My Take: Hendrik Hertzberg is like an over-sized red-velvet armchair in the corner of The New Yorker’s metaphorical living room. A relic of a past era now slightly out of fashion, but a comfortable favourite for those who’ve grown up with him.

I enjoy Hertzberg because while he is an unreconstructed 60s lefty (and a Jimmy Carter speechwriter at that!) he treats politics seriously without being self-righteous. He’s a rare breed – a long term left-wing commentator that hasn’t turned bitter and contemptuous as the world has changed around him. As a result, Hertzberg can be wry without being sarcastic and can be critical without being shrill. Equally rarely, he’s a political writer who isn’t so arrogant as to assume that he is always in right and that everyone else is motivated by stupidity or ill will. Combine this with the fact that he’s an extremely talented writer and Hertzberg is one of the most reliably enjoyable political columnists in America.

“Politics” is a collection of the best of Hertzberg’s political writing over the past forty years. It’s worth reading just to luxuriate in an extended dose of Hetrzberg’s writing, but the best part of this book are the tit-bits of trivia and minutia political life from eras past. For instance, it pains my soul that I wasn’t able to experience the unintentional comedy of the Dan Quayle era of US Politcs. While the 1988 Vice-Presidential Debate is infamous for Lloyd Bentson’s vicious take down of Quayle, the real highlight of the debate as recounted by Hertzberg was the eventual Vice-President’s total disconnection from reality:

“Tom Brokaw sadistically asked (Quayle) to describe the last time he had visited a poor family and to tell how he had explained to that family his votes against the school breakfast program, the school lunch program and the expansion of the child immunization program. In a quavering voice Quayle said he had too met with ‘those people’ and that ‘they didn’t ask me those questions on those votes, because they were glad that I took time out of my schedule to go down and talk about how we’re going to get a food bank going..”

….

“Asked to name a ‘work of literature or art’ that had impressed him lately, Quayle cited a book… by Richard Nixon…. One CBS guest commentator said that this answer ‘came across as non-prepared’.”

Also amusing was the coverage of the Gary Hart saga capped by this surreal exchange on Newshour highlighted by Hertzberg:

Lehrer: You don’t think it speaks to the question of judgement as to what a person would do as a candidate for president of the United States?

Hart: Jim, if I may call you Jim, let’s reverse the logic. Does it suggest that because Ronald Reagan used poor judgement on Irangate that therefore he’s unfaithful to his wife?

Lehrer: I don’t understand what you mean.

Reading contemporaneously written accounts of past political eras also offers provides the added amusement of allowing judge historical predictions against reality. Given his generally humble approach, Hertzberg comes out of this pretty well, but there are a few clangers. One example that springs readily to mind is an amusingly misguided article pimping Michael Dukakis’s Presidential prospects titled ‘The Tortoise’ and positing that Dukakis’s positive campaigning (“Good jobs at Good wages”) had George Bush on the defensive. The opinion of British journo quoted in the same article summing up Dukakis as ‘a hopeless wanker’ has held up rather better with time.

My Take: Philip Gourevitch’s account of the collective insanity of late 20^th century Rwanda is a moving account.

Not simply because it tells a horrific story mainly from first hand accounts, but moreso because it is told unashamedly from a position of moral clarity. Gourevitch doesn’t equivocate in this book. He tells the stories he’s heard directly and with clear moral verdicts. His writing isn’t annoyingly hectoring or self-righteous, but it clearly places blame where it belongs (ie the Belgians, the French, the Hutus, the UN, the French, the Americans, the UNHCR, the French). No where is this approach more clear than in the title of the book, which comes from a letter written by several local pastors to their regional superior, Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a Seventh-Day Adventist Pastor who was later convicted in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda with aiding their killing the following day.

In many ways Gourevitch’s approach reminded me of Hannah Arendt’s writing on the holocaust in this regard – more interested in humanity, and what the genocide said about it, than in providing an objective political history. He delves into some detail into Rwanda’s history and culture, but more for philosophical reflection on the absurdities of human nature than to factually enlighten the reader. One particularly interesting section of the book in this regard was its discussion on the absurdly vague distinction drawn within the country between Hutus and Tutsis.

The very nature of the distinction between Hutus and Tutsis is difficult to articulate. Ethanographers and historians agree that they cannot properly be called distinct ethnic groups. Similarly, the difference does not quite fit the description of classes, castes or ranks. What can be said is that the perceptions of difference probably sprung from historical occupational distinctions between Tutsi as herdsman and Hutu as cultivators. Allegedly, the increased value of cattle gave the numerically inferior Tutsis some social and political cache that was entrenched by entrenched in the 19th century when the Mwami Kigeri Rwabugiri, a Tutsi, ascended the throne, and expanded the state to around its present borders.

All of the above is difficult to verify as a result of the ambiguities of oral history and the substantial distrust that now overlays the area. However, what can be confidently said is that it was the Belgians that entrenched and perpetuated these distinctions in order to administer their colonial rule. As Gourevitch tellingly recounts:

“Colonisation is violence, and there are many ways to carry out that violence. In addition to military and administrative chiefs and a veritable army of churchmen, the Belgians dispatched scientists to Rwanda. The scientists brought scales and measuring tapes and callipers, and they went about weighing Rwandans, measuring Rwandan cranial capacities, and conducting comparative analyses of the relative protuberance of Rwandan noses. Sure enough, the scientists found what they had believed all along.  Tutsis had a ‘nobler’, more ‘naturally’ aristocratic dimensions than the ‘coarse’ and ‘bestial’ Hutus. On the ‘nasal index’ for instance, the median Tutsi nose was found to be about two and a half millimetres longer and nearly five millimetres narrower than the median Hutu nose.”

….

“In 1933-34, the Belgians conducted a census in order to issue ‘ethnic’ identity cards, which labelled every Rwandan as either Hutu (85%) of Tutsi (14%) or Twa (1%). The identity cards made it virtually impossible for Hutus to become Tutsis, and permitted the Belgians to perfect the administration of an apartheid system rooted in the myth of Tutsi superiority… Whatever Hutu and Tutsi identity may have stood for in the pre-colonial state no longer mattered; the Belgians had made ‘ethnicity’ the defining feature of Rwandan existence.”

Combine this institutionalised societal division with the brutality and repression of the Belgian colonial administration and the die was well and truly set. But again, Gourevitch does not recount this history to offer lessons, but more so to muse on the nature of humanity. It’s an approach that works in literature, if not in conflict studies. No doubt the causes of the genocide were more nuanced and ambiguous than Gourevitch recounts. No doubt it’s also important for subject matter scholars to study and analyse these reasons. But for the broader mass of humanity, the rights and wrongs of genocide are patently clear. Gourevitch’s moral clarity in the face of the victims he has encountered seems appropriate and his reflection on the nature of humanity seems the best thing that anyone from outside of Rwanda can take from the tragedy.

Highlight:

“Like Leontius, the young Athenian in Plato, I presume that you are reading this because you desire a closer look, and that you, too, are properly disturbed by your curiosity. Perhaps, in examining this extremity with me, you hope for some understanding, some insight, some flicker of self-knowledge – a moral, or a lesson, or a clue about how to behave in this world: some such information. I don’t discount the possibility, but when it comes to genocide, you already know right from wrong. The best reason I have come up with for looking closely into Rwanda’s stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomfortable about existence and my place in it. The horror, the horror, interests me only insofar as a precise memory of the offense is necessary to understand its legacy.”

My Take: The best book ever written by a political insider. Odds are, that if you ask someone who has spent any real amount of time working in politics, they will nominate this book as the most real account of what it’s really like. It’s a bit of a cult classic for political hacks the world around.

What sets ‘All Too Human’ apart from most other political tomes is its revealing honesty and self-analysis. Stephanopolous’ book is not an insider’s account of the Clinton candidacy and Presidency. It’s a first-hand account of the experience of being a senior political staffer. Stephanopolous perfectly captures the pressure, lack of control and resulting stress of political work, but most candidly, he freely reveals and reflects on his motivations during this period. Stephanopolous is honest enough to admit that often, he was as much driven by the desire for power and influence as he was by public service. As he notes:

“I believe in original sin … I know that I’m capable of craving a cold beer in a village of starving kids … I understand that selfishness vies for space in our hearts with compassion …”

Stephanopolous laments not only the compromises that he made in the pursuit of these selfish ends, but also his failures to achieve these personal ambitions. This theme is especially prominent when Stephanopolous is forced to confront his eventual exclusion from Clinton’s inner circle (and the usurpation of Dick Morris) – a personal setback that triggers a downward spiral into depression and eventually resignation. It was fairly clear to me on reading Stephanopolous’ account of this period that the cause of this depression was not the feeling that Clinton would be less able to serve the public interest without his advice, but more the personal disappointment of losing recognition and therefore influence. As Stephanopolous frankly states:

”I was excluded, which was killing me and my pride.”

As a result, Stephanopolous fell into a deep depression – and felt unable to seek treatment for fear that his situation would be exposed in the media. His situation became so physically dire that his face broke out into permanent hives and he was forced to grow a thick beard to hide the effects. Much of the book feels like an honest personal reflection on this period and a genuine attempt to understand what brought him to this point – in particular his conflagration of personal success in politics and his sense of self-worth.

This honest recognition of the personal interest in public service generated substantial vitriol amongst the journalists who reviewed Stephanopolous’ book. For instance the New York Times scathingly wrote:

It is a positive recommendation of Clinton that he took less advice from Stephanopoulos as time went on. It was this exclusion, not any moral repugnance at power, that made Stephanopoulos a nervous wreck.

…

What we are offered in this book is a little moral homily on the way a good Greek Orthodox altar boy was almost corrupted by power, but finally escaped.

….

But he was not corrupted by power. He was corrupted by the fear of losing it, a fear he brought with him to the White House, not one he picked up there. He tells us himself that he did not choose Clinton as his candidate because he admired him. He admired Mario Cuomo, had ties with Richard Gephardt and was urged by his family to support Paul Tsongas because he was Greek. He went with Clinton instead, since he thought he could win, and his famous funk over the Gennifer Flowers revelation was less an expression of moral repugnance than a frustration that his winner might be a loser after all.

Equally viciously, Salon commented that:

The dish immediately takes on the tone of a spurned lover … the president turns out to be a cad, so his confidences are betrayed, on page after page, with an air of righteousness. The betrayer comes across as shallow, deluded, naive, appallingly star struck and disgustingly ambitious — qualities that, combined with all the stress the roguish Clinton causes, eventually necessitate therapy and psychotropic drugs.

…. a tour de force of self-loathing and self-promotion, “All Too Human: A Political Education.” A poorly written fable about an arrogant young Greek who flies too close to the sun and crashes to the ground — call it the tragedy of Prickarus — it’s recommended mainly to those who already loathe Stephanopoulos and desire more evidence to back their feelings up.

….

Not unlike Monica Lewinsky, he seems to bear more than a touch of unrequited love for the man who now refuses to let aides mention his name in his presence. However pathetic that seems, it’s actually one of Stephanopoulos’ more endearing qualities.

Ouch. This kind of viciousness towards those working in politics from the media is a bit of a personal bug-bear of mine. It’s true that this book was released at a time when the association between depression and the pressures of political life was less well understood (Alastair Campbell, John Brogden, Geoff Gallop etc). However, I do think it reflects a common view in the media that those who work in politics should not only be treated with a healthy scepticism, but with a genuine contempt. The fact that those working in politics are human and subject to human foibles is rarely recognised, and almost never accepted as a reason not to personally vilify those working in public life. Journalists are justified in holding political operatives to account – but not holding them in contempt.

At the end of the day, I have to agree with the sentiments of an Amazon reviewer who commented that:

I praise his frank recounting of how he was working for himself as well as for the president and his agenda. Those who chide Stephanoulos for striving for personal success, and telling us how he pursued it, need to reevaluate their own career motives before they pass judgement.

I think most political staffers who’ve read ‘All Too Human’ appreciated the anxieties that Stephanopolous recounts in this book.  While those who work in political life ought to be primarily motivated by a sense of public service, it’s unreasonable to hold them to a standard in which all self-interested actions are grounds for vilification. Stephanopolous’ honesty in recognising these personal motivations, rather than portraying himself as purely publicly minded saint was a refreshing change for a political memoir.  This kind of candor should be the subject for congratulations, not contempt.

Highlight:

On having realised that that the TelePrompTer had been misloaded for Clinton’s health-care address to Congress:

“The thought of the president trying to concentrate on his delivery as gobbledygook whirred by his eyes made me sick with worry — for him and me. This screwup might not have been my fault, but it was my responsibility. ‘This is the worst thing that’s ever happened,’ I muttered. ‘I dunno,’ replied Mike Feldman, the vice president’s aide, ‘the Holocaust was pretty bad.’ Very funny.”

Yep – I know that feeling well.

My Take: Compiled by RFK’s ninth child (!), “Make Gentle The Life of This World” is a delicious combination of extracts from Robert Kennedy’s own speeches and a selection of passages from a daybook collaboratively compiled by both JFK and RFK from their vociferous personal reading. Thematically organised around the subjects that RFK continually returned to throughout his life (eg “The Act of Living”, “An American Spirit”, “Seeking a Better World”, “A Citizen in a Civil Society”), these selections paint an evocative picture of the character of the man.

One is struck while reading the selections from RFK’s daybook at the volume and depth of the man’s reading. RFK was no mere political hack, no “Hollowman”. His daybook drew from sources as diverse as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Goethe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Robert Frost, TS Eliot, Dante, Francis Bacon, Lao-Tzu, the Ramayana, Thomas Jefferson, Herodotus, Ernest Hemmingway, George Orwell, Montesquieu, Lord Acton, Thomas Paine, Pericles, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Shakespeare.  What is even more impressive is that Kennedy clearly read deeply in these authors. The passages he extracts are not the traditional ‘Inspirational Quotes’ one might encounter in Bartlett’s. Instead they are often obscure and united more by their philosophical constancy than their quotability.

In this sense, the selected passages offer genuine insights into Kennedy’s world view. As Maxwell Kennedy notes in the introduction:

“The selections in this book can be read almost like poetry, or as meditations for someone who wants to think about Robert Kennedy and the 1960s and the nature of politics and leadership.”

What I also found striking while reflecting on these passages was the remarkable foresight in Kennedy’s intellectual fixations – especially on issues that were quite controversial in progressive politics 30 years ago. While RFK is remembered best for speaking out on the timeless issues of racial harmony, equality of opportunity and the end of the Vietnam war, Bobby was no progressive populist. Kennedy was constitutionally incapable of biting his tongue in the face of lazy thinking. As such, he continually returned to issues that he thought were being neglected or being led by blind ideology. In this way, he came into conflict with the left wing of his own party just as much as he did with the Republicans (and no doubt fed much of the antipathy towards him during his life). But with the passage of time, Kennedy’s approach to the issues on which he came into conflict with his own party has largely been vindicated. Whether it was speaking out against oppression abroad (principally Communism), the moral import of employment, the deleterious effects of a reliance on welfare, or the central importance of law and order, Kennedy’s views, while unpopular at the time have now become widely accepted as core tenants in progressive politics.

If you have an interest in progressive politics, this book is like a full body massage for your inner idealist. You can’t help but come away from this book feeling reinvigorated about the potential of the political process. For those of you employed in the day to day business of politics, regular mental escapes into high-minded philosophy of public service are an essential reminder of why you are in this business in the first place.

Highlights: Again, I haven’t sought to replicate Bobby’s most famous quotes below, instead I’ve selected some of the less well known, but equally insightful passages included in this book:

The Responsibilities of Privilege

[During One of RFK’s speeches at a university medical school, a student in the crowd at a speech at a University asked “Where are you going to get all the money for these federally subsidized programs you’re talking about?”]

From You. Let me say something about the tenor of that question and some of the other questions. There are people in this country who suffer. I look around this room and I don’t see many black faces who are going to be doctors. You talk about where the money will come from… Part of civilised society is to let people go to medical school who come from ghettos. You don’t see many people coming out of the gehetytos or off the Indian reservations to medical school. You are the privledged ones here. It’s easy to sit back and say it’s the fault of the federal government, but it’s our responsibility too. It’s our society, not just our government, that spends twice as much on pets as on the poverty program. It’s the poor who carry the major burden of the struggle in Vietnam. You sit here as white medical students while black people carry the burden of the fighting in Vietnam.”

On America’s Moral Leadership

John Adams once said that he considered the founding of America part of “A divine plan for the liberation of the slavish part of mankind all over the globe.” This faith did not spring from grandiose schemes of empires abroad. It grew instead from confidence that the example set by our nation – the example of individual liberty fused with common effort – would spark the spirit of liberty around the planet; and that once unleashed, no despot could suppress it, no prison could restrain it, no army could withstand it.”

In Africa, I tried to answer those who asked, “If the United States is fighting for self-determination in Vietnam, then how can it not support the independence struggle of Angola and Mozambique?” I answered unsatisfactorily, for there is no real answer. Yet to the questioners, it is less our intention than our pretension that is objectionable. Thus does false principle destroy the credibility of our wisdom and purpose that is the true foundation of influence as a world power.

On the Metrics of a Nation’s Success

Our gross national product … if we should judge America by that – counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

On Freedom

Our liberty can grow only when the liberties of all our fellow men are secure; and he who would enslave others ends only by chaining himself, for chains have two ends, and he who holds the chain is as securely bound as he whom it holds.

It is not enough to allow dissent. We must demand it. For there is much to dissent from.

President Kennedy then went on to point out that “Law is the strongest link between man and freedom”. I wonder in how many countries of the world people think of law as the “link between man and freedom.” We know that in many, law is the instrument of tyranny, and people think of law as little more than the will of the state, or the party – not of the people.

In a democratic society law is the form which free men give to justice. The glory of justice and the majesty of law are created not just by the Constitution – no by the Courts – nor by the officers of the law – nor by the lawyers – but by the men and women who constitute our society – who are the protectors of the law as they are themselves protected by the law.”

On Unemployment

The root problem is in the fact of dependency and uselessness itself. Unemployment means having nothing to do – which means nothing to do with the rest of us. To be without work, to be without use to one’s fellow citizens, is to be in truth the Invisible Man of whom Ralph Ellison wrote.

The answer to the welfare crisis is work, jobs, self-sufficiency, and family integrity; not a massive new extension of welfare; not a great new outpouring of guidance counsellors to give the poor more advice. We need jobs… that lets a man say to his community, to his family, to his country, and most important, to himself, “I helped to build this country. I am a participant in its great public ventures. I am a man.”

On the Importance of Politics

The time is important for us to rise in defense of politics. There is no greater need than for educated men and women to point their careers toward public service as the finest and most rewarding type of life.

“We differ from other states in that we regard the individual who holds himself aloof from public affairs as being useless. Yet we yield to non one in our independence of spirit and complete self-reliance. – Pericles

“Our word idiot comes from the Greek name for the man who took no share in public matters” Edith Hamilton.

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My Take: Bitchiness like this can only come from personal experience and unsurprisingly this novel is apparently based on Waugh’s own experience as a foreign correspondent for the Daily Mail in the lead up to the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. Similarly, the arrogant, abrasive and ignorant owner of the Daily Beast is allegedly (and plausibly) an amalgam of the infamous Lord Beaverbrook (the first of the media barons) and Lord Northcliffe (a contemporary rival).

Far be it from me to make comment on the media, but the jaded political hack in me enjoyed the satirical skewering of the fourth estate in ‘Scoop’. It’s worth remembering too that this withering account was penned in the 1930s – a period that would be viewed as something of a golden era of the press, especially when seen from today’s climate of plummeting newspaper audiences, even faster fallings revenues and resulting cost cutting. Unfortunately, a Scoop for the modern era would be more tragedy than farce.

Highlight:

I read the newspapers with lively interest. It is seldom that they are absolutely, point-blank wrong. That is the popular belief, but those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo of truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl, round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament.

They are all negros. And the Fascists won’t be called black because of their racial pride, so they are called White after the White Russians. And the Bolsheviks want to be called Black because of their racial pride. So when you say black you mean red, and when you mean red you say white and when the party who call themselves blacks say traitors they mean what we call blacks, but what we mean when we say traitors I really couldn’t tell you. But from your point of view it will be quite simple. Lord Copper only wants patriot victories and both sides call themselves patriots, and of course both sides will claim all the victories. But, of course, it’s really a war between Russia and Germany and Italy and Japan who are all against one another on the patriotic side. I hope I make myself plain?

Synopsis: Photo-journalist Paul Fusco presents a collection of his photographs from the carriage of Robert F. Kennedy’s funeral train.

My Take: Bobby is a bit of a political hero of mine. He was pilloried as a ruthless political operative in life and is revered as an inspirational idealist in death.  He combined compassion and pragmatism in equal measure and was a model for centrist, progressive policy. He felt the honour and public duty of political participation acutely, but never let higher ends impede political means.

Given that I’m an avid reader and an RFK obsessive, I have close to a dozen different RFK biographies, collections of essays, photo books, and manuscripts. I’m not sure how I’m going to blog them yet as there’s a fair bit of overlap between them, but I thought that I might as well start with my favourite. A limited edition, signed hardcover of The RFK Funeral Train given to me as a brilliantly perceptive birthday present by JJ (especially given that the journey took place on my birthday, June 8). It’s twee, but it’s true: The people who love me buy me books.

The RFK Funeral Train is a gorgeous, elegant and moving collection of photographs of the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans who turned out to line the route of RFK’s funeral train from the body’s original viewing in St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York to its final resting place in Arlington Memorial Cemetery, Washington DC (retracing the journey that Abraham Lincoln’s train had made 103 years before).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG4vJxi9Kis]

Fusco was a professional photo-journalist at the time and had been commissioned to cover the funeral train’s journey. It was an extraordinary opportunity for a photographer to capture the American polis at its rawest and most emotional moment.

The pictures show Americans from all walks of life – rich, poor, black, white, young and old – standing in the summer heat waiting for the opportunity to farewell a man who had come to embody their hope of a better quality of leadership and a better quality life. People who had already endured the despair of the deaths of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the disillusionment of the Vietnam War and saw in Bobby, the potential for the country to move in a new, more positive direction.  People who for their troubles, a few short months, would be subjected to the first term of the Nixon administration.

Fusco’s moving photos are preceded by a foreword by Norman Mailer and are interspersed with extracts from Kennedy’s most famous speeches. It finishes with a quote from Senator Edward Kennedy’s eulogy for RFK that states:

“My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”

Highlights: A sample of the dozens of photos included in this book are attached below:

An excellent Interactive feature on the funeral train from the New York Times is available here.

My Take: Frank Luntz has an impressive CV. An Oxford University PHD, Luntz rose to prominence as the chief pollster for Ross Perot’s outsider presidential bid in 1992. After providing polling for Rudy Giuliani’s successful NYC mayoral campaign, Luntz then achieved his greatest success as the father of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. Since then he’s largely been a freelancer, offering consultancy services to the highest bidder (including a series of media outlets). Say what you want about his morals – he’s a smart guy.

As the man that brought the world the “death tax” (as opposed to the estate tax), “exploring for energy” (rather than “drilling for oil”) and perhaps most famously, “climate change” (as opposed to the previously popular “global warming”), Luntz evokes some strong opinions on the left. He’s often caricatured as a Machiavellian operator, manipulating voters into acting against their own interests with clever but deceptive language.

We could get into a long discussion about the left’s ongoing conflation of the normative value of just ends with just means in politics, but I’ll save that for another time; you needn’t have a ‘whatever it takes’ approach to politics to appreciate the value of Luntz’s work. The fact that, as Luntz puts it “It’s not about what you say, it’s about what people hear” means that political actors don’t get to opt out of being language literate. The action in political communication is in the audience’s minds, not politicians. The role of language in political communication is really beyond the control of political actors. Given that politicians can’t change the way audiences process political communications, they should at least be aware of how this process works in order to avoid what Luntz describes as “the self-sabotage of clumsy phrasing and dubious delivery.” If language has this great an influence, those in the business of persuasion have an obligation to understand it. Whether you use that information to illuminate or obfuscate is a whole other matter.

In this sense, the scariest part of Luntz’s work is the way he shows how language can trump rational argument. The following account from a Luntz run focus group (from a New Yorker profile piece) is illustrative:

He asked people what they would most want to eliminate: an estate tax, an inheritance tax, or a death tax. Death tax won big. They vented for a while about how deeply unfair it was: you work hard your whole life and the government takes it all away at the end. Then asked them how much they thought you were allowed to pass on after your death without incurring a tax. All the non-accountants guessed way too low. He told them that the actual figure was six hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. “Now that you know that,” said, “would anyone not want to abolish the tax?” Nobody raised a hand.

The point here was that if you introduce a subject using language that will produce a strong opinion no subsequent information will get people to change their minds.

By way of delivering the coup de grace, said, “Bill Gates-his children. Billions! Tens of billions if we abolish this tax! Ross Perot. Should they have to pay a death tax?” Only one vote changed.

While Luntz is at pains to emphasise that there are limits to language; that “Some policies and ideas really are more popular than others no matter how they are articulated” (ie you can’t sell a shit sandwich), you can’t help but come away from this book with the impression that language can sell some awfully unpalatable policies. Similarly, I suspect that some awfully good policies wrapped in decidedly mediocre language will also be likely to fail.

Given the egos and self-indulgence of most political actors, the message that “it’s not about you” can be a tough one to digest. It’s made even tougher by Luntz’s observation that most political actors don’t understand who their audience is with much sophistication. In America (as in Australia), the voters are generally less engaged in the day to day battles of politics than most people working in politics assume. So in order to understand what you’re audience might be hearing, you first need to understand who they are.

This of course is where consultants like Luntz come in. Luntz’s trademark is not opinion polling, but rather qualitative focus groups. As running a focus group is as much an art as a science it’s hard to empirically test his methods, but his conclusions sound fair enough to me. Given his focus on the audience, Luntz is explicit that his work is not about soaring rhetoric, it’s about words that work; “language of everyday utility, language that generates results.” Language is means to an end; namely influencing voters. This strongly utilitarian bent is clear from the Ten Rules of Successful Communication Luntz has developed from his focus group work:

1. Simplicity: Use Small Words.
2. Brevity: Use Short Sentences.
3. Credibility is as Important as Philosophy (Be honest about what you can deliver).
4. Consistency Matters (Don’t just say it once, say it a thousand times).
5. Novelty: Offer Something New (Avoid clichés and dead language).
6. Sound and Texture Matter (Rhyme, Cadence, Assonance, Alliteration – they all improve the memorability of your message).
7. Speak Aspirationally (Speak to your audience’s emotional desires).
8. Paint a Vivid Picture (Use language that lets your listeners visualise what you’re saying).
9. Ask a Question. (People react best to language that is participatory).
10. Provide Context and Explain Relevance (Tell people the ‘why’ before you tell them the ‘what’).

The value of most of these rules is obvious, but if you’re at all interested in political communication I highly recommend that you grab a copy of the book and have read of Luntz’s detailed explanations for yourself.

Beyond Luntz’s Ten Commandments, there were also a few other lessons in Luntz’s book that jumped out at me:

• Women hate sports metaphors.
• Show, Don’t Tell: Don’t say you’re an average joe, get down to the footy on the weekends. Don’t say you’re a strong leader, talk like a strong leader.
• Pay attention to detail: Words with very similar meanings can send very different messages to voters. A few examples:
  • “Facts are indisputable. Evidence is open to interpretation”.
  • “‘Accurate’ data is more important than honest, credible , or truthful data because it is a statement of fact rather than someone’s explanation.”

Ultimately, there’s a lot of value in this book. In many respects, I don’t think the book much different to George Orwell’s seminal Politics and the English Language essay. While I certainly disagree with his politics, Luntz’s objective is not to use language to hide or distort meaning. Instead, I think his objective is to ensure that the speaker’s intended message and interpretation of the facts hits home with the audience as clearly as possible. However, there’s nothing to stop voters from rejecting that interpretation; especially if they are also hearing a competing interpretation. If both sides of politics are clearly communicating different, but well understood messages, it will ultimately be up to the voter to determine which is more persuasive. At the end of the day, that’s what democracy is all about.

Highlight:

A participant in a Giuliani focus group stating, with apparent seriousness:

“When the chips were down, Mayor Giuliani stood up to the EPA and let the Ghostbusters do their job. I really liked that about him”

My Take: Ordinarily I steer clear of political biographies (diaries in particular!) but beore I moved to the UK I thought I needed a bit of a crash course in the who’s who of the Party in the UK so I picked this up at the hot new political book of the time. The fact that I’d be spending a year at the LSE learning from Mr Campbell may also have played a part in the decision

AC has been demonised as being the death knell of liberal democracy personified because of his alleged practice of the dark arts of political ’spin’. Far be it from me to have any public comment on the professionalism of contemporary journalists or their role in a functioning democracy, but AC really lines them up in this book (keep in mind he was a senior journalist for many years before moving into politics):

“For all its faults, our political process is a good one, and the means by which much meaningful change is made. That is not a very fashionable view to hold, but as someone who has operated at senior levels in journalism and politics, around a decade in each, it is my respect for the media that has shrunk, and my respect for politics that has grown.”

and

“I have no idea what people will make of this book. I am probably too close to it all, both the events and the process of publishing. I know some newspapers and commentators will come to it with minds made up, and look to find those parts that help confirm their prejudices. It is what is wrong with some of them in the first place, and why I have next to no respect for them, and no real interest in their views. Amid the enormous cuts I have made are many which relate to my dealings with a 24 hour media that has in my view changed for the worse not only political debate but politics itself, as the politicians have to devote so much time and energy to dealing with people who believe their role is not to impart information and fuel healthy debate, but to undermine where possible the actions, decisions and motives of politicians. It is a sad irony that we have more media coverage than ever, but less understanding or real debate.”

Say what you want about him, but AC has a way with words and an ability to zing those who get in his way (currently being perpetuated on his excellent blog). The book itself is a real tome (1000+ pages from memory) so is probably only worthwhile for real political obsessives, but is certainly an engaging account of a fantastically interesting period for UK labour politics.

“Some twat with a Trot poster came up to me on the way in and yelled ‘Butcher!’ Traitor!’ at me. I stopped and mustered as much visual contempt as I could, then assured him that if we win the general election then don’t worry, thanks to wankers like him, there will always be another Tory government along afterwards. These people make me vomit.

And on the left wing of the party in general:

“It is all about how the party sees them as they strut around the conference, and got fuck all to do with whether we ever actually get the power needed to do anything for the country.”

Quite!

Synopsis: In/famous Clinton pollster, Burson-Marsteller CEO and Bowser look alike claims that small-scale, niche trends, identifiable through statistical analysis, are the key drivers for societal change. A long bow, stretched WAY too far for its own good.

My Take: Love him or hate him (and let’s face it, most people hate him these days), Mark Penn has played a pretty central role in progressive campaigning in the US over the past 15 years. As on e of the most influential pollsters/strategists of the Clinton wing of the Democratic party, Penn can claim to have contributed to the successes of Bill Clinton (in particular his identification of “Soccer Moms” as a key demographic in the 1996 US Presidential election), and the relative failures Hillary Clinton.

Microtrends is a bit of a microcosm of the good and the bad of Penn’s tactics in particular, but also pollsters and strategists in general (here’s a link to the Introduction). In a narrow sense, the basic principle of the ‘Microtrend’ is both sensible and important, if not revolutionary to any seasoned campaigner.  Penn reasonably defines a ‘Microtrend’ as:

a small but growing group of people, who share an intense choice or preference, that is often counterintuitive and has sometimes been missed or undercounted by the companies, marketers, policymakers, and others.

He similarly quite sensibly identifies the importance of these groups to political campaigning:

The art of trend-spotting, through polls, is to find groups that are pursuing common activities and desires, and that have either started to come together or can be brought together by the right appeal that crystallizes their needs.

…

It is those groups that can tip an election, make or break a business, or trigger a social movement. They make a huge difference, and yet many conventional commentators on society either don’t see them or deny them outright.

All of which I agree with. All too often political analysts confuse popular support for an issue with vote changing support. 15% of voters who are willing to change their vote on a single issue can be far more politically important than 85% of voters with an opinion on an issue,

Further, the 75 ‘Microtrends’ that Penn identifies are both amusing and illuminating. The book is probably worth reading just for these case studies. Incidentally, there’s a reasonably good promotional Facebook app you can run to see what ‘Microtrend’ you’re likely to fall into which is moderately amusing.

However, things start to go seriously astray when Penn begins to apply this sensible observation as a catch-all explanation of ALL social and political movements. For example, Penn claims that:

The whole idea that there are a few huge trends that determine how America and the world work is breaking down. There are no longer a couple of megaforces sweeping us all along. Instead, America and the world are being pulled apart by an intricate maze of choices, accumulating in “microtrends” – small, under-the-radar forcse that can involve as little as 1 per cent of the population, but which are powerfully shaping our society… Small is the new big.

This is where Penn loses me. It’s one thing to say that many people are strongly motivated by niche concerns that are common to few other people. It might even be fair to suggest that as a result of the emergence of a fragmented, ‘new media’, these ‘microtrends’ are more important than in the past.  However, it’s entirely another thing to say that there aren’t equally important, broader, society wide influences on voter behaviour.

In fact, it’s ironic that this book was released in the lead up to the 2008, US Presidential election, an election in which a single mega-trend, the mass voter movement towards the ‘Change’ represented by Barack Obama, largely determined  the outcome. You only have to read his claims in Microtrends that:

There is no One America anymore, or Two, or Three, or eight. In fact, there are hundreds of Americas, hundreds of new niches made up of people drawn together by common interests.

to see how out of touch Penn was with the US Electorate in 2008.  The fact is that electorates are more than just the sum of the individual interests of the various groupings within it. There are common issues (patriotism, justice, change, security) that cut across niches and influence votes across the electorate. Penn makes the fundamental consultant’s mistake of believing his own bullshit in Microtrends and as a result, blows their influence totally out of proportion. Which is a shame, because ironically, in a narrow sense, Microtrends has a lot of small, but interesting points to make.

Highlights: Some of the more interesting Microtrends Penn identifies:

Extreme Commuters

Among the millions of Americans driving to work every day, you’re pushing the limits (with 3.4 million others) by travelling more than 90 minutes each way. Whether it’s out of necessity or desire, you’ve taken discipline to the extreme, waking up at or before dawn to get to work. And you’re a key, niche consumer — you need ways to eat in the car, study in the car, and be entertained in the car. And boy are you interested in comfortable seats!

Caffeine Crazies

Life takes some extra energy, no? Lately you just can’t perform at your peak levels without a little help from those turbo-caffeinated, super-energy drinks. You’re part of a growing group who knows those drinks just fire you up for all the work and fun you’ve got to get done!

DIY Doctors

The biggest trend in American healthcare is DIYDs: Do-It-Yourself Doctors. These are people who research their own symptoms, diagnose their own illnesses, and administer their own cures. If they have to call on doctors at all, they either treat them like ATM machines for prescriptions they already “know” they need, or they show up in their offices with full-color descriptions of their conditions, self-diagnosed on WebMD.

Synopsis:

My Take: Published in 1990, this collection of Keating quotations comes from the golden era of PJK. The period before he became PM and was forced to moderate (at least to some extent) his more extreme instincts for public, rhetorical bloodshed.

Most of the more well known Keatingisms are collected at the excellent Scumbag Archive, so I’ll refrain from republishing them here. But there are plenty of less well known, but equally amusing Keating sprays that I can’t see anywhere online at presemt so I’ll include a selection of the better ones from this book below:

On the Left:

“What it boils down to is wider nature strips, more trees and we’ll all make wicker baskets in Balmain. Then we’ll all live in renovated terraces in Balmain and we’ll have the arts and crafts shops and everything else is bad and evil.”

“These people are trying to make my party into something other than it is… They’re appendages. That’s why I’ll never abandon ship, and never let those people capture it.”

On the economy:

“If we were providing these policy setting and outcomes in Western Europe, they’d be lighting candles to us in the cathedrals.”

“I guarantee if you walk into any pet shop in Australia what the resident galah will be talking about it micro-economic policy.”

“Stick your head out of the building in any capital city in Australia and it’s a sea of cranes. The economy is so robust that it’s taken a pickaxe to stop it. We’re laying into it with a lump of four-by-two to try and slow it down. In the past, if you hit it with a lump of four-by-two, it would fall to bits. And stay in bits.”

“All these ex-Treasury drop-outs around the place advising me how we ought to best do things – the fact is, look, all these people whould be better off in the Australian Treasury. We’ve lost years of experience. They have dropped out to write a bloody newsletter for some merchant bank. It’s pointless and useless.”

On failing to lodge his tax return:

“My fortunes are tied up with the economy.. I’m still on the big picture, painting the big picture, and I may splash a bit of paint. I did make a mistake, but unlike the Leader of the Opposition, my mistake did not cost half a million people their jobs. My mistake did not retard the economy for twenty years. My mistake did not introduce a massive domestic recession, unlike his mistake which almost destroyed the fabric of the Australian economy.”

On the Aussie battler:

“These people, they live on the ebb and flow of the economy, like kelp on the seashore. They can’t protect, they don’t have the personal wealth to protect themselves from the ups and downs of the economy. We’ve got to protect them.”

On Whitlam:

“It was a contest as to whether the heart on the sleeve outweighed the chip on the shoulder. There was certainly a shortage of cerebral ballast to maintain any equilibrium.”

On the Opposition:

“You were heard in silence, so some of you scumbags on the front bench should just wait a minute until you hear the responses from me.”

“You were in office from 1949 to 1983 bar three years…. And you left everything the way you found it. The place got old and tired and worn out, just like you are… For 30 years all we had was Black Jack McEwen trowelling on the tarrif protection while he was kidding farmers he was representing them. And Liberal Part Treasueres, handed speeches by Treasury officials… they couldn’t even read the speeches, let alone comprehend the stuff. That’s how you ran the Commonwealth. The mandarins ran things… you wouldn’t worry about the detail. Because you NEVER ran the policy. You never RAN the place. We run the departments, we run the policy. We comprehend. We know.”

On journalists:

“At least we’re doing it for the history books – you’re doing it for tomorrow’s fish and chips.”

On politics:

“It’s the great vista of politics that is so appealing. You know, a finger in every pie. You’re always certain of your own motivation even if you’re never quite sure of anybody else’s. So if it’s a case of backing in somebody to do a job you might as well back in yourself.”

“You know me luv, downhill, one ski, no poles.”

“We’re all stressed. The game I’m in is lubricated by stress. Politics is the clearing house of pressures.”

“If you want to wear the belt, you’ve got to have the fights. And if you won’t have the fights, you’ll have the belt taken off you.”

“We are all given the field-marshall’s baton in the knapsack when we get our pre-selection. I got mine then and it is still tucked away” [1988]

From 1986, more prescient than he would have intended:

“I could burn inflation out of the economy with a recession, but I would burn the economy with it.”

On Architecture and Design:

“After art deco there’s only fag packets and bottle tops.”

“Other people play the neddies – I perv on buildings.”

“The Labor Party is the only repository of taste in Australian politics. Most of these Tories, like Fraser, have a knowledge of architecture and design that goes no further than wedding-cake Victoriana and grandfather chairs.”

“If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s mock Chippendale.”

On Modesty in 1987

Keating: This is the great coming of age of Australia. This is the golden age of economic change.

Interviewer: How much credit do you take?

Keating: Oh, a very large part.

And two for our times:

“You don’t have to be a genius – if the private economy is rooted, then we haven’t got much of a chance.”

“Banking is the artery of the economy and we’ve had hardening of the arteries for too long in this country.”