Discourse

Public Policy or Public Politics

So, what shall we talk about? 

Civil discourse - whilst being civil - needs to be about something.  There is generally little need to admonish interlocutors about the need for civil and effective speech when all they are speaking about is the weather.

"Too bad it is raining today or we ..."

"You pusillanimous cad!  That is not rain; that is drizzle!  That is the problem with you Q wingers - you are always making mountains out of molehills - or in this case, thunderstorms out of mist!  Your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries!"

"Oh yeah?  You Z wingnuts just want everybody to believe that we have no responsibility for this dismal downpour - you minimize it for dark and secret nefarious purposes.  You want everybody to see the world through your fog-colored glasses.  You want children to drown ... I say to you: 'Ni!'"

Then again ... the sum of all weather is climate ... and suddenly out come the daggers.  So, why do weather and climate create such different discursive environments?  Most people understand that there is little we can do - collectively or otherwise - about the weather.  There are many people who believe - rightly or wrongly - that there is something that we can do (and have been doing) about the climate.   The difference is that the discussion of climate has become a public policy debate.

A topic that invites government action ushers politics in as well.  Any aspect of life where government acts becomes politicized.  The books and media provided in public libraries become a political issue those provided in private libraries do not.

From Merriam-Webster:

politics - 1. a : the art or science of government  b : the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy  c : the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government

The major political parties have split (roughly) along the fault lines of fundamental political philosophy - ideology.

Again from Merriam-Webster:

ideology - 1. : visionary theorizing  2. a : a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture  b : a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture   c : the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program

Ideology has a bad rep.  But why?  Some argue that ideology gets in the way of "solving problems".  That position is based on the assumption that government action is the way to solve the problems.  And that is one key aspect of the ideological difference. 

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." 

- President Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address

Every policy question whose answer differs depending on underlying political philosophy - and that would be all of them - will be characterized as "partisan politics" even if it is the application of political principles to solve a problem.  Or rather, because it is the application of political prionciples.

Even asking the question: "Is this a problem that government should address?" or to fail to ask it thereby implicitly answering it with "Yes, of course." is partisan politics.

Never Resort to a Speech-Writing Service.

by Reid Buckley

Packaged brilliance is an illusion.

There are services on the market with billings such as Words to Order, Inc., or Talks Unlimited, Ltd. (I invent the names). These are not scams, exactly. They are factories. And judging from what occasionally gets dumped on my desk, their product is awful.

I dislike knocking any outfit trying to make an honest buck off foolish expectations, but the fancy prospectus of one such bureau advertises just about everything that is dreadful in canned talks. You want humor? They got it for you: a million and one jokes in their database to fit every occasion. Example:

[Do you wish to make] a humorous point about the “national debt”?

 

The incredible thing about the federal debt is that we actually got into this terrible shape by buying from the lowest bidder.

 

Wow.[1] Are your sides aching? Mine are like to split. The attribution is to Robert Orben. Here’s another from the same outfit:

Would you prefer to come off as clever? . . . perhaps you want to make an historical point about these “changing times,” we might provide you with material such as this:

 
The earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. In the first 4599 million years nothing much happened. In the next million, man invented use for his arms, legs and his cave. In the 100,000 years that followed, he invented languages, tools, the wheel, fire, primitive warfare and agriculture. 5,000 years later, he had invented recorded history, chariots and the Dark Ages. The next 500, he invented gunpowder, printing, the steam engine, and the industrial revolution. But in the last 100 years, he invented everything else.

 

The attribution here (for shame) is to the Encyclopedia Britannica. But how about a dose of profundity?  Here’s

[an] informational point about the “importance of learning”:

John Pierce was a renowned scientist who worked for AT&T’s prestigious Bell Laboratories. He was known to many as the father of satellite communications because of his work on the Tel-star in the 1960s. “Knowledge,” said Pierce, “sharpens your vision. Skill makes us effective. But it is the consciousness of ignorance, the consciousness of not understanding, and the curiosity about that which lies beyond that are essential to our progress.” John Pierce’s goal was to broaden his ignorance. To avoid at all cost ‘final wisdom” in which we think we know beyond doubt what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, where the world and the country are headed, where they should be headed.

 

That’s not bad in itself, if you ignore the moral relativism, but it is simply too long for a speech. Quotations should be crisp. Brevity is not only the soul of wit; it’s comprehended. But suppose your immediate need is neither to sound the tocsins of solemnity nor to tickle the audience’s ribs. None of that. You wish to make

[a] motivational point about “winning”:

When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him, he will win.

You must agree that this is priceless. (The attribution, if memory does not deceive, is to Bill Bradley, former Princeton and NBA star, onetime Senator from New Jersey, who back in 1999-2000 engaged himself in practicing slam dunks for the presidency, which missed.) Maybe not as pithy nor as funky as Satchel Paige on the same theme (“Somethin’ might be gamin’ on you”), but good. The service offers other such gems . . .

For example, if you want to make the point that “performance is a marathon and not a sprint,” we might provide you with a quote [they mean a quotation[2]] from Harold Geneen, former CEO of ITT:

Performance is not limited to one quarter or a year’s earnings statement. Performance is an attitude that is built into a company and its people for the long haul. It is something that says a company can repeat what it did last year and continue to grow year after year. It is a positive attitude toward growth and achievement over time.

 

One is stupefied by the wisdom to wit herein above; one is also impelled into postprandial stupor, whether one has lunched heavily or not. 

The nuggets of wisdom or humor or clever philosophical profundity that this speech-writing service can dredge up out of its database for you are extraordinary. Let’s merely touch on what’s so bad, wrong, and pathetic about these wares, and why you should eschew having anything to do with providers of same.

Take the “funny” about the national debt, which for some reason, speaking about the debt, is put between quotation marks, as though it is an invention. All right, so it’s not a howler. Well, yes, that’s the first thing wrong with it. Anyone who would imagine that the joke is good enough to use in a speech is a third-rate mind and should never be up on a podium addressing his fellow human beings. Unless your funny is truly funny, don’t utter it. Second, don’t use any quip that, like this one, is already stale. By the time goodies get into the vats of these services they are bound to taste like a ship’s biscuit after it’s been around the Horn. Third, invent your own. Borrowing humor, unless you have the knack of improving on the original through your raconteurial zest and imagination, is worse than “borrowing” a match; you appropriate under false pretenses what was probably expendable in the first place.

Respecting the reduction on “changing times” that was lifted from the Encyclopedia Britannica, that’s the first mistake: use nothing from the Britannica. Speak no quotation from Bartlett’s. Absolutely renounce a thesaurus. These are crips. They sound so. They betray the shallowness of your mind and the paucity of your culture. But if you are driven to a common source book because you are unable to think for yourself and haven’t read a book through since The Hobbit, avoid choosing an illiterate sample, for Heaven’s sake. In this proudly presented nugget, we are told that man “invented use for his arms, legs, and his cave.” Ignore the asymmetry of the syntax. Invented? That’s the wrong word, egregiously—humiliatingly—so. Man was born with the use of his arms and legs, and man found or took advantage of the shelter of the cave. Man did “invent” language, okay; he did “make use” of tools, which in the beginning were probably a serendipitous discovery, as in the way chimpanzees use twigs to fish out termite larvae and other delicious grubs, or the way bonobos use sex to sublimate aggression. The wheel was an invention proper, and so, we may guess, was the making or causation of fire, not the element itself. But primitive warfare and agriculture? Warfare man engaged in from the first snarl; he didn’t have to “invent” the ugly and violent passions. Survival took care of that. Agriculture, like tools, falls under the category of discovery. And what’s this about inventing the Dark Ages! (Inventing a hindsight!) Not only is the reduction illiterate, it is stupid.

Even worse is the canned wisdom these services offer. It takes a truly original, profound, and philosophical mind to recognize a truly philosophical, profound, and original thought. One is not likely to find such rare breeds in a commercial service. What one does get is middlebrow commonplaces. The sample attributed to Senator Bradley shrieks of middlebrow; the sample attributed to Mr. Geneen is quite ordinary as far as business advice goes, as old as the hills, and also dull. The speaker should, anyhow, avoid dressing himself in borrowed clothes.

Avoid trying to purchase authority on the cheap. Either select a skilled professional speechwriter who knows you inside and out to be your Cyrano, or do it the hard way: write your speeches yourself.