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.

There arose the “Draft Colin Powell” movement, around 1995, because people were dissatisfied with the establishment candidates, and Powell had an aura of gravitas, and had apparently executed his military duties competently and intelligently.

Little was known about his politics. Accordingly, people, knowing little about the man politically but respecting what they had seen personally, assumed that Powell shared their positions. People will often see a few pegs of similarity with another person and hang an entire set of assumptions about that person from them.

This leads to an extremely precarious situation when the candidate starts to gain traction. When so little is known about a candidate’s positions but so much is assumed, one misstep creates a jarring cognitive dissonance in voters’ minds that can create a sense of betrayal and a degree of “blowback” that can be difficult, if not impossible, from which to recover.

Powell’s “candidacy” never really took off, in part because some of his public statements started people questioning whether he really did represent what they hoped he did. In the same way, candidates often test worse against “any [Democrat/Republican]” in polls than they do against any particular, identified candidate of the opposing party — because the identified candidates have flaws of which people are aware, while the undefined candidates are idealized images in the minds of those being polled.

That is why Obama’s “Jeremiah Wright Moment” is particularly hazardous for the candidate, and, in a YouTube age, will be a very extended one. Once someone has added outlines and color to the inkblot that makes it look like a particular picture, it is very difficult to recover the artful ambiguity that allows people to read their subconscious hopes and aspirations into a candidate’s carefully generalized image. When a candidate deliberately avoids defining himself, he risks being defined by those with whom he associates.

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.

In the first quotation, the intent is to distract people from her characterization of her misstatement as a “mistake,” rather than a deliberate falsehood, by throwing out some sympathy Bait: “It proves I’m human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation.” So we’ve transitioned quickly from lie to “mistake” to “I’m human” (subtext: everybody makes mistakes) to “Please feel sorry for me because my enemies are unfairly portraying me as inhuman.” The hope, in other words, is that someone will take the Bait to initiate another, more potentially sympathetic, line of questioning, about Clinton’s unfair, mean critics, rather than Clinton’s own misstatement of reality.

The second statement is an example of Multiple Bait Throwing (perhaps we should simply call it “Chumming”), where the core reframing (”I misspoke” rather than “Okay, I lied and got caught”) follows a rapid sequence of Bait Throwing, which can be characterized as “The military’s great; we were in a war zone (so I really was in danger); and this is the only time I’ve misspoken/lied in twelve years ‘or so’.”

The listener is offered several potential distractions — “Yeah, the military sure is great (and how nice of her to compliment them!).” “Wow, was it really a war zone?” “What kind of precautions did they have to take?” coupled with the crucial distraction of “Oh, come on, this is the first time you’ve misspoken in twelve years?”

When people take that Bait and follow up on that clear over-the-top exaggeration (”I can’t believe she said this is the first time she’s misspoken in twelve years!”), Clinton then gets to laughingly back down and say something on the order of “oh, come on, I was only joking. If you want to be all super-serious about it, fine, sure, I’ve probably misspoken on other occasions, so let’s move on.” So the listener gets to feel good that she’s made some concession — “Victory! She’s admitted an error!” — while being unconsciously moved past the blatant reframing Clinton engaged in — “I misspoke,” instead of “I lied.”

The final move Mrs. Clinton gets to make occurs when someone tries to follow up with her on the original point — her predictable reply will be “Hey, come on, I’ve already addressed that. Let’s not beat a dead horse here, okay? Do you have anything new?”

You’ll see Bait Throwing a lot in political speeches and spin. This is just a neatly-packaged example. But once you become consciously aware of it, it starts really sticking out.

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.”