Citizen Budd Shenkin has been making important contributions to our polity at his blog this season. What follows are slightly tweaked versions of two of his recent posts there.
Ads For Dems
All elections count because, as they say, “elections have consequences.” They all do, but it’s hard to overstate the importance of the 2018 and 2020. As my brother Bob said yesterday, if the Dems win in 2018 and 2020, we can dismiss Trumpism as an aberration, even though it may have lasting consequences that might take a very long time to fix. If the Dems don’t win, however, it’s time to think about emigration. He exaggerates, but… The ascent of Trump and Trumpian barbarism around the country is the most serious challenge to our way of life in our lifetime. As Bob said, I knew these people were around, but I didn’t know there were so many of them. And I would add, and that so many of them are so vile.
In the last instance all politics might be local, but sometimes the national issues and national mood are such that the local elections are run in a national force field. This is clearly such a year.
What is to be done? If the national Democratic Party is to have relevance – if it is to be a continuing viable force – it had better work to make that national force field favorable for Democratic candidates. How can they do that? How about making some good ads? Some direct, unhedged, sincere ads that tell it like it is, that are not so obviously crafted for this group and that group that they drift into the forgettable mist of identity politics. Some good candidates are already doing that on their own, as with last night’s victor in Queens-Bronx, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Time for the national Dems to see if they can emulate their juniors.
So, here’s what I’d do. Starting, say, next week, I’d run two or three minute ads on a series of subjects. The campaign would go week by week, cumulative, building the case, objective in presentation but pressing and even outraged in tone, and perhaps growing more outraged as each week passes. Forget this group and that – just make the case.
Ad campaign #1 – Taxes. It is a hallmark of our nation that we should look out for one another, and be both compassionate and fair. We want to reward those who are successful and support their ongoing contributions to the economy, but we also want to provide a strong safety net for the less favored in society, and to provide a chance for every single person who is willing to work hard, to rise. The Republicans don’t agree. Don’t look at what they say, look at what they’ve done. Their favor-the-wealthy Tax Deal of 2017 gives $1.5 Trillion in benefits to big businesses and the wealthy. They say it helps everyone. It doesn’t. Donald Trump’s kids get $100 million extra from this deal. (Add a couple of other wealthy recipients here). And you out there in the 90% of our population? You didn’t get much, if anything.
This Tax Atrocity blew up the budget. The Republicans now want to get that money back from the middle class by lowering Social Security payments, making Medicare more expensive, and eliminating health insurance for 20 million people.
If you vote for a Republican, this is what you are voting for. Don’t let them sweet talk you to think anything different. Republicans are for the superrich, first, last, and always. They’ll tell you otherwise, but they talk a lot of nonsense.
Democrats will end this stupid unfairness. Make America Fair Again. Make us proud to be Americans again. Vote Democratic.
Ad campaign #2 – Health care. Before the Democrats passed The Affordable Care Act–what’s known as Obamacare–millions of people went uncovered. If you had a preexisting condition, you often couldn’t get health insurance. An illness often led to bankruptcy. The Affordable Care Act wasn’t perfect, but it enabled 40 million Americans to obtain insurance coverage even if they had a medical condition. The coverage was sometimes too expensive and had terrible deductibles, but the cost was just coming under control and things were improving, when the Trump Administration and the Republicans in Congress decided to kill Obamacare. They couldn’t get all of the votes they needed in Congress, so they have done it on the sly, cutting here and cutting there, when you weren’t looking, and now 20 million people who had coverage have lost it, and millions more won’t have it in the future because the Republicans are against covering people who have something or other, even if it’s unlikely to cause trouble. This is scandalous. If you can’t afford to pay for health care yourselves, the Republicans figure you should go without it. Thanks, Republicans.
Make America Healthy Again. Make us proud to be Americans again. Vote Democratic.
Ad campaign #3 – Foreign affairs and trade. The Greatest Generation who won World War II bequeathed us a rule-based world, led by the West and by America. We have been united in fighting for a strong world of democratic governments who respect human rights and try to get along among ourselves, and to provide a beacon of good life and good government to the world.
Trump has upended that world. He has offended all our friends, and likes best to hang out with dictators. He loves Putin, he loves Duterte, he loves Erdogan – find an autocrat and chances are he’ll be a good friend of Trump. He even tried to deal with North Korea, where the great dealmaker got bamboozled by a 30 year old dictator who uses assassination as a primary tool. Trump boasts that they get along very well. But our friends in Europe and Canada, who have our traditional Western values of fairness and freedom? Trump insults them.
Trump also lays stupid import taxes on the goods of our friends. The result? We pay higher prices for those goods and other countries retaliate so our businesses and our jobs suffer. Trump is pretty dumb when it comes to trade, and we are the ones who suffer as a result.
Make America Friends With Our Friends Again. Make us proud to be Americans again. Vote Democratic
Ad campaign #4 – Environment. In the bad old days, smog polluted our cities, our waterways were polluted and unhealthy – one river even caught fire. Since the creation of the EPA, we have gained cleaner water and air for everyone. Trump and the Republicans think our water is too clean and our air too unpolluted. We need more fossil fuels spewing smoke, they say. They say, Let’s Make America Dirty Again.
Make America Clean Again. Make us proud to be Americans again. Vote Democratic.
OK – you get the drift. Start calling a spade a spade. Make the charges stick. Own the agenda. Other subjects? Human rights and immigration. Women’s control of their own bodies. State sponsored child abuse at the border.
And then, in the last few weeks before the election, hit his lying.
Make America Honest Again. Make us proud to be Americans again. Vote Democratic.
Then on to self-enrichment and corruption, Zinke and Pruitt and Ivanka’s trademarks in China.
Make America Honest Again. Make us proud to be Americans again. Vote Democratic.
And finally, the practice of Democracy. Whose country is it?
The Democratic Party gerontocracy needs to learn from the younger generation to be aggressive in making its points. Let the Right react; so be it. If the Dems don’t state the case directly and forcefully, how will they get a mandate?
The Art of the Don
E.J. Dionne’s latest column once again bemoans Trump’s mendacity. Here’s Dionne’s introduction to his column on Twitter:
For #Trump, a lie is as good as the truth, as long as a majority of his base believes it. He buries old falsehoods under new ones. And when it comes to creating new and unhinged narratives to displace those rooted in fact, Trump has no equal. My column:
Agreeing with him, I answered his tweet with my own 140 characters: “Good. But need to look at real game he’s playing. It’s show-biz. How do I look? Aggressive? In charge? Determined? Declare ‘this is for you’ and there’s the image. People buy image more than logic. The challenge: Can Dems counter? Need better image, not better facts.”
OK, that’s the gist of it. But, because the subject is so pressing, let me lay it out in 1,280 words rather than 140 characters.
First, there is a conflict between what Trump does and what the commentariat wants him to do because there are two different games being played. The commentariat – and people like me – admire politicians who make governing for the good of the country their priority. You run for office in order to govern. Communications with electorate and commentariat must be more or less truthful, because that is part of good governance. We flatter ourselves by assuming good communication and discussion generate support for better policies.
But it’s obvious that Trump’s game is much different. I doubt he has any conception of the common good or the good of the country. His primary goal in life is “to win” and be seen as a winner. Winning an election is great, but making money is the true measure of winning, and scoring with women another indication of a winner. (That’s the only mention of sex here; I felt I had to mention it, but we’ll let it lie there.)
Everyone out to be President has had a mix of motives, but few have skewed like Trump. And even fewer had tools that Trump brings to the task. He has long experience with the slime world of tabloids; he is a clever schoolyard bully; he channels the Borsht Belt as an entertainer; and he knows reality TV really well. With these tools, he can craft an image. That’s what Trump’s about. He wants to be seen as being in charge, being a hero, being bold—the conqueror of enemies and scourge of whatever seems artificial and elite.
So that’s his game – he means to create that image. Everything else is secondary (except making money; even if the image is punctured at some point, if he’s made a lot of money he can keep, he’s still a winner).
(As an aside, this image probably also has psychic resonance for him, since as a pediatrician I think he probably suffered and continues to suffer from the childhood condition of oppositional-defiant disorder [https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/oppositional-defiant-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20375831]. [Others say it’s tertiary syphilis, and it could be, given his prior medical care, but I’ll pass over that for now.] There are probably many other complexes developed in childhood that continue to manifest themselves in him, and his destructive urges, but that’s not necessary for this analysis.)
So, if that’s your goal, why tell the truth? That is so secondary. Keep the image going the way you would on a TV show, keep it moving, go side to side, keep everyone occupied. If the country as a whole understood the issues, followed the issues well, and judged by logic, he’d be a dead man. But not everyone does. Most people go by images. That’s what they vote for, images. Probably includes you and me, as much as we might think otherwise. I think you get the picture.
The next question is, if you are a part of the commentariat trying to cover him or a politician opposed to him, what do you do?
First for the pundits: I’d stop saying “this is not normal.” The best disinfectant is sunlight, so apply sunlight. If I ran MSNBC, for instance, I’d divide my commentary into sections. I would fully and continually expose what Trump is doing – he is creating an image. I’d run 10 minute segments regularly as “Image Time,” as opposed to the slightly longer segments on policy, along with their usual very much longer segment on horserace time.
On “Image Time,” I would have real pros as experts on call. Who do I mean? Perhaps reality TV producers; perhaps some political consultants who specialize in image. Perhaps some fiction writers. Scriptwriters. Not psychologists, not policy analysts. Limn how he’s crafting his image, what he’s doing, what he’s aiming for – and how others are either aiding him or aping him or reacting to him otherwise. How is he controlling the show? There would be no need to judge whether or not what he’s doing is a good thing, just report it straight.
It would also be interesting on “Image Time” to look at what others are doing with their images – Pelosi, Schumer, all the old and the young. Especially the newly-emergent Dems, and especially the new younger women as they emerge. We’re talking show-biz image coverage, not whether or not their plans make sense or whether or not they are telling the truth. Do they convey images that would lead voters to put trust in them, or are they turnoffs? Real, professional opinions, maybe backed by surveys and such. Wouldn’t that be fascinating?
While all the media professionals know imaging is key, they don’t seem to have figured out how to address it. They may think that if they get too far into it, they will be devaluing serious matters of politics and policy it’s their job to elucidate. So, I’m putting it to you pundits – confront image-management head on, and then you can have your serious discussions of policy and politics unsullied by the show-biz element.
Now for the politicians. You, too, have to look at the image issue squarely, analyzing Trump’s plays and your own. You can say, here’s Trump’s image – unfettered, strong, decisive, innovative, unafraid, etc. You can even imitate the jut of his jaw if you like. And you should definitely go meta. This is what Chris Christy did so effectively in destroying Rubio on stage – he just repeats his memorized bits, said Christy, and as a gift to Christy that startled him and us, Rubio recited just such a bit. Over and out for Rubio; it will be replayed for years, I’d guess, at least if opponents are smart. That’s the power of a meta-communication.
And then, having dealt with that, you can say, that’s what he says and how he poses, but is that really what he does? I personally would then use Mitt Romney’s statement about Trump: He’s a phony, a fraud. Mitt gets a lot of things wrong, I’d say, but this one he nailed. Having done that, the door is then open for fact-attacks. Facts themselves cannot win the day, but when mixed with a meta-communication, they have a better chance of working. Such melds should make for great short ads.
And then comes the hard part for Dems – fixing yourself. Given the fact that image presentation and communication is such an important part of the job, it’s amazing how amateurish so many professional pols are. Could they maybe take some acting lessons? I did that years ago and I never learned so much about others and myself. Just learn what an acting “action” is, what effect are you trying to have on the others, and you would go far. Don’t think that just because Trump is hateful he doesn’t have something to teach, because he does.