The Untrained Ear

Peggy Noonan, in a piece about Barack Obama in the April 18 edition of the Wall Street Journal, pinpoints the crucial qualities of a political spouse. It wasn’t the focus of her article, so I wanted to ensure it got noticed with particularity:

[Michelle Obama] has a great deal that would be attractive in a first lady (intelligence, accomplishment, beauty) but lacks placidity, which is, actually, necessary. All first ladies, first spouses, should be like Denis Thatcher, slightly dazed, mildly inscrutable, utterly supportive. It is the only job in the world where “seems slightly drugged” is a positive job qualification. The key is to know you are not the drama, you do not draw the lightning, you are a background player who yet has deep, unseen power. (The “deep, unseen power” part keeps you serene and energized. The constant possibility of quiet revenge keeps one peppy.)

Shelby Steele’s insightful and incisive piece on Barack Obama in the Wall Street Journal as a “bargainer” candidate — a candidate who offers whites racial innocence, and blacks the opportunity to “document the end of inferiority” — bears reading. One of the corollaries to the “bargainer” concept that Steele discusses is the power, and the pitfalls, of being a “blank screen”:

But bargainers have an Achilles heel. They succeed as conduits of white innocence only as long as they are largely invisible as complex human beings. They hope to become icons that can be identified with rather than seen, and their individual complexity gets in the way of this. So bargainers are always laboring to stay invisible. (We don’t know the real politics or convictions of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey, bargainers all.) Mr. Obama has said of himself, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views . . .” And so, human visibility is Mr. Obama’s Achilles heel. If we see the real man, his contradictions and bents of character, he will be ruined as an icon, as a “blank screen.”

It is this last quality — the blank screen — that is a critical factor in the rapid ascendance, and, typically, the subsequent meteoric fall, of many political candidates. I view these types of candidates more as “Rorschach” candidates, because their value is in what they show about the desires and drivers of their supporters, moreso than in what the candidates themselves represent.

Before Barack Obama, for example, there was a non-candidate on the other side: Colin Powell. For those young readers of this blog, Mr. Powell was a prominent military figure in the elder Bush administration, before he became Secretary of State in the younger Bush administration.

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Barack Obama’s March 18 speech on race relations in the United States (note that I deliberately did not characterize it as a “speech explaining his voluntary choice of the Trinity Church, and Jeremiah Wright as the pastor, for himself, his wife and his daughters,” because that wasn’t in fact what the speech was about), should, as some people have recommended, be studied in schools.

But not necessarily as an inspirational text that showcases the history and aspirations of the American people; rather, this speech should be studied for its architecture, not its content.

Politicians — notwithstanding their reputations — do not typically simply blather on without a goal, focus or point (unless they’re simply running out the clock in an interview, for example, to avoid a difficult question). They do not speak just to make people feel good, or just to inspire. Politicians (or, rather, their speech-writers) design speeches, especially lengthy ones, the way biological engineers might design a virus — with a protein coat of vague, ambiguous words pocked with intellectual antigens that will lock on to particular receptors in the desired audience’s mind, allowing the concealed, packaged meanings to be injected into a listener’s subconscious to achieve a desired effect.

Mr. Obama’s speeches are particularly well-crafted; I am starting to view his writers more as speech engineers. The March 18 address is particularly fertile with examples of consciously-crafted persuasion techniques, one of which I’ll discuss briefly here.

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When Hillary Clinton was caught in an obvious and blatant lie, she resorted to a standard politician tactic — “Bait Throwing.”

Let’s look at this elegant example of Bait Throwing (from, of all places, an NPR report):

Clinton told reporters in Pennsylvania on Tuesday that she erred in describing the scene, which she now realizes after talking with aides and others.

“So I made a mistake,” she said. “That happens. It proves I’m human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation.”

Another example appears here (from an interview with KDKA radio):

“The military took great care of us. They were worried about taking a first lady to a war zone and took some extra precautions. Last week for the first time in 12 years or so, I misspoke.”

There are several flavors of Bait in each of these quotes. All are intended to move the listener or reader away from the core issue (that Clinton clearly lied about her experience), mostly by distraction.

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Michelle Malkin has a beautiful compilation that tracks the arc of Hillary Clinton’s fantasy about what her trip to Tuzla (in Bosnia) was like.

As a summary for those who don’t marinate themselves in the daily brew of the ongoing Presidential campaigns:

Mrs. Bill Clinton attempted to bolster her supposed international relations expertise (and an image of courageousness as well) by saying that when she visited Bosnia, the airplane had to do a “corkscrew” landing, and she had to run, with her head down, to waiting armored vehicles, to avoid sniper fire.

Of course, there were a few dozen other people there (not counting the massed military forces providing security for the then-First Lady), many of whom had video cameras, and the actuality of the trip differs wildly from Mrs. Clinton’s Walter-Mitty-like retelling. Her tale never rung true, especially considering 1) the military and Secret Service would never bring a First Lady into a zone with active sniper fire; 2) she had brought Chelsea along (who takes their kid to a war zone?), and oh by the way 3) Sinbad, and Sheryl Crowe, were also along for the trip.

Check out Ms. Malkin’s site for an hilarious group skewering.

And stay tuned for my follow-up on the political speech-writing techniques of the “pivot” and the “bait.”

So here’s Barack Obama’s first major written statement on his relationship with his pastor, Jeremiah Wright — and remember, the issue here is not Jeremiah Wright’s statements themselves (though it is easy to see why people would be outraged by them), but rather Barack Obama’s voluntary 20-year relationship with Wright.

While many others were ooo-ing and ahh-ing about Mr. Obama’s genteel refusal to dip to the level of his critics, I was struck by how very conventional his carefully-parsed statement was. It’s something, in other words, that any run-of-the-mill pol would attempt when backed into a corner. Observe:

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