We use language for some very different tasks. We use it to reason carefully, to weigh evidence, to gain clarity, to pursue truth. And we also use language to obscure, to spin, to manipulate, to deceive. Both sorts of uses are necessary in politics. But it’s helpful to be aware of when we’re doing what.
Politicians are right to aim at inspiring, influencing, and persuading their listeners. And it’s true that those aims can be hindered by too much complexity or nuance, but are often helped by spin, by soundbites, by blustering, or by changing the subject. But that’s not the full story. On the one hand, yes, adding more rational content into a speech can, if done poorly, make the speech more boring, harder to follow, less emotionally resonant, and consequently less likely to change minds or spur actions. But it can instead be done well.
The key is to realize that thinking about the content of a speech is only half of the job. It’s also essential to think through all aspects of how exactly that content will be expressed by a particular speaker in a particular setting at a particular time, and of how it will be received by 329 million different Americans, or at least by a big enough chunk of them. This requires thinking deeply and carefully about matters of framing, phrasing, tone, connotations, associations; about how to push the right emotional buttons while avoiding the wrong ones; about how to appeal to as many moral intuitions as possible while offending as few as possible; about audience attention and distraction and fatigue and defense mechanisms; and much, much more.
Then there’s a crucial final step. Once you’ve done all that wide-ranging intellectual work, and gained substantial insight into all sorts of complexities and nuances—bury it. No one cares about your insights. So go back to the things they do care about. Go back to their actual practical concerns and their actual moral and social feelings. And then very judiciously draw out from your whole analyis the few kernels, or the few signposts, that can actually be conveyed well.
I’ll illustrate this with one point from my imagined State of the Union response. But first, a word about the response’s overall tone and framing. If you are someone who’s especially politically knowledgeable and engaged, you might have watched Trump’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday and seen a speech filled with brazen lies, bad-faith posturing, and empty rhetoric. You might have spotted every false claim, heard every dog whistle, and been stunned by the partisanship and reality TV theatrics that were, while perhaps tame for Trump, absolutely bonkers for a State of the Union Address. In light of all that, and of everything else you know about Trump and his past three years of chaos and sadism, you might favor a response speech full of vitriol, disgust, and wholesale denunciation.
But the problem is that the picture this responds to is not the picture all Americans saw. Plenty of Americans saw a measured and serious speech, filled with uplift and patriotism involving Americans of all backgrounds, and describing lots of real accomplishments from the past and sincere plans for the future. A response speech aimed at them should consider moderating its tone and picking its battles.
One of the battles I chose, though, concerned the State of the Union’s grisly stories of immigrant crime, a perennial Trump favorite. And the way I chose to handle it will illustrate the points above.
I’ve only seen two common responses from Democratic politicians and pundits to Trump’s lurid crime stories. One response is to say nothing. The other response is to generally criticize Trump for demonizing immigrants, for being racist, for being divisive. I think both these responses are inadequate.
There’s also a very different response that I think is likewise inadequate. And that’s to wade into a deep analysis and explanation of what Trump said, and what Trump implied, and what his hearers are likely to think and feel in response, and what the relevant crime stats actually are, and what factors influence crime rates for different demographic groups at different times and places, and what moral principles weigh against judging individuals based on group statistics, and how people differ in their visceral comfort or discomfort with human difference, and how scapegoats and outgroups function psychologically and socially and politically… and much more. It’s an approach that aims at only the very most patient, humble, and curious of listeners. And I wouldn’t expect that to be a large group.
So we need to remember our crucial final step. We need to plow through all that analysis and research and reflection—but then bury it. And leave on the surface only a few signposts, or a folksy gesture, or a moving story. Here’s how I chose to play it:
You looked real good tonight when you talked like you were talking to all Americans. […] Mr. President, keep talking like this. And remember, Mr. President, that people like Mr. McGee and Mr. Ortiz and Ms. Davis, people who might not look like you or talk like you or pray like you—they are every bit as American as you.
In all honesty, you seem to forget that sometimes, Mr. President. In fact, Mr. President, you seemed to forget it in this very speech. Because Mr. President, how can you remember that […] and then tell us your horror stories about people who look that way and speak that way?
How can you do that when the American people know, Mr. President, that what you’re saying can’t be quite right? Maybe they can’t all explain exactly what’s getting left out where it should be or put in where it shouldn’t, but they can see something’s off. There’s something there that doesn’t sit right. Something that doesn’t smell right. Something that doesn’t feel right.
That’s because Mr. President, it’s not right. Here’s the truth, Mr. President. There are some bad people in this world, you can’t deny it. And some of em look like you others of em don’t. And any group of people, no matter which way you wanna group em, is going to have bad people in it.
That’s the truth. But it’s a damn lie, Mr. President, when you try to twist that around, and make people angry, and make people afraid, and make people feel like they need to protect themselves from anybody who looks or talks or prays different.
And you know what, Mr. President, it’s a lie that I don’t think can keep working for you for too much longer. Because the American people are smarter than that, and the American people are better than that. And they can see, every last one of em, even the ones that love you the most—they can see what’s in front of their own eyes. They can see the good people they live with and work with and shop with who might dress or talk different but by golly love their families just the same. And love their neighbors just the same. And love this country just the same.
And there’s another thing, Mr. President. Americans know where they came from. We don’t all know as much, and we don’t all talk about it as much, but every one of us knows that we got to this wonderful country of ours, with so much promise, and such precious freedom, from a whole lot of other places that at some time or another had less. From places where people were hurting. Where people were hungry, were poor, were facing violence, were facing desperation. And maybe we don’t all agree on what all that means, and how exactly we oughta run our borders or our asylum system or our immigration system. But we know we’re gonna have to figure it out together, Mr. President. And we know we’re gonna have to find ways to do it that serve our interests and our values at the same time. And we know, Mr. President, that we can’t ever, ever let it get us so mixed up that we start thinking or talking like any American ain’t a real American because he looks different than we do.
First note the way that I sort of ease into the criticism. There are two big reasons for this. One involves the ways we tend to react defensively to criticism or disagreement, involving things like reactance, System 1 vs. System 2, and Jonathan Haidt’s evocative picture of the mind acting like an in-house press secretary. The other big reason involves the ways that small differences in framing and phrasing and delivery can radically change how listeners initially process something, and consequently how they initially feel about it, and consequently what they end up thinking and doing about it. This is apparent in good oratory, in good literature, and maybe most of all in good storytelling or standup comedy.
So here, I try to gradually evoke unease with what Trump is saying, and draw listeners toward a posture of doubt before ever voicing any concrete criticism that they can start reacting against. And in doing so I draw on the fact that our moral instincts and intuitions seem to be built on top of older and simpler ones. And feelings of disgust in particular seem to be bound up with many feelings of distrust or moral disapproval. So I try to stir up visceral feelings of disgust by using terms likely to evoke illness and contamination. There’s something there that doesn’t sit right. Something that doesn’t smell right. Something that doesn’t feel right.
At that point, the stage is set. And you might be tempted to then start explaining that in fact immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the native born, and that anyway it’s always wrong to judge individuals based on the groups they belong to, and maybe also that hey even when there are statistical differences between demographic groups, e.g. in the commission of crimes by different racial or ethnic groups in a particular time and place, that’s still not because of membership in the relevant racial or ethnic group, but rather because of the social and economic forces acting on that group in that time and place.
But this would be a mistake. It’s too complex to move many listeners, and it starts introducing factual claims that are easy targets for doubt and disagreement.
So instead I chose just two pieces of the analysis that I thought could be conveyed effectively. First, there are bad people in any group. Maybe you think there’s no such thing as a truly bad person, and that’s fine, but this isn’t the place to go into it. Instead you want to acknowledge and thereby defuse the facts that Trump started with, namely that yes, there are particular cases in which particular undocumented immigrants have committed horrific crimes.
Second, I gesture toward the fact that such particular cases obviously don’t represent the behavior of all undocumented immigrants, and in fact they don’t support any negative inferences about all undocumented immigrants. But I avoid getting into the weeds on this, and I avoid demanding some perfect progressive ideal of tolerance, and instead content myself with giving a few nudges in the right direction.
There’s lots more that could be unpacked here, but you probably get the idea.
UP NEXT: a speech for Bernie Sanders on democratic socialism!