Election Platitudes and Cliches that Suck

 

It’s the day after the Iowa Caucus and start of the election cycle, so I thought I’d list all the campaign platitudes and cliches that have already become a sheer nuisance, beginning with, I will keep America safe.

Okay, national security is obviously a big issue in this campaign, and people want to know what we’re going to do to keep America safe. Fortunately, the candidates have a great message: “We will keep America safe.” Thank God! Marco Rubio plans to keep this country safe — as opposed to Rand Paul, whose campaign slogan is “I hope ISIS wins,” and Bernie Sanders, who’s gone out of his way to emphasize that he’s pro-Putin.

I hope the sarcasm is clear. The fact is, nobody is against national security, so saying over and over again “I will keep this country safe” amounts to nothing, because every other candidate says the same thing. You might as well say, “When I’m president, I will not be a Nazi.” Great, I didn’t know someone had other plans?

I will make lot of jobs.

Just like national security. Nobody is against employment.

Here’s an ad for my ads.

This is a very special sort of silly that I’ve mostly seen from Marco Rubio on Fox. (I’d include the ad, but I can’t find it online.) The ad essentially shows people watching Rubio campaign ads, dutifully nodding their heads. The ad tries to show normal people responding to Marco Rubio, even though no normal person has ever been so enamored of a campaign ad. In fact, the whole purpose of the ad must be to show voters how they ought to react to his ads. Perhaps if this ad doesn’t work out, they can shoot footage of people reacting positively to the ad showing people watching the ad and post it as an ad, so next time people react correctly.

Jesus endorsed me.

Obviously, Republicans love to talk about religion and faith in the primaries, because evangelicals vote a lot. However, there’s a fine line between discussion and pandering that is crossed … always. Take, for instance, this Rubio ad-cum-Sunday-School-lecture:

While it’s a little more believable when candidates like Santorum and Huckabee make their whole campaign about social issues, when Rubio and Cruz suddenly become expert theologians who’ve discovered a passage in the Bible endorsing ethanol subsidies, it starts to wear thin. Evangelicals see right through the pandering.

VETERANS! VETERANS! VETERANS!

If there’s any issue more transparently politically exploited than faith, it’s veterans. Of course everyone loves the military. Veterans deserve tremendous respect. But respect doesn’t necessarily mean pandering. In fact, pandering is somewhat disrespectful, since it assumes gullibility. When you habitually end every speech, “God Bless the Veterans!” you inherently stop meaning it. It’s like the prayer you say before dinner: You memorized the words, but it doesn’t mean much to you anymore. If it does, it’s probably because you’ve thought it through — not as a tune or rhyme, but as a diction that expresses actual thought.

This is something I’d like to see Americans work on in general. Instead of reciting platitudes about how great the troops are at every opportunity, take the time, occasionally, really to think about the importance of the armed forces. It will yield more respect because you passionately understand what you’re saying.

 

Leadership!

Perhaps this is just a libertarian thing, but I don’t believe the president is a leader. The Republican consensus seems to be that Americans want a “leader.” Jeb Bush loves to push this idea of leadership above all else:

It really comes down to when a modern president is supposed to lead. I’m a free-marketer, so I don’t want them leading the economy. I doubt most conservatives think their goal on social issues is to lead people’s social lives. Separation of powers means the president isn’t supposed to be a heavy-handed leader, but rather a manager.

Indeed, the president rarely leads, even as commander-in-chief. He doesn’t go to the front lines or give direct commands, so he isn’t a leader. He’s a manager. The job is to plan and make decisions, much like a CEO (indeed, the president is basically the CEO of the government). We don’t usually call CEOs leaders because they’re not people to whom individuals look up. A president as leader sounds to me like exactly what the Founders sought to avoid. If you believe that government is a social contract undertaken for security, then government is more of a security-provision service than a commanding entity. I pay UPS to provide my mail. I don’t typically call its CEO my leader. I pay the president to protect me. So why would I call him my leader? I pay him to protect me. He could be my leader if I worked for him as a government employee, though that doesn’t necessarily mean he does lead me, even if he has the power to do it. Even if you believe leadership is huge for a president, the platitudes are still dumb because leaders don’t typically brag about what great leaders they are.

Look, over there! He supports amnesty!

This has been yuuuge this cycle. Ted Cruz saying a vote for Marco Rubio is a vote for amnesty. Donald Trump saying … everything. Thankfully, this pure hyperbole was actually touched upon in the last debate.

It’s a fact: Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are not the only anti-amnesty candidates. Nobody has been much more consistent on this than the others. And the difference between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio is not 300 million Mexicans. This is pandering (or anti-leadership) to the core: Seeing immigration as a big issue and jumping on the bandwagon just because everyone else is.

Finally:

These platitudes and tricks are important. They’re a major reason such incompetent people get elected. This is key to the split between Trump and the establishment, and both sides need to realize it’s a problem of laziness. Trump’s problem is that he gives no specifics and just tells people what they want to hear. His supporters need to realize this won’t fix anything. The establishment needs to realize they do the exactly same thing — just slightly more eloquently.

Thank you very much. Jesus endorsed this post because it keeps America safe. Remember, it’s a matter of public record whether you agree with this work of leadership or not, and if not, you support amnesty. God bless the troops!

Published in Elections, General, Politics
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  1. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    Is it really appropriate to call the President the CEO of the government?  Business CEOs are creators of policy, not just its executors, subject only to extremely broad guidance by the Board of Directors.  There is nothing in a typical corporation at all analogous to Congress, let alone the Supreme Court.

    “Chief Operating Officer” would probably be more like it.

    • #1
  2. JRez Inactive
    JRez
    @JRez

    I just heard this one live:  “We Will Win At Everything!”

    Seems completely reasonable and objectively measurable, right?

    • #2
  3. Stoicous Inactive
    Stoicous
    @Stoicous

    David Foster:Is it really appropriate to call the President the CEO of the government? Business CEOs are creators of policy, not just its executors, subject only to extremely broad guidance by the Board of Directors. There is nothing in a typical corporation at all analogous to Congress, let alone the Supreme Court.

    “Chief Operating Officer” would probably be more like it.

    Perhaps, but the point is still the same. The people at the very top aren’t leaders, they are managers. They decide what needs to be done, they don’t go around motivating people to do it.

    The idea of the Board of Directors and the Officers and the Congress and the Executive are somewhat analagous. The balance of power may be different, but the structure is similar. The BoD/Congress decides what must be done. The Executive does it, however the people at the very top of the Executive make the mid-level decisions necessary to get the job done.

    • #3
  4. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Stoicous: You might as well say “I will not be a Nazi in Office”. Great, I didn’t know someone had other plans?

    Yes, I think one or two candidates have other plans.

    • #4
  5. Quinn the Eskimo Member
    Quinn the Eskimo
    @

    I would love to hear the candidates talk to people like they were talking to adults of reasonable intelligence.  I am not sure how much the candidates, the media or the audience want that.

    To me, the model of that is the “Time for Choosing” speech.  I don’t know what it sounded like in 1964, but it sounds sophisticated by the standard of 2016.

    I know that there are questions where I feel conflicted, like on the NSA and where the proper boundaries are in the security versus privacy debate.  I can handle a serious talk and not something that devolves into Big Brother versus letting the terrorists win.  That sort of thing makes it harder for me to decide, not easier and given the seriousness of the questions involved and I resent that.

    • #5
  6. Byron Horatio Inactive
    Byron Horatio
    @ByronHoratio

    You and I don’t want a “leader,” but I suspect most do. It’s an unseemly sentiment in a republic and completely incompatible with the idea of a self-reliant citizenry where every man’s home is his castle. But I realize this libertarian sentiment goes against human nature and our evolutionary predisposition.

    • #6
  7. livingthehighlife Inactive
    livingthehighlife
    @livingthehighlife

    With what we know about Hillary’s classified email, is “I will keep America safe” a cliche or a fact?

    The fact is Hillary won’t.  And there’s strong doubts about Bernie.

    • #7
  8. Johnny Dubya Inactive
    Johnny Dubya
    @JohnnyDubya

    I also hate it when the president or a candidate begins a statement by saying, “As I’ve said many times,…”

    Of course you’ve said it many times! You’re a politician and you talk about this stuff for a living. Sometimes, it’s said to the press with an air of annoyance, as a parent says to a child, “How many times have I told you to put your dishes in the dishwasher?!”

    • #8
  9. dbeck Inactive
    dbeck
    @dbeck

    Indications are tax increases won’t fund the dems agenda alone. Big cuts to Defense (especially R & D) to pay for infrastructure redos and a means test for Social Security will provide some of the money.  If you have any sort of other retirement payments you can forget social security.  Bernie has said so and HRC has been mum. The dems don’t think Defense is important. Neither of them will go after ISIS in a meaningful way. Both have made hollow statements about foreign policy, same as the repubs.

    The steady social reengineering of America is the prime objective, work on the infrastructure a distant second. It is important to drive the rich out of the country and to increase the number of poor, dependant people. I can’t wait for HRC to set up a private server for POTUS and start funneling money to the Crime Family Foundation for the contracts awarded for the great rebuild of our infrastructure.

    Keeping America “safe” is in the eye of the beholder. What America is becoming is something else, something unrecognizable unless you are the mafia.

    • #9
  10. Dustoff Inactive
    Dustoff
    @Dustoff

    I would comment, but all the Oxygen has been sucked out of the room.

    • #10
  11. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    dbeck: It is important to drive the rich out of the country and to increase the number of poor, dependant people.

    It’s also important to increase the number of rich, dependent people.

    • #11
  12. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    Stoicous:Perhaps, but the point is still the same. The people at the very top aren’t leaders, they are managers. They decide what needs to be done, they don’t go around motivating people to do it.

    The people at the very top, if they are any good, are indeed leaders.  They motivate their direct reports directly, which in turn has an impact on the subordinates of those DRs and so on down, and they also motivate everyone in the company indirectly by the way they position the company and the incentive systems they create.  I doubt you’d find all that many people in Apple who felt that Steve Jobs wasn’t a leader…even though some might not feel that his leadership was good.  Similarly in the military, Eisenhower was a leader despite the vast size of his organization.

    • #12
  13. Spicy Food Hiccups Inactive
    Spicy Food Hiccups
    @SpicyFoodHiccups

    Stoicous: You might as well say, “When I’m president, I will not be a Nazi.”

    The first half of that one is a pain, too.

    “Gee…I was going to vote for that guy, but then he said, ‘if I’m elected’.  I just don’t know if I can vote for someone without the confidence to say ‘when’,” said no voter ever.

    • #13
  14. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    I will eliminate the IRS.  Proclaimed by almost everybody.  No, you won’t.  Even if we abolish income taxes and replace it with a sales tax, there will still be an agency that collects the payments and investigates potential tax fraud.

    From the supporters, not from the candidate himself: Trump loves America.  OK, I believe you.  But does that make him special?  By what formulation did you determine that your guy loves America more than the other candidates?  Is it just that he expresses the most anger at foreigners, or do you think that Carly Fiorina or Rand Paul are rooting for Iran to conquer us?

    • #14
  15. Man With the Axe Inactive
    Man With the Axe
    @ManWiththeAxe

    The cliché, such as “I will keep America safe” is a starting point. The candidate should follow up with the particulars. “I will increase the number of ships in the navy. I will ask Congress to declare war on ISIS.”

    • #15
  16. SParker Member
    SParker
    @SParker

    The Reticulator:

    Stoicous: You might as well say “I will not be a Nazi in Office”. Great, I didn’t know someone had other plans?

    Yes, I think one or two candidates have other plans.

    If so, they’d be best advised not to say “I will not be a Nazi in Office,” as it introduces a possibility most of us likely weren’t entertaining (and is not overly reassuring if we were).  Like a total stranger saying “don’t worry, I won’t hurt you” out of the blue as they offer to help you with your groceries.  It tips off the about-to-be victim.  There is no up-side to “I will not be a Nazi in Office” as a political slogan.

    • #16
  17. Nancy Inactive
    Nancy
    @Nancy

    Here’s the one I hate:  “On my first day in office….” We all know that on the president’s first day in office he makes a speech and attends a lot of parties.

    • #17
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