Progressive Rhetoric: What Are We For?
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What are we good for?
Don't answer "Absolutely nothing." And don't give that same tired, disorganized list we've been throwing out for years.
Sure, we're for education, health-care, equality, choice, civil liberties, low taxes, welfare, the environment and every other Progressive cause. And that's well and good. But we're failing to pitch them in the context of the greater Progressive frame.
What's the fall-out from this failure?
Ask your average North Carolinian what liberals are about and they'll tell you. They'll tell you that we want to violate marriage, steal their guns, and abort their babies.
Throw a parade and we're there. But don't ask us, by no means can you ask us, why we show up at both the gay pride parade and the summit on global warming.
Progressives offer a list of views, what James Carville rightly refers to as a litany. We're like a preacher delivering the same old sermon to a sparse, sleeping congregation.
We can't weave together a narrative. Not for the life of the party. And that's what's at stake: the life of the party.
How shall we repair our rhetoric?
Let's look to history. What Progressive messages have resonated, have survived? How have past Progressives framed liberal ideals in ways that won widespread popular support?
Have a sense of humor. Don't always play nice.
Okay, so Wilson crashed and burned toward the end because he got carried away. But his initial rhetoric found an audience. We can probably reap a few lessons about how to ennoble and galvanize the American people.
Compassionate yet strong. A Liberal with teeth.
Truly Progressive. Patriotism. Community. Integrity. Strength. Freedom.
Kennedy's presidency was unremarkable. But his election was not--it was phenomenal. Not in small part due to the tragedy of his assassination, John F. Kennedy has been deified, elevated to a pedestal in the pantheon of American mythology. Neither the morbid appeal of his demise nor his good looks fully account for his status. How did Kennedy become the JFK of legend, a figure the entire country grieved? How did Camelot, his court of young elite intellectuals, summon popular support and capture the imagination of a nation?
Anti-war without being weak, evoking the imagery of slaughtered sons and daughters. Carter did not win re-election, but he had to be elected to be defeated as an incumbent.
In Carter's gaffes, we may unearth vital lessons. Americans insist upon confidence in their leaders, would rather be "Strong and wrong than weak and right" as President Bill Clinton asserted. The people want to be lead, not asked. And they don't want Amy Carter, aged 12, asked.
Clinton insisted upon a common link, a unified stake in welfare and in social reform programs. He did not suggest or plead for the acceptance of this link but asserted it in ennobling and empowering rhetoric.
A virtuoso in the rhetoric of unity, Clinton simultaneously establishes the Progressive ideal of community and strikes back at divisive Republican tactics.
Review failed campaigns. Scrutinize successful ones. Lobby fellow Progressives for a return to the big picture, to larger concepts of community and freedom.
Don't answer "Absolutely nothing." And don't give that same tired, disorganized list we've been throwing out for years.
Sure, we're for education, health-care, equality, choice, civil liberties, low taxes, welfare, the environment and every other Progressive cause. And that's well and good. But we're failing to pitch them in the context of the greater Progressive frame.
What's the fall-out from this failure?
Ask your average North Carolinian what liberals are about and they'll tell you. They'll tell you that we want to violate marriage, steal their guns, and abort their babies.
Throw a parade and we're there. But don't ask us, by no means can you ask us, why we show up at both the gay pride parade and the summit on global warming.
Progressives offer a list of views, what James Carville rightly refers to as a litany. We're like a preacher delivering the same old sermon to a sparse, sleeping congregation.
We can't weave together a narrative. Not for the life of the party. And that's what's at stake: the life of the party.
How shall we repair our rhetoric?
Let's look to history. What Progressive messages have resonated, have survived? How have past Progressives framed liberal ideals in ways that won widespread popular support?
"A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits."
Woodrow Wilson
Have a sense of humor. Don't always play nice.
"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand."
Woodrow Wilson
Okay, so Wilson crashed and burned toward the end because he got carried away. But his initial rhetoric found an audience. We can probably reap a few lessons about how to ennoble and galvanize the American people.
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
John F. Kennedy
Compassionate yet strong. A Liberal with teeth.
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
John F. Kennedy, Inaugural address, January 20, 1961
Truly Progressive. Patriotism. Community. Integrity. Strength. Freedom.
"Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation."
John F. Kennedy
Kennedy's presidency was unremarkable. But his election was not--it was phenomenal. Not in small part due to the tragedy of his assassination, John F. Kennedy has been deified, elevated to a pedestal in the pantheon of American mythology. Neither the morbid appeal of his demise nor his good looks fully account for his status. How did Kennedy become the JFK of legend, a figure the entire country grieved? How did Camelot, his court of young elite intellectuals, summon popular support and capture the imagination of a nation?
"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children."
Jimmy Carter
Anti-war without being weak, evoking the imagery of slaughtered sons and daughters. Carter did not win re-election, but he had to be elected to be defeated as an incumbent.
"I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day before I came here to ask her what the most important issue was, she said she thought nuclear weaponry."
Jimmy Carter, 1980 Debate with Reagan
In Carter's gaffes, we may unearth vital lessons. Americans insist upon confidence in their leaders, would rather be "Strong and wrong than weak and right" as President Bill Clinton asserted. The people want to be lead, not asked. And they don't want Amy Carter, aged 12, asked.
"By lifting the weakest, poorest among us, we lift the rest of us as well."
Bill Clinton
Clinton insisted upon a common link, a unified stake in welfare and in social reform programs. He did not suggest or plead for the acceptance of this link but asserted it in ennobling and empowering rhetoric.
"For too long we've been told about "us" and "them." Each and every election we see a new slate of arguments and ads telling us that "they" are the problem, not "us." But there can be no "them" in America. There's only us."
Bill Clinton
A virtuoso in the rhetoric of unity, Clinton simultaneously establishes the Progressive ideal of community and strikes back at divisive Republican tactics.
Review failed campaigns. Scrutinize successful ones. Lobby fellow Progressives for a return to the big picture, to larger concepts of community and freedom.
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Exactly what the progressives need. Screaming at the top of our lungs about what is wrong is not going to do anything about fixing it. Since you invoked Carville, so will I. Why can't we sell our image? Part of it is that we are too flowery, too verbose, and too seemingly self righteous. We have been allowed to be branded as immoral and weak on terror. Out of touch intellectuals who are racist and want to subvert out country.
Look at all the good we have done for the country. Yet, somehow we are the bad guys, the weak guys. Unless we get more teeth back, we are going to fade into irrelevance.
Wonderful post. Hope veryone takes it to heart.