Is there a more polished way to message the New Democratic Creed: "Vote for me 'cause, um, heh-heh-heh"?

In their recall-election debate last night, Wisconsin Governorissimo Scott Walker says to his Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett: "I worship at the toes of billionaires and am a sniveling crook besides, and did I mention my lovely full head of naturally dark hair? Is it any wonder that voters want me, you union-coddling old coot?"

by Ken

Just as I was preparing to fulminate a little about the art and science of political "messaging," I made the mistake of glancing at the POLITICS section of this morning's washingtonpost.com e-rundown (you can click on it to enlarge, if you're sufficiently strong of stomach):


Apart from the prevailing disgustingness -- the exceptions being Vice President Biden, talking about the tragedy of the loss of his first family, and the all-around-unspeakable John Edwards -- what's interesting is that these are tales of Republican loathsomeness. On some level the electorate does register the slime factor, but somehow when it comes to GOP perfidy, the way it generally registers is in general revulsion at the political system, of the "They all suck" variety. Traditional Republican consultants don't mind this, because depressing the vote has the effect of magnifying the electoral oomph of their core voters: the hard-core deranged.

One of the few recent Borowitz Report dispatches that I didn't pass along here was Thursday's witty-as-usual "U.S. Sends Emergency Shipment of Negative Ads to Egypt Aid to Fledgling Democracy," which began:

In what it is calling a mission to support a fledgling democracy in the Middle East, the United States this week sent an emergency shipment of negative ads to Cairo.

Explaining the secret mission, a State Department official said that with its first democratic elections getting underway, "Egypt had no access to the mother's milk of any working democracy: vicious campaign ads full of lies and distortions." . . .

Actually, it was the e-blurb for the story about the Virginia GOP Senate primary that got me thinking (this time) about the paradox of political messaging. For how long now have we been talking about a November showdown between GOP former Gov. and Sen. George "Macaca Man" Allen and nominal Dem former Gov. Tim Kaine? So long and so certainly that it hadn't even dawned on me that the Macaca Man first has to get through a primary. I saw that blurb, "The recent rejection of a gay judge is among the dividing lines in the final GOP primary debate" (referring to the shocking recent episode where the state's House of Delegates allowed itself to be intimidated by rampagingly unapologetic homophobes) and realized that there are shadings to be observed even among the slime-bound, who vie to persuade GOP core voters that they've got the most suitably slimy message.

It says something about the state of our political discourse, I think, that the most honest and illuminating media voices belong to the likes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and of course Andy Borowitz. At least there's the added benefit that for the brief moments when they're holding forth, we get to laugh at it.

Then we turn back to reality. It's always still there. It's not going anywhere except maybe down. Possible exception: As we continue to ignore looming catastrophes like climate change, it may be going where we all are: down the tubes.

Even there we can see the depressing lowering of the already-too-low-to-believe right-wing standard of attention to reality. The standard right-wing response to the climate-change issue used to be: We need more studies. Perhaps because the very idea of "studies" suggests some adherence to a "knowledge" standard, this has evolved into: There ain't no such thing, you liberal devil, and your mother wears sweat socks.

And yet, somehow, the right-wingers continue to get away with it. One of my larger frustrations with out present-day political swamp is the Messaging Gap. The true right-wing message, after all, is something like:

I'm garbage; you're worse -- it's a marriage made by God in his Hell Heaven. And did I mention that if you don't vote for me, I'll make the world blow up the world will blow up.

Yet by the time the silver-tongued right-wing messagers have worked their magic, it's all about God, country, and puppies.

It goes without saying -- doesn't it? -- that Republicans don't believe those beautifully polished fake messages crafted for them by master strategists like Frank Luntz. That all falls under the heading of "stuff we say," which may or may not having anything to do with "what we do." It occurs to me that the Incorporated Willard may be the ultimate case: The man will say absolutely anything he thinks will get him either votes or campaign cash, and gets positively indignant when he's called to account for stuff he says.

RIGHT-WINGERS HATE, HATE, HATE HAVING
STUFF THEY'VE SAID QUOTED BACK AT THEM

As I've noted a number of times, this has become an exceedingly popular right-wing response, this gut-wrenched outrage at being confronted with stuff that they've in fact said or done. Dating back at least to the mercifully unsuccessful struggle to get ultra-right-wing zealot Robert Bork confirmed to the Supreme Court, few things aggrieve right-wing dears more self-righteously than quoting back to them stuff they've, you know, said. The Bork failure-to-achieve-confirmation spectacle gave rise to the term "Borking," which entered the political language without even ironic recognition that all those dastardly things said about the victim of Borking may in fact be 100 percent true. (No, 200 percent true!)

AND IT'S NOT AS IF WE DON'T HAVE
EXPERT MESSAGERS ON OUR SIDE

And they have the added advantage that their messages are true. I was just looking back at the chunklets of wisdom from Drew Westen I've quoted in previous posts. (Do yourself a favor and lick on the "Drew Westen" label at the bottom of this post, and then do yourself an even larger favor by clicking through -- as I always urged -- to read the full sources from which the chunklets were chunked.

Drew's cases are so rigorously as well as eloquently argued that, while they're quotable as hell (almost every sentence and paragraph in a Drew Westen piece can be usefully excerpted), the quotes don't fairly represent the rigor and sensibleness of the arguments. But let me just one example, from the September 2010 pre-election period (originally quoted in a post called "Can 2010 electoral disaster be averted? Drew Westen and Mike Lux weigh in"):

What Democrats have needed to offer the American people is a clear narrative about what and who led our country to the mess in which we find ourselves today and a clear vision of what and who will lead us out. That narrative would have laid a roadmap for our elected officials and voters alike, rather than making each legislative issue a seemingly discrete turn onto a dirt road. That narrative might have included -- and should include today -- some key elements: that if the economy is tumbling, it's the role of leadership and government to stop the free-fall; that if Wall Street is gambling with our financial security, our homes, and our jobs, true leaders do not sit back helplessly and wax eloquent about the free market, they take away the dice; that if the private sector can't create jobs for people who want to work, then we'll put Americans back to work rebuilding our roads, bridges, and schools; that if Big Oil is preventing us from competing with China's wind and solar energy programs, then we'll eliminate the tax breaks that lead to dysfunctional investments in 19th century fuels and have a public-private partnership with companies that will create the clean, safe fuels of the 21st century and the millions of good American jobs that will follow.

Call me slow, but it's only gradually dawned on me that there's a perfectly good reason so many Democrats -- including the Obama White House, to pick a random example -- don't avail themselves of Drew Westen's brilliant messaging. The reason is that they don't believe in the messages, or at least are afraid to be caught publicly believing in them. Maybe there's some depressing opposite-parallelism here: Republicans who don't believe the cunning button-pushing messages crafted for them by their master messagers have no trouble spouting them, while Democrats are unable or unwilling even to pretend to believe in truth-anchored messages that offer us a possible way out.

Is it any wonder we turn to Jon S, Stephen C, and Andy B?

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