon, it's always 1938 in Munich and s/he is always Churchill. Although the right always accuses the left of identity politics, this is their form of it. By being "tough and clear," with no "moral ambiguity," you show what kind of a man you are. You are, in fact, quite manly and those others--those women, those diplomats, that president--is not. Identity, willpower, a Green Ring, that's the key to success, according to this speech. It's not. As is always true, as Reinhold Niebuhr should have taught these people, success results from difficult, annoying, endless work. From moral compromises that are unsatisfactory but better than the alternatives. It's called life.

 

Brian Williams, NBC, and Moral Panic

I'm at something of a loss to understand the furor over Brian Williams and his serial exaggerations. But I think the concept of a moral panic helps to explain it. A moral panic occurs when gatekeepers seize upon an incident, person, or group of people to portray it or them as a serious threat to the social order. Usually, the accusation is an exaggeration, meant to enforce the power of the gatekeepers, to police important boundaries, or to distract attention from worse offenses. So, let's think about what Williams did, how NBC reacted in practical and moral terms, and why it makes sense to see this as a moral panic.

My reading of too many articles (and I could still be wrong) is this: On a reporting trip to Iraq, Williams flew in a helicopter convoy. It may or may not have come under small arms fire. A convoy ahead of them did come under small arms and rocket propelled grenade fire. Williams may or may not have heard that over a headset and, given the seating arrangements and the bad view, could have thought it was his convoy. Nonetheless, he clearly knew, at minimum, that he had not come under RPG fire. Initially, he told the story with some accuracy at the various speeches he gave but over the years it gradually evolved into a narrative that put him at the center of the action--the brave newsman, in khakis (of course) risking his life in the company of American heroes. Similarly, he may have exaggerated the conditions he saw in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, although this has not drawn quite as much press.

I'd argue this was a minor sin, at worst. Williams exaggerated in order to make himself look better, more dangerous, a real newsman out in the field. Since no anchor ever really does that ever in their lives any more, they perform instead a simulacrum of fieldwork as anchors. They don the right clothes--that's very important to this performance--and head out onto the beach in a hurricane, Times Square in a blizzard, a helicopter in a war, a ship out on the Gulf in a well leak. They are always surrounded, coached, produced, coddled and safe and deep down, I suspect they hate that. So, they tell some tall tales, much like the ones I tell of my speech team experiences. I suspect the lunch meat really wasn't (always) moldy, the hotels (except for Tomah and Baltimore) weren't quite that bad, nor was the coach completely insane. This was a version of the "walked to school in a blizzard ten miles uphill both ways when I was a kid" lie and "why do YOU get a snow day?"

Think about what he did NOT do. He did not commit a major personal transgression--he did not commit adultery, serial rapes facilitated by drugs, a DUI, crash a car that kills someone, etc.. He did not plagiarize a news story, lie about a source, commit a Judith Miller, pay for a story, pay a source--in fact, there's no evidence he ever got a story wrong. As a matter of fact, he and Anderson Cooper probably did the most to stoke outrage about Katrina and create a correct consensus that Bush screwed up and people needed help.

Should NBC have suspended a #1 anchor and a rare bright spot at a besieged network? Because, honestly, it's Lorne Michaels, Jimmy Fallon, and Brian Williams. That's about it at NBC. Now, you can cut Williams. Should they have done it? No.

Practically speaking, we know the playbook for these transgressions and many considerably worse. The gatekeepers rage. You lower your head, bite your lower lip, and say (Southern accents? Use 'em if you got 'em), "I deeply regret the damage I've done to my friends and family. All I can do now is to work harder for them and for the American people every day. Every. Single. Day." When the gatekeepers rage again, and say you have no credibility, you just keep saying that and doing your job. Because most people simply don't care about this stuff. And Bill Clinton knew that. Show regret. Move on. Ignore the pontificators. That's the playbook.

In a larger moral context, let's think about NBC. Since Tom Brokaw created the Greatest Generation, it has been the most consistent and powerful advocate of the military in the media landscape. It has made veterans stories its own; it pulls Brokaw out of mothballs at every opportunity; it constantly passes along inside info from the Pentagon; its reporters and anchors wore flag lapel pins in during the Iraq War; John McCain is basically a co-host of Meet the Press. It never, not once, reflected upon its coverage of the leadup to the Iraq war nor its gullibility in its acceptance of Bush Administration lies. Unlike the NYT and other outlets, for instance, it never investigated its reporting. The contrast to the present situation is stark. In search of ratings, it put David Gregory in charge of Meet the Press. This is not an institution known for its ethics. Brian Williams has been the least of their troubles over the past twenty years.

And that's why they fell into moral panic. I think the concept explains two aspects of this. When your credibility, like NBC's, truly should have gone away due to your sins (the Iraq War), I think you find yourself deeply sensitive to smaller infractions. In the classic, stereotypical example, if the guy replaces the toilet paper roll every single time it needs it, he's likely committed adultery.

Second, and more important, the media landscape has flattened. People like me can pontificate. The only thing that protects the big money in national news is the appearance of gravitas. Let's face it, all kinds of geeky folks on the interwebs and elsewhere are way smarter than the mainstream media and likely able to outthink and outreport them. The only thing the big boys have going for them is an exaggerated sense of self, a cultural sense of weight, of matter, of tradition, of being the place to go, so that old folks like me will keep watching the evening news. Absent that, if they have to compete on even terms, if Andrea Mitchell really has to match her "wits" against Thomas Ricks or Jonathan Chait, it's over. It's not about substance; it's about the appearance of substance, the illusion of weight. That's why the appearance of impropriety--a tall tale--is so much worse than an actual impropriety--swallowing lies that make a war. Because appearance is all they have left. And appearance earns them millions and millions of dollars.

The British have the perfect term. A television presenter. Brian Williams is an excellent presenter. He does that job very well and people like him in that role. He should be allowed to keep it.

It's a Bad Start for Bruce Rauner

I'm a liberal and I desperately want Republican Governor Bruce Rauner to succeed. By some estimates, Illinois faces as much as a $9 billion dollar budget deficit for the coming year. For decades, under governors of both parties, the state failed to support its pension funds and it failed to address a structural deficit in its budget. We're a mess. As a result, Illinois voters turned to a billionaire to bail them out and, like most people, I hoped we were getting a practical, capable executive. We have not yet seen that man. His mistakes have been legion. This AP story supports many of the claims I make below.

First, he signed a series of executive orders that no one quite understands. They were designed to freeze spending and address alleged corruption, yet they were so badly drafted, no one quite knows what they mean or what sorts of acts will violate them. Now, Rauner is no lawyer, but he did hire the people who drafted these orders which leads to...

Second, Rauner has spent much of the transition and his early days as governor misleadingly and hypocritically attacking those he is supposed to lead. He's argued repeatedly that state employees are paid too much, using a Pew study that failed to correct for comparable education and skill levels. A 2013 UI study did and found that public employees in Illinois could expect to be paid 13.5% less than similar folks in the private sector. Now, that includes local employees, but nonetheless, it casts serious doubt on Rauner's claim. Moreover, he's paying his office staff 36% more than his predecessor. He's justified that by saying, get this, that they're taking significant cuts to leave the private sector and thus he has to pay them something like what they're worth. Yes, Governor, that's right, public employees make LESS, contrary to what you've been saying. And how good are these people if they can't catch THIS gaffe or draft a clear executive order?

Third, he's spent the last few weeks blaming everything but the pension problems for the deficit. There are issues. But, he's not quite telling the truth. There is a rise in Medicaid recipients, but the feds are covering nearly all of that. He decries the business environment and argues for right to work laws, but Moody's Analytics notes that "Illinois' business climate outshines its regional rivals," and that business costs "are now lower than those in Wisconsin and Ohio but higher than those in neighboring Missouri and Indiana." The latter is likely true because of "high metropolitan areas [Chicago] with unique features that appeal to business such as California and New York" do. Plus, right to work laws reduce union membership but likely do not contribute to economic growth in the long run due to the "downward pressure on incomes" that results.

Fourth, his animus toward unions is significantly damaging his political credibility. Illinois is a blue state. Both houses of the state legislature have Democratic super-majorities. Not simply majorities--super majorities, enough Ds to pass anything over the Governor's veto. Plus, even Republicans like public unions in Illinois. When the anti-union theme of his recent tour of the state became clear, only 1 Republican lawmaker showed up for his speech in Decatur and none in Champaign. Downstate. That's Republicanland. Those are areas represented by Republican Congressmen. Respect for him is low enough that when he offered his own plan for a long term minimum wage hike during his State of the State address, Democratic legislators openly laughed. And, again, they're a super majority.

Most important, he's simply refused to speak about the elephant in the room--the budget crisis. He's offered no hints, no plans, no trial balloons on his budget, nothing nada, not in his Inaugural nor in his State of the State. It's as if when Ronald Reagan assumed office in 1981, he decided that, rather than persuading people to support his budget plans, he would speak about free trade agreements. Reagan liked free trade and it was part of the conservative agenda, but it was completely beside the point at that point. The crap Rauner is peddling is beside the point and he's wasting precious time and capital doing so.

Bruce Rauner had--still has--two choices. He can be Jim Edgar, a wonderful former Republican Governor who focused like a laser beam on the state's problems and worked with Democrats to solve them. Or, he can be Scott Walker. Yeech. So far, he's chosen the latter. I hope he changes his mind.

 

Ferguson and the Founders

I've been mulling over Danielle Allen's marvelous new book, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality  . It's helped me to think through the reason for my anger over the acts of our justice system and, in turn, one reason why this is so very bad for our nation.

The Declaration declares that "all men are created equal." Since the moment Congress approved the draft, Americans have debated precisely what they--we--meant--mean--by that phrase. Was it only men? White men? All men? Men and women? Did God create? An accident of evolution? Aliens? And what do we mean by equality? Was--Is--it a right or, as Lincoln would have us take it, a proposition, one that needed to be tested not only by a great civil war, but also by the challenges posed to each generation as each makes and maintains a government of the people, by the people, for the people?

As you can tell, I'm inclined toward Lincoln--I live in Illinois, after all--and he not only defined the phrase as a proposition, but he also gave it a particular kind of meaning in his December 1, 1862 Annual Message. He wrote: "In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve." Both freedom and equality are, he thought, indivisible. To threaten the equality of one is to threaten the equality of all. Reciprocity underlined and gave force to our most fundamental national values.

Yet there is more to this, as the founders understood. The Declaration, Allen notes, records the first action taken by the American people as a people: they "petitioned [the King] for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." To be equal demands reciprocity--responsiveness--in relationships.

What did the colonists want? As a free people, they expected their government to respond. Perhaps they might not get all that they wanted, but their status, their dignity, as a free people demanded of their rulers that they respond fairly, openly, clearly. People have a right, the founders felt, to expect their rulers to understand the people's interests. As Allen writes, "If a king doesn't take his subjects interests to heart, he's not really doing his job. Reciprocity--or mutual responsiveness--is at the heart of justice." That is why the founders included the right to petition in the Constitution. They wrote into the heart of our founding dcuments the demand that the government respond to our grievances.

There is more still, I think. For when rulers, friends, husbands, wives, partners reject the rule of reciprocity, they not only damage the relationship, they also perform a kind of erasure. The right to an honest, heartfelt, thoughtful, caring response is fundamental to our identity. When someone denies us (3x before the cock crows), types us, refuses us, s/he erases us. We are not worthy. We are not a free people, are not citizens, are not due even the courtesy of a phone call, of any sort of recognition. We are wiped away.

In that situation, the founders concluded, a free people must make the ruler respond. They must organize, they must dump the tea into the harbor, they must "effect their Safety and Happiness."

Reciprocity is at the heart of justice. "A long train of abuses and usurpations" has created a situation in which some of our fellow citizens can no longer expect justice, recognition, or reciprocity. We owe it to them, to ourselves, to make it right.

 

A Quick Review of the Oval Office Address

After President Obama delivered yet another one of his weird, standing at a podium televised speeches last night, several people were wondering whatever happened to the classic Oval Office Address, that monument to our rhetorical youth. So far as I can tell, the story goes something like this.

The advent of television roughly coincided with that of the Cold War and presidents took full advantage of that fact. When they needed to speak to the nation on important matters, they generally sat at a desk in the Oval Office, sometimes with a desk podium and sometimes not. Most often, there was some sort of backdrop--a curtain or whatever--with flags on either side. Reagan skipped the backdrop and showed us the lovely view out the back. Most of us remember his speeches as the norm.

That style reflected the Cold War. It was a bipolar world and the president led freedom's forces from his command center, the White House, and when he spoke to the American people, it was from that platform. We could rest assured that the leader of the free world was doing his job from where he was supposed to be.

But as the world fragmented, so, too, did presidential public address. The end of the Cold War meant that the president had to attend to multiple problems and peoples and, to show his management of those issues, he often traveled to those places or spoke from scenes designed to reflect our concerns. Of course, this happened during the Cold War--the Berlin Wall was a favorite backdrop for Cold War presidents--but that change accelerated at the Cold War's close.

In addition, Ronald Reagan had trained in movies, hosted television shows, and regarded the camera as his best friend. If you haven't tried it, giving a speech straight into the unblinking eye is hard. Reagan learned to do it better than anyone. As a result, I suspect, subsequent presidents did not want that comparison.

H.W. Bush soldiered manfully on, as he did with nearly everything in his life, but the baby boomers put an end to the Oval Office address. Clinton sometimes used it, esp. for foreign policy statements, such as his speech announcing the Bosnian peace accord, but more often found other venues. In fact, he loved the State of the Union and tended to reserve major policy statements for that venue. W., too, hated the Oval Office speech. Both, I think, needed people--needed audience reaction, needed to be able to connect to the people in order to deliver a speech effectively. Obama has followed in their footsteps. I also suspect that the Obama administration finds something irretrievably old-fashioned about the sit at the desk speech in an Internet age.

I think it's a mistake. Many people still--and always will--question Obama's legitimacy as the president of the United States. When he can, he should invoke the iconography of the office in support of his credibility. Particularly when he suffers from low approval ratings, the visual reminders of his office's authority would enhance his standing with the American people. But for whatever reason, he seems remarkably reluctant to do so. And thus you get these ridiculous speeches, when it seems as if he's standing at a podium in his living room delivering a speech to no one. In case the White House staff hasn't figured it out yet, let me clue them in: It looks stupid.

 

 

Obama, Ferguson, and Rhetorical Opportunity

A recent article at vox noted that the "White House" claims Obama can't give a "big speech" on Ferguson because President Obama, unlike the candidate, cannot "bridge divides," might "infuriate conservatives," and make hard problems "impossible." Lord, these people are stupid.

1) Presidential rhetoric does not have as its ONLY goal conciliation. Sometimes, believe it or not, presidents say--gasp!--mean things;

2) Conservatives are infuriated when this president speaks, and when he's silent, and when he stands tall, and when he's small, and when he eats green eggs and ham, and when he sees a grand slam. Get the picture, nincompoops?! By trembling at the thought of conservative anger, you cede control of the president's rhetoric to conservatives, you dipsh%$#;

3) Where are these solvable problems? On what do you think the House will move? Immigration? And, by the by, look around. Some conservatives are with you on the militarization of police;

4) Candidate Obama didn't bridge squat. He persuaded people to vote for him, as he did in 2012, by recognizing problems affecting people, articulating positions that a majority thought likely would solve those problems, and proving considerably more attractive than the alternative. And candidate Obama wasn't afraid to attack the alternative, either. Sometimes, presidents peel the paint off of the national house--have you read TR or FDR? Heard of Truman?

5) Sometimes, rhetoric takes time and effort. You should know that one speech seldom resolves all problems, or did you believe your own propaganda about the race speech? Seriously, you need to develop ideas and stick to them.

This president is likely to go down in rhetorical history as an eloquent man who completely lacked a sense of timing--what the Greeks termed kairos. The second he took office, he lost all ability to seize an opportunity. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but these people piss me off.

The State of the Union

"Republicanism," the political theorist Isaac Kramnick has written, "is historically an ideology of leisure." Its idea of citizenship privileges those who do not have to work, who can think deep thoughts about the virtues of communal life (with people like them), about the demands of citizenship (on people like them), and about the nobility of political action (for people like them). Slaves and women, as Aristotle noted, filled the gap. They worked, so civic republicans could think. And orate.

"Liberalism," Kramnick continued, "at its origin, is an ideology of work. It attributes virtue to people who are industrioyus and diligent and condemns as corrupt privileged aristocrats and leisured gentlefolk. The essence of humanity is the obligation to work." So it is for Barack Obama--and for Bill Clinton. As I noted on Twitter last night, Obama's 2014 SOU bears a distinct resemblance to Clinton's 1996 address and reflects, surely, something of an ideological consensus in the Democratic Party, one that the 4 different Republican respondents could not possibly project.

That consensus revolves around the value of work. Each individual possesses both the opportunity and the responsibility to work; the govwernment, in turn, will provide the conditions in which people can develop themselves to their highest capacity. And so, each of the president's policy proposals denigrated those of leisire--cut tax breaks for businesses that go abroad, end privileges for those living on capital, for those who do not work--and open opportunity for those who do. Infrastructure development, so people can go to work. Good health care, so people can go to work. Michelle Obama's exercise, so you won't get fat, and you can work hard. Technology hubs, to educate people, so they can go to work. At each stage, each and every American possesses the obligation to work, to develop their capacities to be, in the words of the old Army slogan, all that they can be.

Thus, we come to Cory Remsburg. It's not simply that the sergreant embodied patriotic values; it is also that he continues to develop himself, to create himself, to author himself, as Benjamin Franklin occasionally put it, under the worst of circumstances. As the ideal American, he represents our capacity for work.

The liberal emphasis on work, of course, cuts in a couple of ways. Quite often, it's been used as a powerfully progressive tool, in the hands of the Progressives and the Populists. They developed a producer orientation, arguing that the farmers, the laborers, the working people, produced and built this country and deserved a New Deal far more than the moneychangers who stained the temple of democracy.

Yet at other times, conservatives have turned the emphasis on work against the poor, pointing to "welfare queens," to them, to those people who get government benefits, who fail to work or who must be made to work.

As a conceptual resource, "work" can be turned to a variety of uses. Its traditional, liberal cut against the feckless wealthy and for those who "work hard and take responsibility," was most evident last night. For Democrats, I suspect it may continue to be a powerful rhetorical resource.  

Liberal Eye on the Republican Guy

Nearly everybody in the nation has weighed in on the Republican makeover; I think Heidi Klum featured it on "America's Top Model." To this point, I've been dissatisfied with the results. Most have either asked the Republicans to change too much or too little. Here's my two cents' worth. To be clear, this is a cynical, repugnant approach. That's why I think it will work for Republicans.

1) Cut deals on immigration and the deficit: These issues are losers for the Republican Party. They've been beaten time and again on them and, every time they come up, they remind everyone that the Republican establishment supports a government of rich white folks, by rich white folks, and for rich white folks. Obama is dying to make a deal and cement his legacy. Take the deals, declare victory ("With this agreement, we've finally forced the president to make the serious cuts, yada, yada") and get these issues off the table. You can always come back to them and give rich people more tax cuts and pillage programs for the poor when you control the government.

2) Let Obamacare go: Rs risk looking like the insane FB stalker who follows someone years after the breakup. Stop it. Let it go. Beyond that, Governor Rick Scott (Felon, Florida) is starting to figure out ways to take the money, "incentivize private providers," and shower already rich health care execs with said money. Copy him. Twist the implementation rules of Obamacare to exclude the poor and favor the people you love. Turn it to your advantage quietly, behind the scenes.

3) Purge the party of the old folks: Any Bush, Cheney, Boehner, McConnell, McCain, Graham, Hatch and the rest need to go. Perhaps some of them would be nice enough to fall on their swords and accomplish 1 and 2 on their way out the door. Put the new generation in charge and in front of the cameras, a group that doesn't stink of bigotry and losing--Rubio, Ryan, Kasich, Jindahl, McDonnell, Cantor, Martinez, etc. Some will flame out; others will go forth. But every time McCain appears on a Sunday show, a Republican loses another vote.

4) Turn to the governors: A series of controversial R governors have won in the past couple of election cycles. A couple (Maine, SC, Florida) appear to have serious problems or limited national potential. The rest have won with a surprisingly coherent agenda that's barely touched the congressional party. What is it?

    a) Public employee unions are the devil. Break them. "We" work hard and earn little; "they" are lazy and earn too much. They've ruined the education system, the postal system, and the federal government. All of the racial coding that Republicans know and love can be used--has been used--against public employee unions who, happily for such Rs, have a large % of minority employees. Scapegoat them for all of the nation's ills, but in particular for:

    b) Education. Blow it up. For decades, the mainstream media has run down American education and people are primed to hate K-12. So, offer vouchers, destroy the unions, promise to blow up the system and start over.

    c) Drill, baby, drill. Fracking, fracking, fracking. Pipelines. Shale Oil. Texas T. Black gold.

    d) Tax reform: The old arguments for protecting the rich have failed. You need new ones. On the state level, Rs have discovered the joys of investment vs. consumption. Income taxes attack savings and investment. America will be much better off with consumption taxes, that virtuously restrain the poor from buying what they want and reserve funds for the wealthy. It's the same policy result--soak the poor and help the rich--but it's a new language. Consumption=BAD. Investment=GOOD. It would be a brave canddiate who goes all the way and proposes a national consumption (sales) tax and lowers income tax rates to nearly nothing. But it might work.

    e) Embrace pro-life. Run screaming from the guns and the gays: You need to fire up the base and nothing is better than abortion AS LONG AS THERE IS THE EXCEPTION FOR RAPE, INCEST, AND LIFE OF THE MOTHER. Don't be idiots. Americans will tolerate, if not endorse, virtually any restriction short of that, so don't be stupid. Meanwhile, gays and guns are bad, bad, bad. On both issues, the R base vociferously supports one position, and the majority (vast majority in some cases) supports another. That's simply awful for you. Practice glittering generalities. Lots of nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. NO VERBS. Twenty years from now, I expect traditional conservatives will find a lovely issue in the high gay divorce rate ("Don't gays and lesbians understand family values?"). Until then, lay low.

5) Understand swing states: Rs have a narrow electoral window now. One or both 2016 nominees should be from Ohio and Florida. That's the route to victory. No more Utah, or Massachusetts or Arizona or even other southern states that are gimmes. Kasich-Rubio 2016 probably wins you the White House. If Kasich wins reelection. Which is looking better and better.

6) Kick out the neocons and bring America home: None of the Republican leaders have any understanding of foreign policy anyway. So, go simple. No more war. Strong defense, but no use of force. Let those "other" nations do their job for a change. We've got work to do here at home. The mainstream media will wring their hands and whine about isolationism. The rest of the coutnry will love you for it.

That's it. Evil, nasty and likely to be successful. Horrible for the country. A perfect path to second class status in the world. But, hey, Rs don't have a problem with that as long as they win.

 

Quick Thoughts on Barack Obama's Second Inaugural

Here's one rhetorical critic's reaction to Obama's Second Inaugural. In general, I find myself noting his consistent rhetorical habits.

1) President Obama loves to root his political philosophy and policies in history. The speech begins with the Founders, works its way through those moments in our past in which we made our truths self-evident, and concludes with the future. This habit constitutes the president as a conservative; his presidency has evolved out of the past and he seeks incremental, not revolutionary, change.

2) He frames that history as a journey. This matters for two reasons. First, it emphasizes our agency. History can happen to people; we choose to take a journey. Equally important, we make choices along the way to do this and not that; to go here, and not there. Thus, the journey led through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall. Second, it emphasizes the filiopiety so prominent in Obama's discourse. Each generation has a task (aka Moses and Joshua in earlier speeches). We must respect where those before us have gone, take up the journey ourselves, and pass the joys and burdens on to those who follow. The Exodus metaphor underwrites this notion.

3) In turn, the speech is a web of allusions to those who have made these journeys. Obama has a carefully selected repertoire of influential figures and documents: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.. In that way, Obama lays claim to a swath of American history and, indeed, to a powerful interpretation of that history--the Whig narrative of progress and inclusion.

4) The language of the speech is generally good with two exceptions. First, there are too many be verbs and dependent clauses. Second, there are two incredibly clunky paragraphs stuffed into the middle. The climate change and enduring security paragraphs are badly written and too detailed. They should have been excised and the ideas distilled into single sentences expanding the "Our journey is not complete..." section. Indeed, that section deserved more emphasis, both because of its centrality to Obama's lexicon and because it could have done what JFK's pledge section did so well--brought the people into governance not only as witnesses (see the first line) but as participants.

5) It reads a bit better than it sounds.

Anyway, some opening thoughts. Love to hear what others think.