Saying the unsayable has become the norm, but when public language breaks down, argues former BBC director general Mark Thompson, politics falls apart
What happens when political language fails? When the rage and incomprehension boil over, and we run out of a common vocabulary and sufficient trust in each others words to be able to sit down and work through what unites and divides us? Dont expect much comfort from history. From the fall of Athens to the rise of totalitarianism, observers from Thucydides to George Orwell have associated a breakdown in public language or rhetoric, to give it a more traditional name with the failure of democracy, loss of freedom, civil strife and, ultimately, tyranny and murder.
We are children of the Enlightenment, brought up to believe that we must always dig below the surface to get at the truth, and that nothing could be more of the surface than rhetoric, that slap of paint politicians use to cover who knows what. No wonder we usually want to work back from deficiencies in the way we hear political ideas expressed to what we take to be more fundamental causes ideology, group values and affinities, the major economic and social challenges of the day. But there have been periods, in both ancient and modern history, when observers have come to believe that the causality can flow in the opposite direction, and that it is when public language fails that politics as whole starts to fall apart.
So lets talk about 2016. In Britain, the ugly shambles that passed for a once-and-for-all national debate about our place in Europe. In the US, an official candidate for the presidency seemingly capable of any exaggeration or untruth including wondering aloud if the USs gun owners couldnt do something to stop Hillary Clinton but still retaining the support of tens of millions of voters. In continental Europe, the extremists gaining ground in many countries, the ultra-rightist Norbert Hofer within millimetres of the Austrian presidency, Marine Le Pen polling well in the run-up to next years French presidential race. And almost everywhere whether in the debating chamber, on prime time TV or the smartphone in your pocket a sense of a public discourse that is losing its power to explain and reconcile, or indeed to express anything beyond hatred and division.
These trends have many social, economic and political causes, but public language the language we use when we discuss politics or policy, or make our case in court, or try to persuade anyone of anything else in a public context seems to me to be at the heart of the matter. Indeed, I believe we are living through what amounts to a crisis in public language.
The crisis is playing out in many ways, but perhaps the most important is the failure of conventional political rhetoric in almost every western country. The gap between the claims and promises of political leaders and the facts on the ground about inequality, globalisation and the crash of 2008, about immigration, about the wests unhappy wars in the Middle East, and much else besides became insupportably wide. As opinion polls in the US, UK, France and elsewhere demonstrate, many voters have simply stopped believing a word of it.
But the death of a political rhetoric is not like a royal succession, with the crown passing smoothly from one monarch to the next. Were living in a disputed interregnum, with many politicians refusing to accept that the old queen is dead and strange pretenders popping up everywhere anti-politicians such as Beppe Grillo and Donald Trump, mavericks from within existing political structures such as Ted Cruz and Boris Johnson each with their own rhetorical recipe for fame and glory.
Of course, the pretenders would deny that they were in the rhetoric business at all. If they mention the word, it is only in the context of the detested public language of the establishment. If theres one thing I cant abide its rhetoric, that Trump-before-the-fact Silvio Berlusconi once remarked. Im only interested in what needs to get done. Trumps own appeal depends more than anything on the belief that he is a truth-teller untainted by the lying ways of conventional politicians: early in the primary campaign, one representative Fox News poll found that 44% of a sample of US voters, and 62% of Republicans, agreed with the statement: He tells it like it is, and we need that now in a president.
But lets not make the mistake of confusing anti-rhetorical truth-telling with actually telling the truth. One of the advantages of noisily rejecting any notion of rhetoric is that, once listeners are convinced youre not trying to deceive them in the manner of regular politicians, they may switch off the critical faculties they usually apply to political speech and forgive you any amount of exaggeration, contradiction or offensiveness. And, if rivals or the establishment media then point this out, your supporters may dismiss it as spin. Here is Florida voter Yolanda Esquivel, quoted by the BBC in November 2015, rejecting criticism of Trump for his outspokenness: Im looking at what candidates can do, not the picky little things they say that people want to make a big deal of.
Michael Goves statement that people in this country have had enough of experts was a more fine-grained attack on the conventional rhetoric of the establishment. At first blush, it sounds like and was immediately and bitterly condemned as an attack on expertise as such. I see it rather as an attack on the sound of modern technocratic government, a claim that the public are sick and tired of we-know-best lectures from economists and others, lectures that are couched in impenetrable jargon and that, despite their weighty tone at the time, frequently turn out to be wrong.
The difficulty that ordinary voters have in making sense of the language of elite policymakers is a real issue. One Ipsos MORI survey identified what the researchers called a presumption of complexity on the part of many respondents, which meant they thought it was hopeless to even try to understand the issue in question. But is Goves proposed solution to the problem to fire the experts en masse? It seems unlikely: in the education department and elsewhere Gove was a notably technocratic minister, steeped in data and expert advice. Is it rather to hang on to the technocrats, but to hide them from public view so that their complicated ideas no longer irritate non-expert listeners? Thats scarcely a recipe for restoring public confidence. Or should we see his statement as a piece of instrumental rhetoric itself, a cynical way of rubbishing the legions of proRemain economists while simultaneously presenting the speaker himself not as a paid-up member of that hated elite, but as one of those simple souls who prefers honest ignorance to the slipperiness and insufferable superiority of the overeducated?
Gove took care throughout the Brexit campaign to speak with more directness and less of qualification than is usual among senior British politicians. Asked on the same occasion whether he would stand to be Tory leader, he just said: Count me out. Its hard to imagine anything clearer or more straightforward a refreshingly candid response from a post-rhetorical politician. Within days, that statement was no longer operative, to use the term coined by Nixons press secretary Ron Ziegler. Clarity and straightforwardness are no guarantee that something is true.
Across the west, anti-politicians from outside the mainstream, and those mainstream politicians who hope to use some of the anti-politicians populist mojo to advance themselves and their causes within conventional political structures, are trying to strike this lets cut through the rhetoric pose. But, whether or not they and their supporters are aware of it, anti-rhetoric is itself a classic move in the rhetorical game indeed, in the right circumstances, it can be the most persuasive move of all. And, like any other form of public language, we can unpack it to find out what makes it tick. Heres Trump addressing a stadium of supporters in Dallas in September last year:
I made a beautiful speech. I thought it was wonderful. Everything was fine. A week and a half later, they attacked me. In other words they went through and then they lied. They made it up. Im talking about illegal immigration We have to stop illegal immigration. We have to do it. [Cheers and applause] We have to do it. Have to do it. [Audience: USA! USA! USA! USA!] And when I hear some of the people that Im running against, including the Democrats, we have to build a wall, folks. We have to build a wall. All you have to do is go to Israel and say, How is your wall working? Walls work.
Those super-short sentences emphasise certainty and determination, but build up layer by layer towards a climax with a kind of emotional logic. Its a style that students of rhetoric call parataxis. This is the way generals and dictators have always spoken to distinguish themselves from the cavilling civilians they mean to sweep aside. Julius Caesars famous summary, not of his invasion of Britain, but of his victory in the Battle of Zela Veni vidi vici, I came, I saw, I conquered is a classical example of parataxis. Today listeners are more likely to associate it with the successful entrepreneur or chief executive.
Trumps style of parataxis is almost infinitely compressible, as his intuitive mastery of the micro-rhetorical world of Twitter shows: Lightweight Marco Rubio was working hard last night. The problem is he is a choker, and once a choker, always a chokker [sic]! Mr Meltdown.
Lightweight, choker, Mr Meltdown this is personal in every sense of the word, and written personally on the spur of the moment or dictated in real time to a thick-fingered aide, if that last miskeyed chokker is anything to go by. But it contains no fewer than three different summaries of the Trump view of Senator Rubio, each of which is immediately and eminently retweetable. Twitter seems to have influenced Trumps set piece oratory as well; often he obsesses over a single word or a phrase, like someone feverishly circling something objectionable in a newspaper. Just a couple of weeks ago, he was accusing Barack Obama of creating Islamic State: Hes the founder of Isis. Hes the founder of Isis. Hes the founder. He founded Isis. I would say that the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.
Does he actually mean it when he says things like this? Nodding to a concept in quantum mechanics, the Urban Dictionary defines a Schrdingers douchebag as someone who makes an unacceptable remark and then waits to see the reaction before declaring retrospectively whether they meant it for real or were just joking. But perhaps in Trumps case the indeterminacy is genuine, and the words just tumble out of his mouth without him even bothering to decide at the time whether they are to be taken at face value or as a sarcastic, fantastic throwaway.
The fluidity, the way the words follow a still-emerging train of thought, adds to the sense of spontaneity and candour. Perhaps because of that (and to the despair of many of those around him), he has so far largely refused to abandon this style of speaking in favour of prepared texts and the Teleprompter. In that Dallas speech, he starts an idea In other words they went through presumably intending to say something like, They went through my speech and twisted what I said and presented it out of context. But this is exactly the kind of whiny complaint which conventional politicians make, so halfway through he drops it in favour of the far punchier and then they lied. Isnt lying what these political and media enemies are all about? Cut to the chase. And when I hear some of the people that Im running against, including the Democrats, sounds as if were about to get a paragraph attacking other would-be Republican nominees, or the Democratic contenders, or both. But Trump doesnt want to waste time pointing out the different ways in which Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are defective candidates. In fact he doesnt sound very interested in other candidates at all. So he simply leaves it out and jumps, mid-sentence, to the main thing on his mind: we have to build a wall, folks.
The immoderation is calculated. Professional politicians have traditionally wanted to be viewed as wise counsellors; mastering the detail and carefully weighing up the options before making a policy proposal; at least seeming to listen to serious objections made to them by opponents. Trump speaks as if the truth and the right policies were blindingly obvious, and the so-called wise counsellors who claim that the world is a complex place, and that policymaking needs to take account of that complexity, are idiots or in somebodys pocket. Saying the unsayable is the clearest possible way of signalling this contrary stance. But for Trump, stamping on political correctness is not just effective positioning. He has found a wanton ecstasy in it, a joyous spasm of indignation in which supporters are only too happy to lose themselves.
The Trump style eschews any kind of rhetorical cleverness. The shocking statements are not couched in witty or allusive language. His campaign slogan Make America Great Again! could hardly be less original or artful. Everything is intended to emphasise the break with the despised language of the men and women of the Washington machine. There is a wall between them and you, Trump seems to say to his audience, but I am on this side of the wall alongside you. They treat you as stupid, but you understand things far better than they do. The guarantee that I see the world as you do is the fact that I speak in your language, not theirs.
The British EU referendum campaign lacked the mad fireworks of the current US presidential cycle, but it too rapidly descended into wild exaggeration and insult, with the public looking on in palpable bewilderment. What we really need is an end to the arms race of ever more lurid claims and counter-claims made by both sides on this, was the weary verdict of Treasury select committee chairman Andrew Tyrie MP in the days before the vote. I think its confusing the public, its impoverishing political debate.
Yet clear rhetorical winners and losers still emerged. The Remain camp never found an emotionally compelling way of expressing the case for continued membership of the EU; there was no idealism nor even at least from the most prominent leaders of the campaign evidence of an iota of enthusiasm to put alongside the 10 plagues of Egypt with which they sought to scare off anyone contemplating departure. The Brexit messaging was both more chaotic and more irresponsible Nigel Farage beaming in front of a poster depicting a sea of refugees worthy of Josef Goebbels himself, promises made during the campaign cheerfully revoked within hours of the votes coming in yet the Leavers also found language with a power and cogency that eluded their adversaries. Take back control. Independence Day. Both these phrases offer the listener agency and at least the prospect of opportunity and hope. Dismissed as absurd, not just by the opposing politicians but by much of Britain, they nonetheless pushed Brexit over the top.
Perhaps you find this kind of phrase-making glib and repellent and are amazed that anyone could be taken in by it. Perhaps you regard the success of Trumps novel style of oratory as nothing more than final confirmation that many Americans have lost their wits. Yet all rhetoric is designed for a particular time and place, and above all for a particular audience it is a supremely tactical, contextual art and these words probably werent intended for you. And you must accept that by the same token the public language that most persuades you, whether its the fierce rhetoric of rights and inclusion or the measured rationality of evidence-based policymaking, and whether delivered with the soaring inspiration of the young Obama, the dogged persistence of a Bernie Sanders or a Jeremy Corbyn, or the authoritative and affectless calm of an Angela Merkel or a Theresa May, can ring every bit as hollow in other ears.
So how did we get here and what, if anything, can we do to begin to put things right? Im sceptical of any theory that is predicated on the wickedness or insanity of any one set of actors in this drama. Its easy to blame politicians and parties with whom you happen to disagree, but this doesnt account for the fact that similar changes are taking place in public discourse in radically different political cultures and across ideological polarities: the mainly leftwing critics of Andrew Lansleys attempt to reform the NHS under a Tory-led coalition in this country used some of the same rhetorical tactics as the conservative opponents of Obamacare in the US. For me, the loading of all blame on to the political other is not a diagnosis but a symptom of the disease. Nor do I believe, as Tony Blair suggested in his 2007 Feral Beast speech, that the principal culprits are the media. That is also too simplistic not that I think that my profession is entirely blameless.
I believe instead that the crisis in our public language springs from a set of interlocking political, cultural and technological forces forces that go beyond any one ideology, or interest group, or national political situation. The first factor is the changing character of western politics, with previous affiliations based on class and other forms of traditional group identity giving way, especially after the end of the cold war, to a more complex and uncertain landscape in which political leaders struggle for definition and differentiation. With policy platforms more arguable and coalitions of interest more transient, its hardly surprising that political rhetoric has become more fissiparous and because, when tribal loyalties recede, the character of individual politicians becomes more salient more personal.
The second factor is that widening gulf between the worldview and language of the experts who make modern policy and those of the public at large. Modern government is inescapably technocratic and precisely because western societies have already made gigantic gains in many areas the trade-offs involved in any new policy proposal are more finely balanced than they used to be: it was far easier to decide in the aftermath of the second world war that London needed a major new airport than it is to decide today whether that airport should have an additional runway. The ranks of economists, statisticians and planners assemble vast quantities of evidence to support the political decision-making process, but neither they nor ministers seem to believe it is feasible, or perhaps even desirable, to try to share much of this with the public. As a result, there are often two quite distinct discourses about a given policy question: a sophisticated, evidence-based conversation between the illuminati who sit behind the closed doors of Whitehall, the European Commission and the IMF; and an instinct-based and often emotional wrangle in the realm of retail politics. One way of thinking about the Brexit debate is as a clash between these two modes of political discourse, with that of the professional policymakers coming off a poor second.
The next factor is digital technology and its impact both on pre-existing media and on the wider dissemination and discussion of political ideas. Over three decades or so, technology has driven an astonishing expansion of media choice and it has democratised the generation and dissemination of political opinion. It has also disrupted legacy business models, squeezed investment in newsrooms and in specialist journalistic expertise, and left most news publishers, whether venerable analogue-era institutions or digital startups, edging towards economic survival mode chasing audiences, optimising headlines, courting shock and controversy. Apart from a handful of players, seriousness, restraint and a sense that journalists have a duty to make major public policy choices intelligible to the public have all been in retreat.
The web and the major social platforms have also allowed anyone who wants to take part in a new 24/7 worldwide discussion of politics, culture and pretty much everything else. Alas, alongside much that is thoughtful and constructive, the new technologies have opened a Pandoras box of (often anonymous) abuse, extremism, intimidation and fury. And the vitriol spills back into conventional media and real-world politics I saw it myself in July at the Republican convention in Cleveland (Lock her up! Lock her up! was the least of it). The internet has set a new dark standard for the expression of strong opinion, which some politicians, activists and commentators are only too happy to meet.
The fourth force at work is related to our understanding of how persuasive language works. Over the course of the 20th century, empirical advances were made in the way words are used to sell to goods and services. They were then systematically applied to political messaging, and the impressionistic rhetoric of promotion increasingly came to replace the rhetoric of traditional step-by-step political argument. The effect has been to give political language some of the brevity, intensity and urgency we associate with the best marketing, but to strip it of explanatory and argumentative power.
What can we do? The forces at work are formidable and tend to reinforce each other. We are adaptable creatures and we know that our life together depends on our being able to resolve our differences at least most of the time, so its reasonable to hope that one day this difficult and disruptive period of political, social and technological transition will yield to a new equilibrium and a recovery of the public language on which the health of our democracies depends. We cant know for sure if or when that will happen, but there are some steps we could take right away.
Politicians could treat the public like grownups and share some of their actual thinking about policy, including those painful trade-offs, with the people they want to vote for them. Reciprocal altruism might even lead them to shout less and allow their opponents to finish the sentence more often so that those same opponents extend the same courtesy to them. The media too could cut fewer corners and take more chances with the journalism that costs more international reporting, investigations but may ultimately make for a better business. Without in any way going soft, it could allow politicians more space to address the public in their own words. As for the public themselves? Lets teach our children rhetoric. Teach them how words and images are used, and abused, to sell packaged goods, political parties and wars, holy or otherwise.
Of course, any programme of reform has to begin with an acknowledgement that there is a problem. If this weird and unsettling year has nothing else to teach us, we can still hope that 2016 will go down as the moment we took that crucial first step.
Mark Thompson is CEO of the New York Times and former director general of the BBC. His book Enough Said is published by Bodley Head.
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