David Frum's Diary on National Review Online
You should read David Frum's article on why Sarah Palin needs to engage with the press and accept interview requests. He argues to conservatives that the Republican tendency to reject the media and broader "elite" opinion is the primary cause of the Bush Failure.
The short version is that by rejecting elite opinion, and rejecting elite gatekeepers, the Bush administration lost all authoritative friends outside of their immediate sphere, and therefore when they needed to persuade a skeptical public, there was no outside authority to help them along.
As he says:
Speaking directly to the people works when the people are intensely engaged. But big publics pay only intermittent attention to politics and policy. When that attention is diverted, specialists and enthusiasts reclaim their usual disproportionate impact.
I think this is a good first step, in terms of conservative self-assessment, but I don't think it goes far enough.
Implicit in Frum's argument, still, is what I find implicit in too many rhetoricians sense of persuasion: that ultimately it is about wielding power. Even here, Frum is advocating a play-nice strategy with elites so that they will be on your side when the chips are down.
But this presupposes that the message is fine, and it only needs to be carried by the correct messenger for it to exert power over the electorate. In this sense, any message will do, so long as the recipient hears it from the right person in the right way.
I reject this premise, and my case example is Colin Powell. Powell was exactly the sort of respected elite who appeared to be outside of the immediate Bush-Cheney sphere. So, when he went to the UN, he was able to ram the Iraq war home the last ten yards based purely on his position as a trusted semi-outside and not on the actual merits of the case. He played along the way that Frum wants of other elites, but in this case it wasn't because the Bush Admin played nice with Powell, it appears instead that he did it as a last act of loyalty to the office of the President.
That act has basically destroyed a huge portion of his reputation.
Most messengers would never do that. A radioactive message remains so, no matter who carries it, and while elite sympathy (as with Powell) can sometimes carry the message a little bit further, and thus exert power, this is a very limited and self-destructive view of the persuasive process.
Republicans say "elite" but really they mean "anyone who disagrees with me." And this is not just where the ability to wield rhetorical power collapses, as Frum argues. But worse, this is where the entire intellectual enterprise of conservatism collapses.
Here's the deal that Frum doesn't get: we engage contrary views in order to develop our own ideas. Engaging critical inquiry isn't just an exercise in polite discourse with the goal of building political capital. It's the legislative, academic, intellectual process.
When you don't talk to people who disagree with you, your brain becomes a hot house flower. When the greenhouse cracks, your ideas die.
This is why the Rovian strategy could never build a true long-term majority. It had no compromises, it never evolved. Rove (and his predecessors) put conservatism into a box, and turned a movement into a fad.
This is why Obama was so good on O'Reilly last night. He drew strength from Papa Bear's belligerence, he drew out Bill's anger, and he developed common ground. This doesn't just flatter Bill, though. It also improves Obama.
That's why Obama has a shot at re-shaping the electorate in a way that Rove never had. We can't let our ideas of rhetoric be dominated by simplistic Platonic notions of a perfect message always in search of just the right messenger. Instead, we have to recognize debate as the place where ideas are formed instead of the place where ideas go to war.
UPDATE: David Frum Responds:
From David Frum.
You write:
Here's the deal that Frum doesn't get: we engage contrary views in order to develop our own ideas. Engaging critical inquiry isn't just an exercise in polite discourse with the goal of building political capital. It's the legislative, academic, intellectual process.
Of course I do get that. Political decision-making requires critical inquiry. But even the wisest decisions will never command unanimous assent. Once the decision is made, there is then required an effort of political persuasion. That's when political communication steps in. And my point is that intelligent communication succeeds better in the long run (even in the medium term) than sloganeering.
I RESPOND:
Well, the important point is that whether he gets this or not, the nuance was missing from his article, and it's an important nuance. It seems implicit in this quick response that he thinks this idea is obvious and goes without saying (I take this implication from his use of the phrase: "of course I do get that" which seems like a condescending head pat). But if this is such an obvious observation, why do we see the idea put into practice so rarely?
My experience teaching has taught me that nothing goes without saying.
I'm also resistant, still, to the idea of "political communication" stepping in. Whenever I hear a phrase like that, I feel like the person who wants to make a change is really just getting tired of debate and wants to bring out the brick bats finally. It's the shift from meaningful discussion back to rhetoric as an exertion of power. However, I do recognize that building consensus is a long, arduous process where ideas evolve and change, and that can often seem to be too long a process when big issues are at stake. But I think the problem in America could hardly be described as Too Much consensus building.
'Cause Alaska racists are completely unselfconscious.
