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Reading a lot of conservative posts last night and this morning (unfortunately, just part of the gig here), I was mystified at the conviction of so many people that the mangled clips of the president’s “you didn’t build that” quote from Roanoke provided a gigantic, “aha” moment in the campaign that would drive Obama from the White House like a whipped Kenyan dog. The money quote that most of them are tossing around comes from the deep thinker Pat Sajak:
It’s as if President Obama climbed into a tank, put on his helmet, talked about how his foray into Cambodia was seared in his memory, looked at his watch, misspelled “potato” and pardoned Richard Nixon all in the same day.
Really? I mean, even if you buy the twisted, mendacious version of the Obama quote that the Romney campaign is retailing, are Americans really so protective of the tender sensibilities of business owners that they are shocked anyone would suggest that each and every one of them built their businesses strictly on their own? (Aside from from roads and bridges and inheritances, how’s about employees as a significant factor in business success?).
But then Dave Weigel explained it to me:
Call it a magic word gaffe—a statement that reveals not what a politician believes, but what you already feared, in your bone marrow, that a politician believes. Democrats still can’t understand why Obama’s speech is supposed to offend anyone. Republicans know that he’s a closet socialist, and that this sentiment only comes out when his energy is flagging….
A normal gaffe is usually discovered by the “mainstream” press, or by a rival campaign, in real time. Think about the Obama campaign hounding John McCain on his “the fundamentals of the economy are sound” as Lehman collapsed. Think about “the private sector is doing fine” becoming proof, for Romney, that Obama saw no problems in the private sector. The magic word gaffe takes more digging, because the media that mostly covers campaigns aren’t primed to hear what partisans hear.
Barack Obama’s presidency has been full of these moments. If you watched Glenn Beck during his Fox News years, you got endless exposure (more than 100 episodes of it, according to Lexis-Nexis) to an Oct. 30, 2008 quote from an Obama rally in Columbia, Mo. “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” said the candidate.
Bingo. The “magic word gaffe” is sort of the inverse of the “dog whistle” whereby pols use banal language that has a special meaning to ideologues (“constitutional conservative” being one notable example; “respect for life” being another). For our right-wing brothers and sisters, progressive (itself a magic word—maybe even a secret handshake—connoting Marxist convictions) discourse is full of these signifiers. “Equality.” “Fairness.” “Giving something back.” “Shared sacrifice.” Constant vigilance for these magic words is how conservatives have convinced themselves that the blandly pragmatic center-left politician Barack Obama pursuing leftover moderate Republican policies is a villain-figure straight out of Atlas Shrugged or (for the godly) Left Behind, hating success and righteousness.
The problem with this stuff, of course, is that the low-information swing voters who will decide the present election will require an awful lot of education to understand the magic word gaffes. They haven’t marinated their brains with Beckian revisionist history and don’t run around pasting “Breitbart Is Here!” posters on telephone poles. Many of them, in fact, probably don’t own businesses and don’t much think of their own bosses—much less the Mitt Romneys of the world—as heroic figures. So the nastiness aimed at Obama will inevitably get a lot coarser than what we hearing today. So what if a few facts get bent or invented along the way? America must be protected!
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Jilli on July 20, 2012 10:31 AM:
Jack Gilchrist, the business owner featured in the ad appeared on Cavuto yesterday...in his commentary he agreed with Obama. He reminisced on his 11th grade teacher that influenced him, the government building roads, and the governments involvement in the internet. Basically disproving romneys premise. (Lawrence O'Donnell covered it last night.)
bo on July 20, 2012 10:40 AM:
Pat Sajak? Pat Sajak? My Gawd! Really? If left to his own devices, this vaccuous dolt would be dangling a tin cup on Hollywood Boulevard collecting loose change from passers-by.
R_GGED INDIVID_ALISM
Can I buy a vowel, Pat?
James M on July 20, 2012 10:42 AM:
An honest question.
Don't want to go too far off-thread, but I really would like for someone to tell me how Fox News is allowed to continue to operate? Sure, I know about free speech, etc., but how can a major network be allowed to repeatedly (or perhaps even systematically) make false statements?
Aren't media outlets licensed over the public airwaves held to some minimum standard of accuracy and fairness? Have the laws been changed?
davidp on July 20, 2012 10:45 AM:
Chait observes today that this sensitivity about language has migrated from the political left to the right. 20 years ago it was liberals who were pouncing on any language that could be deemed offensive. Now it's the very wealthy whose sensibilities we must spare.
stormskies on July 20, 2012 10:48 AM:
James M: I forgot who now but someone a couple of years ago tried to take Fox propaganda to court for purposeful and deliberate lying. If my memories is right this went all the way to the Supreme Court who then ruled that Fox, relative to 'free speech' could lie all they want too.
In Canada, for example, their news media is not allowed to lie whatsoever just to provide some contrast to this.
BillFromPA on July 20, 2012 10:51 AM:
Another good thing (for us) about how the campaigns are going brass-knuckles so early is that Willard's strategy of heavily editing Obama's words to say the opposite of that intended is already being exposed and thus disarmed. It was either on Madow or O'Donnell last night that I saw a respones add by the Good Guys showing the repug smear, then the actual Obama words in context topped off by a shot of Mittens with the graphic, 'He'll say anything'.
If Romney didn't need to change the subject from his taxes to anything else, and damn quick, he could have kept this dirty trick in the bag for use in the final days when there would be less time to debunk the lie.
As for the returns themselves, they're Willard's 'Nixon Tapes', for those old enough to remember Watergate. They exist, they're probably fatal to the Romney campaign, but refusing to release them is just as fatal. Also, Mittens has already started down the path Nixon took. The year he did release is missing a required form declaring the amount of money in off-shore accounts. Just as Nixon let the tapes out in dribs and drabs, partial transcripts with obvious typos, Willard is drip, drip, dripping this out, killing his chances by a thousand cuts in order to avoid the fatal blow hidden in the returns.
Barbara on July 20, 2012 10:51 AM:
I had the same reaction. The notion that this completely mendacious rewrite of what the president said would be a game changing moment rests on the notion that whoever can be persuaded is most troubled by the notion that Obama might be too pro-worker and anti-"job creator." This whole job creator nonsense is itself of questionable import -- that is, it probably does not resonate with most of these people.
It's going to have to be a lot less subtle -- Romney's none to subtle statement that Obama doesn't know what it means to be American is probably the direction this is headed. It's always going to be about race, at least for the next two to three election cycles.
T2 on July 20, 2012 10:57 AM:
at the end of the day, Sununu meant: He doesn't know how to be a white American. Strange how they always forget his mom was white. I suspect the Romney's and Sununu's of the country are more disturbed at that fact, than if his parents were both black.
c u n d gulag on July 20, 2012 11:01 AM:
Almost every great thought can be found in a lyric from a great Beatles, Dylan, Who, Stones, or Paul Simon song.
From "The Boxer":
"Still a man hears what he wants to hear. And disregards the rest..."
stormskies on July 20, 2012 11:16 AM:
The problem with this stuff, of course, is that the low-information swing voters who will decide the present election will require an awful lot of education to understand the magic word gaffes.
************
If this is true then is fucking beyond scary: that the so called 'low information' voter, which is really a nice 'code word' for total fucking stupidity, will decide the fate of all of us. Fucking a...........
Sean Scallon on July 20, 2012 11:22 AM:
So conservatism has basically been reduced to a series of "magic words" or phrases, focus group tested and poll measured, which politicians wittingly (or in this case unwittingly use to fire up the masses in a pro/con direction.
(Sigh).....
bluestatedon on July 20, 2012 11:30 AM:
Since the so-called "mainstream media" by and large has absolutely no interest in calling Romney what he obviously is—a pathological liar—it's up to the Obama campaign to defend itself. They've been far too quiet since Romney's smear, with their only response being a standard tut-tutting by Carney that will reach nobody.
James M on July 20, 2012 11:43 AM:
stormskies: Thanks for the info. I didn't know about the Supreme Court ruling.
@T2's comment:
"at the end of the day, Sununu meant: He doesn't know how to be a white American. Strange how they always forget his mom was white."
It doesn't matter to them, I may be going back too far into the hoary past by invoking the 'One Drop Rule', but I think it applies here. The One Drop Rule was probably the most pernicious aspect of the racial discrimination practiced in the old South. The rule stated that if you had 'one drop', that is, if any percentage, no matter how tiny, of your genealogy was Black, that you were also Black. You could have blond hair and blue eyes: wouldn't matter.
jmano on July 20, 2012 12:01 PM:
I read Sajak's comments, and he really ought to know better. We all know he is a Republican of long standing, and he was probably doing his party's wishes by writing something his low-info, wheel-watching crowd could connect to. The fact that his comments have no basis in either fact or truth is irrelevant to both Sajak and his audience.
beejeez on July 20, 2012 12:27 PM:
Look, I agree with every word that the Prez said, but here's the rub: He didn't say it very well. He jumbled up his statement with phrases he should have known could easily be taken out of context and used to club him with. It goes in the scorebook as an error. Elizabeth Warren's statement, by contrast, was exactly right: passionate, intelligent, logical and very effective. The Prez would have done better to cite her and quote her verbatim. Might've helped her campaign, too.
This isn't characteristic of Obama, who is usually very disciplined as a campaigner and executive. But these are high stakes he's playing for, and even minor mistakes are going to be exploited to the maximum. He needs to step up his game. Maybe he should depend on a teleprompter.
Qalice on July 20, 2012 12:40 PM:
“Equality.” “Fairness.” “Giving something back.” “Shared sacrifice.” I was raised -- by Republican parents in the Catholic Church -- to believe those things were good and admirable. So much of the awfulness in our country today can be traced to the fact that they've been changed to code words for evil by the entire right wing.
DisgustedWithItAll on July 20, 2012 12:40 PM:
If it's hypnotically awesome stupidity you're into for laughs, you can't do better than Krauthammer's latest drivel:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-did-the-state-make-you-great/2012/07/19/gJQAbZOiwW_story.html
This is simply awesome in its cluelessness. And then to see just how seriously the wingnuts are into this, check out the comments. Unbelievable. Just fucking unbelievable.
*** on July 20, 2012 12:52 PM:
beejeez -
Romney campaign took his speech, cut it up in a video editor, reassembled it dishonestly leaving out the sentence before that gives context to make it sound like Obama said something else, and you are blaming Obama for not delivering the speech properly? How do you suggest he deliver a speech that can't be edited on a computer? What is language if wingnuts can redefine it to make it mean whatever they want? This is behaviour that wouldn't be tolerated in a kindergarten, yet here it is from a Presidential candidate.
Are you sure you are following along?
MuddyLee on July 20, 2012 1:37 PM:
Lest we forget, both Atlas Shrugged and the Left Behind series are works of FICTION. Sajak should be thanking the system that set up licenses for TV broadcasts so that he could make a living doing NOTHING USEFUL - same for Vanna. How can these people be so stupid? Remember who their heroes are: Reagan, Bush2, Cheney, Palin, Bachmann....SIGH
beejeez on July 20, 2012 2:29 PM:
Easy there, Disgusted. We're all friends here.
I saw the Obama speech mostly uninterrupted and immediately cringed at his sentence, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that." If he'd simply added the word "alone" at the end of the sentence, it would have been just as effective and defensible without an extended explanation. Compare Obama's halting, unscripted version of the argument and Warren's well-rehearsed version and you'll see what I mean. You couldn't isolate a sentence of Warren's statement and use it against her out of context, and that's why it defies rebuttal.
If the Romney campaign's cutting and pasting Obama's statement was unfair, then it was unfair for the Obama campaign to isolate Romney's "Corporations are people, my friend" statement in its ads. I'm not saying I would find Romney's explanation persuasive, just intelligible -- exactly as Obama's foes would not agree with his statement, but can't deny it's an understandable argument.
By now it should be clear that any serious candidate must choose his words with fierce attention to precision and a pessimistic understanding of how they will be manipulated.
MassachussettsLiberalinDC on July 20, 2012 2:48 PM:
Weigel doesn't point this out, but what he is talking about is confirmation bias. The subject has become very popular in contemporary political science. It's the spin that an individual's own brain does that triggers the "dog whistles" he hears or the "frames" he relates to.
Weigel's "magic word" point is that "build that" is vague enough that the individual gets to decide on their own what "that" refers to and confirmation bias is how dems decide it refers to roads while conservatives decide that it is businesses.
Conservatives ears perked up hearing Obama just as dems ears perked when they heard Romney say "corporations are people".
Doug on July 20, 2012 7:57 PM:
It's an excellent example of just how insulated from reality too many of these people are.
To THEM, OF COURSE it means President Obama is anti-business because they KNOW that's what Mr. Obama IS. As do all their friends and associates because, after all, why waste time talking to people who so OBVIOUSLY are WRONG?. Mr. Obama's actual record and actions don't matter - they KNOW what he really is!
This does NOT preclude that the recognition they're backing a loser is sinking in and desperation is setting in as a reason...