Presidential Rhetoric, Before and After

Why does it matter that presidential and vice-presidential candidates demonstrate a crafted capacity to communicate clearly and convincingly? Because it is via that capacity that the candidates elected to lead our nation the next four years exercise leadership in office. Communication is not merely something effective leaders do; it is the means by which they are leaders. Indeed, it is the coin of their realm.

So it matters whether the candidates “spoke well” in the four debates that began at Old Miss the evening of September 26. That’s what the winning candidate will be doing at the White House – not just in press conferences and public speaking situations but behind the scenes in, e.g., meetings with advisers, and they aren’t likely to improve “on the job.” No “leader” can “lead” anyone anywhere anytime except through the medium of communication, most often oral rather than written. (That’s why I thought eight years ago that the Bush Administration would likely fail, due to the president’s inability to communicate effectively internally and externally, as Oliver Stone reminds us so well in his movie, “W.” On the former, read Bob Woodward’s books on the Iraq War; on the latter, just listen to the President at any press conference, or his last speech to the country.)

In these times, presidents must be able to communicate effectively with the America people and with the world. That means more than living up to the expectations of him or her, the false but common media standard for judging the debates and other forms of presidential rhetoric.

Rather, the respective presidential or vice presidential internal and external communications, whether of a candidate or the elected leader of our land, ought to measure up to the three-fold standards of public address, taught in Western society for more than 2,000 years:

• First: content must be truthful, internally consistent, and structured and worded to enable recipients to understand, if not believe and be moved by, it.
• Second, vocal and physical delivery must be appropriately animated but consistent with content.
• Third: appropriate moral standards must be used to ensure that mere effectiveness does not trump ethicality.

So, in listening to the speeches of the candidates and their remarks during the past election cycle, we ought to have evaluated their utterances with those criteria in mind.

Now that President-elect Barack Obama has become Communicator-in-Chief as well as Commander-in-Chief, we can apply those standards to his presidential rhetoric. If his brilliant Election Night speech to 175,000-plus persons in Grant Park in Chicago is any indication, we have elected an eloquent president, one of only four to occupy the White House since Professor Woodrow Wilson, former Princeton debate coach, won the right to do so in 1912. Can you name those four?

Four things to know about debating

Did you see and listen to the first two of the three scheduled 90-minute presidential debates? I did, as I’ve done for the each of the debates since 1960, but never ever with an audience as huge as the one held at Ole Miss.

There are four things to know about debating:

First, let me warn you away from telling others that the first Presidential Debates were the seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas the fall of 1858. Their famous exchanges were parts of a U.S. senatorial campaign in Illinois. That Lincoln and Douglas ran against each other for President in 1860 contributes to the misunderstanding about their debating that year. Fact: Lincoln and Douglas never debated each other in a presidential campaign. In fact, Lincoln made no speeches during the campaign of 1860, as was the custom, while Douglas campaigned all over the nation, North and South. Only one other prior presidential contest had featured such in-person campaigning.

Second, let me encourage you to tell others that the first radio debate (televised, I think, to a few places) between primary candidates for the presidency took place in 1948. More than 40 million Americans listened in, according to Time magazine. Fact: The first debate between presidential candidates was the primary one aired in 1948.

Third, let me encourage you also to tell others that the famous 1960 debates between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy were, indeed, the first and the first to be televised, debates between the nominees, respectively, of the Republican and Democratic Parties. These debates were also broadcast by radio, as a result of which some now discredited research found that radio listeners reported that an ill and wan Nixon had won, whereas TV viewers found the tanned and handsome Kennedy had won. The perception persists, nevertheless, that the medium is the message, and so the background, [staging, coloring, placement of the media moderator giving each Qs in turn is now a part of the “debate about the debates” that takes place every four years] that is so despite the fact that since 1987 a Commission on Presidential Debates exists to organize the debates. Never mind the fact that the debates are not debates. They are glorified joint press conferences run by a third party. Fact: The first debates between the two major party presidential candidates were the 1960 televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon.

Fourth, let me warn you away from using the media’s criteria for judging the debates. That standard is whether a given candidate lives up to the media’s expectations of him or her, as two front page articles on the September 23 issue of the New York Times make clear. That criterion is a false one for two reasons:
First, it is not based on the threefold standards of public address taught in Western society for more than 2,000 years:
a. Content about economic and national security issues should be internally consistent, structured and worded to enable listeners to understand it at least;
b. Vocal or physical delivery should be animated but consistent with content.
c. Moral standards should be embodied in the content of utterance to ensure that mere effectiveness does not trump ethicality.

The second reason the media’s expectations should not be used to judge a debater’s success is that it permits the least experienced debate to “win” merely by showing up and holding her own with her opponent. That why Gov. Sarah Palin “won” her Oct. VP debate with the much more experienced Senator Joe Biden.
Fact: The media’s expectation criterion is not the one to use to judge the debaters or the outcome of a debate.

Whether you were among the tens of millions who viewed the first two debates, I hope you’ll plan to view – and judge – the final one Oct. 15.

Expectations of Political Leaders

What should we expect of our political leaders? That is, those public officials presently in office or prospectively seeking to be in office? Should we expect them to be mirror images of our own prejudices and positions, for example? Should we expect them to change their positions on important issues? Should we expect them to communicate clearly with us as to whatever their present positions on such issue are? Let’s consider each question in turn.

First, should we expect our political leaders to mirror our own present prejudices and positions, regarding, say, the latest “hot button” issues? Even though we live and vote in a constitutional republic or representative democracy, the answer clearly has to be “No.” Facts and issues change, people mature, even political leaders. What our political leaders owe us, therefore, and what we should expect from them at all times is their best judgment exercised in the affairs of state. That’s what the great 18th century English parliamentarian and rhetorician Edmund Burke said he owed his constituents and all they should expect of him: his best judgment on the matters that came before him. Q: Could any one be elected today on the basis of so singular a commitment?

Second, should we expect public officials to communicate clearly with us as to whatever are their present positions on major matters? Of course, we should, but how can they do so as long as they continue to be punished for being clear on matters controversial? Suppose Senators Barack Obama and/or John McCain believe that a crucial part of any comprehensive American energy plan for the next decade required a doubling of the federal excise tax on gasoline. Dare he say so during the rough and tumble of the coming presidential campaign? I think not.

Third, should we expect public officials to expand their limited political capital only on issues that matter? “Yes” ought to be our answer. After all, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1787: “The basis of our government [is]…the opinion of the people.” But, to make a reality of such an answer we must learn to resist the siren song of politicians’ pandering to our present prejudices; that’s so especially on such emotional issues as fighting the teaching of Darwin’s evolutionary theory of biology – along with, say, Newton’s theory of gravity and Einstein’s theory of relativity – in public schools, insisting on the placement of replicas of one version of Moses’ Ten Commandments in public courthouses, and mandating a return of sectarian prayer to public schools.

Fourth and finally, should we expect public officials ever to change their positions on important issues? Well, of course, we should, for the same reasons the rest of us change ours: We become aware of new information bearing on the subject and/or we ourselves simply mature to a new level of understanding of some complex matter.

Consider these matters:

• Whether or not the United States should set a date for the ultimate withdrawal of the main body of American military forces in Iraq, or
• Whether the U.S. should directly negotiate with anti-American authoritarian states, or
• Whether the Second Amendment confers a collective or individual right to bear arms or
• Whether the revenues of big oil companies here should be taxed at a higher rate.
  

Each of these issues has been the basis of the charge of “flip-flopping” by one candidate or another during the past few weeks of the presidential campaign.

In a speech in July 1846, Daniel Webster, America’s then greatest orator, statesman and senator, said this on the subject: “Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes in circumstances, are often justifiable.” Nineteenth century orator Wendell Phillips agreed: “I will utter what I believe today, [even] if it should contradict all I said yesterday.” Is that what we should expect of our political leaders? To never change one’s opinion is effectively to state that one is never wiser today than yesterday!

Words do matter

I have been a serious student of language since I was a sophomore at Auburn University in 1961. That’s when my English professor and mentor Ruth Faulk introduced me to George Orwell’s famous essay, "Politics and the English Language." Reading that classic analysis of the debauching of the English language was a revelation then – and one that has stayed clear with me for nearly half a century.

Language matters: It’s what makes us human … the link we share with others. It’s the legal tender of communication. Without resort to language, it would be all but impossible to stimulate in others anything like the ideas and feelings we having within ourself – and so impossible to communicate effectively.

Words, in particular, matter. They are the coinage of communication, enabling us to engage in useful exchanges with other human beings.

Some words matter because they label and frame large, important concepts – such words as abortion, freedom, love, patriotism, and war. Other words matter because they are small but have the power as Orwell first showed me, to debauch language itself. Two examples of that have been in the news lately.

The two examples concern two quite evident verbal trends in our time. The first one was the subject an analytical essay in the New York Times by Clyde Haberman. It focuses on the ubiquitous use of the “F” word. He observed:

The reality is that this vulgar word has been tossed about with such abandon in public for so many years that New Yorkers tend to tune it out. Its endless, and mindless, repetition left them numb long ago. By now, the word is no longer shocking, just tedious.

Through frequent use, “a world like this begins to be less of a curse word,” said Ricardo Ortheguy, a sociolinguist at the City University of New York Graduate Center. “The more you use it, the less dirty it is.”

He discussed several possible causes of the phenomenon, which, of course, is hardly limited to the streets and offices of NYC. One is that “boundaries between public space and private are being erased. Cell phones contribute mightily to that, said another sociolinguist, John V. Singler of New York University. ‘The range of places where it’s O.K. to use that word has grown enormously.” Professor Singler said. By now, he said, “the real taboo words – and even those depend on who’s saying them – have to do much more with race.”

You routinely hear Wall Street suits use the word at high decibels in the subway. Police officers bounce it casually among one another, no matter who is around to hear it. Teenagers use it all the time. Some people walk around with the word screaming from their T-shirts – an insight, perhaps, into their capacity for self-degradation."

The second verbal trend was discussed by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough during his commencement speech to graduates of Boston College. He said, in part: “Please, please do what you can to cure the verbal virus that seems increasingly rampant among your generation.” He said he’s particularly troubled by the “relentless, wearisome use of words such as like, awesome and actually.”

“Just imagine if in his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy had said, ‘Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually.’ “ he said.

The AP news story on the speech ended thus: Graduates apparently thought his speech was, like, awesome. They gave him a standing ovation.

DNA, the Movies and Montgomery's Old Empire Theatre

To be aired March 8, 2008 on WTSU-FM, 3 p.m.

Have you ever noticed that most models of DNA consist of intertwined strands of what look like strips of celluloid film? Think about it.

For many years, I've pictured my cells' DNA that way. Moreover, I've conceptualized individual sequences of that DNA as pictures of my earliest days as a fetus in my mother's womb. You see, she and my father met at Montgomery's Empire Theatre in the late '30s, where they both worked. That's the theatre across Montgomery Street from the then-named Paramount, in front of which Mrs. Rosa Parks was arrested in December 1955, by which time my parents had moved on to other jobs. The Empire was torn down many years later to make way for the Rosa Parks Library & Museum of Troy University across from the now-named Davis Theatre. When Mrs. Parks was arrested, a Western movie was playing at the Empire, directed by and starring an Academy Award-winning actor. Tell me his name and the title of his film and I'll send you a prize from my movie library (deadline March 15). You can see both on the marquee in photos taken at the time.

But back to my personal story... After my parents married, I found myself a viable fetus in October of 1941 while my mother was still working at the Empire. That why in lectures about motion pictures I always tell audiences I first went to the movies in utero! That's also why I've long thought that at least a few of my DNA sequences fore-ordained my life-long love affair with the movies, which I've been seeing on the silver screen and now also on video devices for more than six decades. That's probably also why the Empire Theatre is still my favorite of the seven walk-in and three drive-in theatres I frequented growing up in the Capital City. Besides, it was the only one whose screen was wider than the theatre was deep, lending the appearance of wide-screen viewing even before the first CinemaScope feature film unspooled at the Paramount in 1953: the five-times Oscar-nominated religious epic, "The Robe." It was in April 1963 at the Empire that I saw the motion picture that I recently told Al Benn of The Montgomery Advertiser for a pre-Oscar article he was writing was my all-time favorite feature film. The film? "To Kill A Mockingbird," nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning three, including one for my favorite actor, Gregory Peck, with whom I corresponded the last 20 years or so of his life. All of this came back to me yesterday morning at 11 a.m. as my wife Lenore, my sister Glenda Yelverton, Joanne Jacobs, who produces my radio commentary for WTSU-FM, and I stood in front of the Parks Library and Museum for the formal installation of two engraved bricks in its sidewalk entrance, honoring Glenda's and my father and mother, the day before Glenda's birthday. The two bricks read together as follows: "Millie and Jake Vickrey ... met at the Empire Theatre." There wasn't enough room on the bricks even to add the words "here" or "At this place." As long as Mrs. Parks' arrest is memorialized on a nearby historic marker, the Empire connection will be made clear, I hope. Regardless, I know and making it is something I've wanted to do since our mother died 1100 days ago.

Perhaps, you, too, would like to have a brick engraved and embedded in the sidewalk in front of the Parks Library and Museum, say, to honor Mrs. Parks' dear friend, the late Mrs. Johnnie Carr, one of my heroines. If so, call Mrs. Julia Wilson, Troy University Montgomery, at 334-241-9502. A brick near the front door costs $100; one on the corner, $50. Whether your DNA has movie-related sequences ... or whether you have a personal connection with the old Empire Theatre or Mrs. Rosa Parks, I hope you'll visit her Library and Museum, an exhibit in which just won a national award. When you do, look at the bricks you'll have to walk on to get in. Some of them have stories to tell, if you know how to "read" them.