The Weekly Screed (#820)

Brevity is the soul of politics
by David Benjamin

“Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but stand there and take it.”
                                                                     — Lyndon Johnson

MADISON, Wis. — Herbert Hoover sealed his political fate when he said, “Prosperity is just around the corner.” His problem? Verbosity. In politics you get nowhere with a six-word, 37-character complete sentence with a subject, verb and predicate phrase.

By comparison, his opponent in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, promised, simply, a “New Deal.” In seven letters, FDR concentrated the almost overwhelming power of Two-Word Politics.

Consider Roosevelt’s greatest global adversary. Adolf Hitler, the madman who devastated Europe, was a master of Two-Word Politics from the moment he chose his title for Mein Kampf. One of the fascinating aspects of the Third Reich (two words) is how many of its inextricably twisted concepts and atrocities entered the German (and global) vernacular in a vast lexicon of two-word soundbites — from “lebensraum” (living space), “master race,” “blood & soil,” and “sieg heil” to “blitzkrieg” (lightning war), “lugenpresse” (lying press) and history’s most despicable euphemism: “Final Solution.”

Meanwhile, back in the USA, FDR was bracing democracy and birthing the “welfare state” with unspeakably complicated financial and social reforms under the two syllables of the “New Deal.” Likewise, FDR reduced to a couple of simple words a labyrinth of competing forces and innovations forced on him by the Great Depression: “organized money,” “fear itself,” “social security,” “public works,” “unemployment insurance,” “rural electrification,” “fireside chat,” “lend-lease,” “moral order,” “four freedoms.” FDR’s speeches were consistently literate, nuanced and dense with policy, but they sparkled with terse, catchy newsreel couplets that regular folks could hum on the way home from the Bijou.

Down through decades of American history, Two-Word Politics has been deployed with varying degrees of success in causes both noble and dubious. For example: “New Frontier,” “Great Society,” “liberal media” (lugenpresse), “silent majority,” “segregation forever,” “freedom now,” “kinder, gentler,” “progress & prosperity” (Al Gore — just awful!), “hope & change” (much better), “stronger together” (oh God, no!), and, finally, “America first.”

The latter phrase, exhumed by our current White House-dweller, echoes the pro-Nazi isolationists of the 1930s. It’s one of those Trump formulations that make me wonder about Two-Word Politics today, and what comes next.

By recycling the phrase “Make America Great Again” (No, it wasn’t his idea; the Gipper said it first), Donald Trump pulled a Hoover, using a complete sentence and twice too many words. Why not just “Great Again”? But in other respects, he has proved an idiot savant in couplet humping. His successful pairings include “birth certificate,” “low energy,” “little Marco,” “the wall,” “believe me,” “you’re fired,” “fake news” (lugenpresse), “travel ban,” “witch hunt” and, of course, “crooked Hillary.”

The difference between the Hitler/FDR/LBJ/Nixon manipulation of Two-Word Politics and Trump’s variation is that terms like “Final Solution,” “New Deal” and “Great Society” were shorthand for substantive policy, political ideology and legislative strategy. In Trump’s case, this tactic really is just a couple of words, “sound & fury” signifying jabberwocky.

Which suggests to me that he who lives by the pithy couplet might well be killed by a hail of similar nuggets. Trouble is, up ’til now, Trump’s nemeses are wordier than Webster’s Third. The Affordable Care Act (one too many words there) is one of U.S. history’s great social benefits, but there wasn’t a Democrat on the face of the earth who could summarize it in 500 pages or less, much less two words. So, even after it bumbled into law, it languished in public contempt, discredited by a two-word slogan: “repeal & replace.”

“Repeal & replace” was, of course, sound and fury. But it didn’t need to be anything more — until, suddenly, its authors came to power and people said, “Okay, where’s the manuscript?”

Surprisingly, Congressional Democrats seem to be catching on to Two-Word Politics. They’ve labeled Trump’s American Health Care Act (Zounds! Four words!) the “secret bill,” which is accurate because GOP leaders kept this huge embarrassment tightly under wraps ’til the last mortifying minute. Also, aided by a resurrected press, Democrats are drawing blood with the term, “Russia scandal.” Even better, that nostalgic double entendre, “Deep Throat,” is back in style.

I wonder, though. Can these normally loquacious, preachy Democrats keep it dumb as they approach the 2018 vote. Thus far, the record isn’t promising. No memorable couplets arose during special elections in Kansas, Montana, South Carolina — all won (but narrowly) by the Trumpians. Jon Ossoff, the bright young ectomorph who raised liberal hopes in Red Georgia, cunningly avoided saying anything blunt or prickly, thus succeeding in saying virtually nothing at all, thus losing to a woman who specialized in talking out of her ass but doing so more entertainingly than Ossoff.

Ossoff’s opponent, Karen Handel, was also blessed by the current true-to-your-school faith among rank-and-file Republicans — who are more “yellow dog” than were Southern Democrats in their own “Jim Crow” past. A Republican today will vote for a burning bag of crap rather than Jesus Christ (D).

On the other hand, “progressives,” “liberals” and “left-leaning independents” are more like food snobs at McDonald’s. They’ll vote for a Democrat rather than a burning bag of crap, but only after reading the candidate’s small print — to determine transfat content, preservatives, calories, cholesterol, antibiotics, high fructose corn syrup, genetic modification, sodium, nitrites, carbs, enzyme load, gluten, rat droppings, LGBTQ devotion, Hillary contamination, and/or any suspicious middle-of-the-road tendencies. If any ingredient is slightly impure, well then, it’s “Adios, Adlai” and “Hello, Jill Stein.”

The one “hope” that Democrats might “change” from a cast of heartsick Hamlets to a fearless flotilla of Farraguts is to follow the example of their best two Two-Word Pols, Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders. Between them, they’ve articulated three key two-word ideas that everyone can understand — even though they mask policy reforms that are daunting in their complexity and terrifying (to pussyfoot progressives) in their scope. These couplets have the power to rally the criminally fickle youth vote, appeal to self-piteous white males, uplift the fortunes of the middle class, piss off Grover Norquist to the point of apoplexy and force Republicans to campaign against Mom, apple pie and the high-steel Mohawks.

Democrats, tune in. This means you, Joe Donnelly and Heidi Heitkamp! The three couplets you need to memorize and repeat over and over again, staying on message ’til you wanna puke, are these:

1. Public Works (Never, ever, say “infrastructure.”)

2. Free College

3. Single Payer

Okay, one more:

4. Don’t Explain!