Why Simple Rhetoric Works
This is not a political blog. But, throughout this year, which has held more elections worldwide than any in human history, it has stricken me how basic linguistic themes can shape our world. About two weeks ago, I decided to try to put together a piece on how, in an ever more complex world, the simplest language remains just as, if not increasingly, effective. Life intervened, and I failed to finish it before the US election. But given its outcome, the idea seems all the more apposite — and urgent.
America’s next president is infamous for rhetoric that is crude, insulting, and sometimes quite vicious. Much has been made, usually by his critics, of how calling opponents scum, or enemies of the people, divides the country. But of course, divisive rhetoric is nothing new. For decades, Americans have called each other fascists or communists, alternatively. George W. Bush was regularly denounced as a war criminal. Objectively, these are far graver labels than “Crooked Hillary,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Lyin’ Ted,” etc. But somehow, Mr. Trump’s attacks cut through, where others fall flat. Why?
Mr. Trump may be peculiarly un-elevated among world historic figures, but he is not the first to observe that punchy words and phrases hit home far more than abstruse policy arguments. Winston Churchill was famous for his insistence on using almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon words, which form the ancient core of the English language, rather than Latin or Greek ones. In his famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech, the only non-Germanic word is “surrender.” (To demonstrate, I have italicised all non-Anglo-Saxon words in the paragraph below — I have done a more extensive analysis of this theme elsewhere.)
It is not for nothing that the man most commonly compared to Mr. Trump, Boris Johnson, is a great admirer of Mr. Churchill. He, too, favours straight talk that hits voters in the gut — except, of course, when he describes opponents as “great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies.” “Get Brexit Done” was a bizarre slogan in an election in which the principal question was how to pull off Brexit. But it worked just as well for him in 2019 as Mr. Trump’s did in 2016 — and now 2024. Whatever else Mr. Churchill may have thought of those races, it is worth noting that the only non-Anglo-Saxon word in “Make America Great Again,” “Build the Wall,” and “Drain the Swamp” is the name of the country.
Donald Trump is, of course, not the only one in American politics who has figured this out. Barack Obama’s dual platforms of “Hope” and “Change” are as unforgettable as they are easy to understand. Mr. Churchill always favoured triples, but why force voters into the extra effort? These words effectively reflect the vibes of the campaign, just as Mr. Trump’s do his.
Former future vice president Tim Walz won his place on the ticket by giving Mr. Trump a taste of his own medicine, mocking him and his acolytes as “weird.” I would rather be weird than Hitler, but schoolyard bullying cuts through where 20th Century political analogies do not reach.
Pithy phrases, when turned around as attack lines, can also be dangerous. In 2012, Mitt Romney’s comments to wealthy donors on how “the 47%” of Americans who pay no net income tax are basically freeriders did more than any Obama policy argument to sink his campaign. Democrats relished it then, but it was their turn to wince four years later, when Hillary Clinton described her opponent’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” Whatever the context, for most voters, it is the sound bite that matters.
By eerie contrast to all this, canny but immoral political operators can use technical-sounding terms to lift a horrifying reality out of everyday consciousness. Communist regimes liked to refer to “liquidating” unwanted “elements,” which is a sanguine way to describe murdering millions of people. China labels its policy of wiping out Muslim culture in Xinjiang as “combatting religious extremism.” Even in democratic systems, Western governments buy themselves some political latitude by describing civilians they accidentally blow up as “collateral damage.”
Thus, effective political rhetoric is built on style, but substance can matter, too. Some of the best slogans are those that are not only simple in form, but evoke a clear image. After all, no one likes to think of him- or herself in a basket of deplorables. An image like that can capture imaginations even in the most repressive societies. In China, government censors have been pulling their hair out trying to combat the social media trend of “lying flat,” a lament among young people unable to rise up in an increasingly challenging economy.
A stark image can shine through even when the message is not true. Earlier this year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that the opposition wanted to seize women’s gold jewelry, so it could be melted down and used to finance welfare for Muslims. The Congress party disavowed this and denounced it as racist slander, but the image stuck in the minds of Mr. Modi’s supporters.
Mr. Trump caught similar flak for claiming, without offering evidence, that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets. Democrats called him a racist and a liar. But they could not help that this shocking claim shifted the national conversation back to immigration, a strong point for their opponent.
These are fairly infamous examples, but even respectable politicians sometimes lapse into messaging whose catchiness is matched only by its substantive vapidity. Republicans of many political stripes back “building the wall,” but seldom bother to offer details of how that would be feasible or effective. An even broader array of Democrats regularly call for rich people or corporations to “pay their fair share,” without ever specifying what that share is, in a tax system in which the top 10% already pay all net income tax. “Pay” is not an Anglo-Saxon word, but both slogans otherwise have all the zip of compelling popular rhetoric.
Sometimes, a good slogan is so catchy that it outlives its usefulness and becomes a liability. Richard Nixon’s promise to end the Vietnam War with “peace with honor” flopped so spectacularly that people readily remembered it 46 years later, during the shambolic US pullout from Afghanistan.
In 2015, Chancellor Angela Merkel was asked if Germany were really capable of absorbing the million refugees she had just invited in. She declared that, “Wir schaffen das” — we can handle it! As problems multiplied and the electorate decided that maybe they did not want to schaffen das, the slogan became at best a joke, and at worst an attack line.
More recently, public health authorities reassured Americans that a proposed lockdown would take only “two weeks to slow the spread” of Covid-19. It worked, for a time. But, as Draconian restrictions dragged on for months and years, the apparent disingenuousness became a formidable cudgel for lockdown skeptics. The CDC could point out that circumstances had changed, and science is ever-evolving. But, as the noted “Great Communicator” Ronald Reagan observed, “When you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
In her brief, Icarian arc on the front pages of American life, Kamala Harris was at her best when she kept things simple. In late summer, as Donald Trump grouchily and wordily lamented how unfair it was to switch things up on him, the new Democrat standard-bearer chose the Obama-esque message of “Joy.” Her poll numbers surged. Meanwhile, her runningmate found a pejorative label that changed the way people saw Republicans, just as Mr. Trump himself had done to so many of his rivals.
In the last weeks of the campaign, however, Ms. Harris and her backers reverted to the same tactics that helped doom Joe Biden’s campaign. Their opponents were no longer “weird,” but “threats to democracy,” as explained in her advertisements by an anti-Trump general citing a political science text on fascism. By contrast, Mr. Trump returned to the same punchy messaging that made him a television star, then an effective candidate, and now, yet again, the most powerful man in the free world.
It may seem paradoxical that, in an increasingly complex world, political messaging is, if anything, getting simpler. Part of this is attributable to new technology, which erodes our attention spans and, arguably, our language skills. But, in a way, it also reflects the entrenchment of popular democracy.
The Chinese Communist Party does not, typically, resort to simplistic sloganeering. And any study of 19th Century politics shows that discourse was more elevated when the franchise was more restricted. But in a more broadly inclusive world, politicians must appeal to millions of voters who do not much know or care for politics.
It is no accident that Winston Churchill won his way up at a time when the radio was transforming how many people got their information — nor that his German nemesis was the pioneer of television campaigning. By the next such revolution in 2008, Barack Obama captured people’s imagination with single words.
One might hope that, in the future, our discourse can rise above the level of fifth graders. As I have examined elsewhere, dovetailing trends in technology and language may pour cold water on that aspiration — but it is possible. For now, however, the future belongs to those who can make their ideas clear.
