Parsing the GOP, word for word B4
KB K KLMNO pledge from B1
to the people where it belongs.” I wasn’t involved with this document, but I have moderated almost 50 instant-response focus groups with thousands of voters this year, and I do have a good idea of what they really want. So, how does the Pledge stack up against the Contract — and might it lead to similar success? Let’s break them down, point by point. First, their names: “A Pledge to Amer- ica” vs. the “Contract With America.” I have to give the edge to the 1994 version, though I have an even better word. No- body trusts political promises or politi- cians’ pledges, but a “commitment” sug- gests seriousness and a willingness to
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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2010
the Contract was in the perception that it was a binding document with an en- forcement clause. “If we break this con- tract, throw us out. We mean it.” That was written in large, bold letters at the bottom of the TV Guide version, and it is one of the most powerful statements in the document. For the first time in American politics, a group of elected of- ficials explicitly invited their constitu- ents to toss them from office if they failed to do what they promised. (It took Americans 12 years to take them up on that offer.)
By comparison, the Pledge ends with a
“call to action” — always a good ap- proach — but then it appeals to “men and women of good will and good heart.” Who talks like that outside of, say, Sher- wood Forest? Advantage: Contract.
Frank I. Luntz will discuss this article Monday at 10 a.m. at
put your reputation on the line. I con- ducted polls on this wording this year, and an overwhelming 81 percent of Americans preferred a “commitment,” while just 10 percent chose a “promise” and only 9 percent a “pledge.” The American people in 2010, above all else, want politicians to demonstrate that Washington works for America, not the other way around. The full-page, double-sided, tear-out ad for the Con- tract With America that ran in TV Guide in October 1994 did just that, featuring two simple but powerful sentences: “A campaign promise is one thing. A signed contract is quite another.” The authors of the 2010 document could have done better than “pledge.” Second, let’s look at the documents’
bipartisan appeal. The words “Clinton” and “Democrat” were missing from the 1994 Contract and the TV Guide ad for a reason. Late at night on Sept. 25, 1994, I sat at a computer at the Republican Na- tional Committee and removed the draft Contract’s four remaining references to Clinton and the Democrats because vot- ers were crying out for a nonpartisan ap- proach to governing. The 2010 Pledge is more overtly critical of the Democrats in Congress and the White House, but more important, it is considerably more anti-government in its language. Calling Washington a “red tape factory” conjures a compelling visual, and suggesting that the priorities of the people “have been ignored, even mocked by the powers-that-be in Washington” is just the sort of red-meat rhetoric that fires up the grass roots. But the most pas- sionate descriptor in the document, “an arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites,” hits exactly what independents think. Independents deter- mine who wins elections, so on that score, the Pledge beats the Contract.
J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) holds up a copy of the GOP’s “Pledge to America” Thursday at a lumber yard in Sterling. But how does this agenda compare with the GOP’s 1994 “Contract With America”?
1994 CONTRACT
A contract implies commitment and accountability.
ADVANTAGE
Avoided criticism of Bill Clinton and the Democrats because voters wanted nonpartisanship.
Long, boring, forgettable.
Bipartisan appeal
Opening line
Off ered detailed actions to be taken on the fi rst day in offi ce.
ADVANTAGE
It was one of the most powerful statements in the document: “If we break this contract, throw us out. We mean it.”
ADVANTAGE
Closing line
A “call to action” and an appeal to “men and women of good will and good heart.” Who really talks like that?
Specifi cs
Appeals to key independent voters by going aſt er arrogant, out-of-touch elites.
ADVANTAGE
“America is more than a country” — simple, profound, says so much in so few words.
ADVANTAGE
No Day One specifi cs.
vs. Title 2010 PLEDGE Which GOP manifesto sends the right message?
Who trusts politicians’ pledges, anyway?
Third, the opening lines. Here, the
Pledge wins hands down. “America is more than a country” is a simple but profound statement that says so much in just a few words. By comparison, the Contract began with language that sounded like it was spoken by Sir Law- rence Olivier in some film about Shake- speare: “As Republican Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body we propose not just to change its policies, but even more important, to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.” Any sentence that has more than 40 words cannot possibly be effective. And frankly, any opening sen- tence that includes the word “Repub- lican” is spring-loaded for failure. This year, the authors of the Pledge under- stand that it’s not about them, the Re- publicans; it’s about you, the American people. Once again, the Pledge wins. Fourth, the specifics. The Contract of- fered a detailed course of action. In fact, it proposed eight major reforms, includ- ing the first independent audit of Con- gress and a cut in the congressional budget and staffing, that House mem- bers promised to pass (and did) on their very first day in office. The Pledge has no equivalent — a glaring omission. Fifth and finally, the closing lines. For those who read it, the effectiveness of
cratic “Six for ’06” campaign, which doesn’t even rise to the import of its own Wikipedia entry, and whose authors even acknowledged at the time that it was nothing more than an election gim- mick. “It’s closing the deal,” opined Sen. Chuck Schumer, then chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Com- mittee, hardly a ringing endorsement. Officially called “A New Direction for America,” it had none of the legislative detail of the 1994 Contract, none of the intellectual heft of the 2010 Pledge — and no one other than Nancy Pelosi cam- paigned on it. The Pledge is different. It’s not quite a
O
contract, but it’s definitely more than an agenda. And it addresses the issue that has most incensed the American people over the past two years: It calls for a per- manent end to taxpayer-funded bail- outs. There should be no room for misin- terpretation here. From the bailouts to billionaires to the stimulus package that failed to stimulate to the government takeover of health care, the American people cried “Stop!” — but the Demo- cratic majority in Washington refused to listen. That alone justifies the Pledge ef- fort. And when examining its other agenda items, I can’t help but conclude that the similar criticisms that were lev- eled at the Contract — too bold, too tim- id, too conservative, not conservative enough — will fail to sink the Pledge as well.
Ultimately, of course, the success of the Pledge will be determined not by the results on Election Day, but by what hap- pens afterward. Still, there’s a simple les- son for both parties: The American peo- ple aren’t just mad as hell. This time, they’re truly not going to take it any- more. They’ll keep changing their gov- ernment until their government really changes. So credit Republicans for put- ting their Pledge on paper. Now, they will be held accountable to the standard they’ve set for themselves — and it’s a good one.
f course, campaign documents don’t always resonate or have an impact; just consider the Demo-
You did what, Grandpa? regret from B1
to face the evils in which they’re compli- cit. Those who ate the sugar or wore the cotton that the slaves grew simply didn’t think about what made those goods pos- sible. That’s why abolitionists sought to direct attention toward the conditions of the Middle Passage, through detailed il- lustrations of slave ships and horrifying stories of the suffering below decks. With these signs in mind, here are four contenders for future moral con- demnation.
Our prison system
We already know that the massive waste of life in our prisons is morally troubling; those who defend the condi- tions of incarceration usually do so in non-moral terms (citing costs or the ad- ministrative difficulty of reforms); and we’re inclined to avert our eyes from the details. Check, check and check. Roughly 1 percent of adults in this
country are incarcerated. We have 4 per- cent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its prisoners. No other nation has as large a proportion of its popula- tion in prison; even China’s rate is less than half of ours. What’s more, the ma- jority of our prisoners are non-violent offenders, many of them detained on drug charges. (Whether a country that was truly free would criminalize recrea- tional drug use is a related question worth pondering.) And the full extent of the punishment prisoners face isn’t detailed in any judge’s sentence. More than 100,000 in- mates suffer sexual abuse, including rape, each year; some contract HIV as a result. Our country holds at least 25,000 prisoners in isolation in so-called su- permax facilities, under conditions that many psychologists say amount to tor- ture.
Industrial meat production The arguments against the cruelty of
factory farming have certainly been around a long time; it was Jeremy Ben- tham, in the 18th century, who observed that, when it comes to the treatment of animals, the key question is not whether animals can reason but whether they
can suffer. People who eat factory- farmed bacon or chicken rarely offer a moral justification for what they’re do- ing. Instead, they try not to think about it too much, shying away from stomach- turning stories about what goes on in our industrial abattoirs. Of the more than 90 million cattle in our country, at least 10 million at any time are packed into feedlots, saved from the inevitable diseases of over- crowding only by regular doses of antibi- otics, surrounded by piles of their own feces, their nostrils filled with the smell of their own urine. Picture it — and then imagine your grandchildren seeing that picture. In the European Union, many of the most inhumane conditions we allow are already illegal or — like the sow stalls into which pregnant pigs are often crammed in the United States — will be illegal soon.
The institutionalized and isolated elderly
Nearly 2 million of America’s elderly are warehoused in nursing homes, out of sight and, to some extent, out of mind. Some 10,000 for-profit facilities have arisen across the country in recent dec- ades to hold them. Other elderly Amer- icans may live independently, but often they are isolated and cut off from their families. (The United States is not alone among advanced democracies in this. Consider the heat wave that hit France in 2003: While many families were en- joying their summer vacations, some 14,000 elderly parents and grandparents were left to perish in the stifling tem- peratures.) Is this what Western mo- dernity amounts to — societies that feel no filial obligations to their inconven- ient elders? Sometimes we can learn from societ- ies much poorer than ours. My English mother spent the last 50 years of her life in Ghana, where I grew up. In her final years, it was her good fortune not only to have the resources to stay at home, but also to live in a country where doing so was customary. She had family next door who visited her every day, and she was cared for by doctors and nurses who were willing to come to her when she was too ill to come to them. In short, she
had the advantages of a society in which older people are treated with respect and concern. Keeping aging parents and their chil- dren closer is a challenge, particularly in a society where almost everybody has a job outside the home (if not across the country). Yet the three signs apply here as well: When we see old people who, de- spite many living relatives, suffer grow- ing isolation, we know something is wrong. We scarcely try to defend the sit- uation; when we can, we put it out of our minds. Self-interest, if nothing else, should make us hope that our descend- ants will have worked out a better way.
The environment Of course, most transgenerational ob-
ligations run the other way — from par- ents to children — and of these the most obvious candidate for opprobrium is our wasteful attitude toward the planet’s natural resources and ecology. Look at a satellite picture of Russia, and you’ll see a vast expanse of parched wasteland where decades earlier was a lush and verdant landscape. That’s the Republic of Kalmykia, home to what was recog- nized in the 1990s as Europe’s first man- made desert. Desertification, which is primarily the result of destructive land- management practices, threatens a third of the Earth’s surface; tens of thousands of Chinese villages have been overrun by sand drifts in the past few decades. It’s not as though we’re unaware of
what we’re doing to the planet: We know the harm done by deforestation, wetland destruction, pollution, overfishing, greenhouse gas emissions — the whole litany. Our descendants, who will inherit this devastated Earth, are unlikely to have the luxury of such recklessness. Chances are, they won’t be able to avert their eyes, even if they want to.
Let’s not stop there, though. We will
all have our own suspicions about which practices will someday prompt people to ask, in dismay: What were they think- ing? Even when we don’t have a good an-
swer, we’ll be better off for anticipating the question.
What’s the big idea?
Greed may not be good — but envy is worse
“Greed, for lack of a better word, is
good. Greed is right. Greed works.” Gordon Gekko’s infamous speech in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film “Wall Street” came to embody the excesses of 1980s high finance. Now Gekko, fresh out of prison, is back in Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” which features the financier (played again by Michael Douglas) warning of the impending economic crisis of 2008. Turns out greed caused some trouble while Gekko was locked up. But is greed capitalism’s worst sin? Not so, argues economist Victor Claar. In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute last week, Claar posited that another deadly sin — envy — is an inherent part of the free-market system and can prove even more insidious. Claar, a co-author of “Economics in Christian Perspective,” relied on Thomas Aquinas’s definition of envy: sadness at the good of another. He cited the biblical parable of the prodigal son, in which the older sibling is envious of his dissolute brother, whose return home sparks a big party. “It sounds like blue-collar frustrations that we hear today,” Claar said. “ ‘I did everything the right way, I played by all of the right rules — and here I am.’ ” Whether because of differing intelligence, skill, ambition or luck, free markets produce different outcomes for different people, so envy is inevitable. And in democratic systems, “envious majorities” can push for policies that “narrow the gap between them and the targets of their envy.”
But Claar worries that this road can lead to initiatives that, “in the guise of social justice,” produce greater unemployment or less overall wealth. And those results in turn lead to “outrage at the system that generated the outcome.”
BARRY WETCHER/SMPSP
“Greed is good,” Michael Douglas’s character said in “Wall Street.” But what do economists think?
Was Claar talking about President Obama’s policies? “The current administration does seem to be keen on taking from the rich to give to the poor,” he said in an e-mail. “Sometimes the tone is not mean — ‘spread the wealth around’ — yet at times it is, suggesting those making over $250,000 should feel guilty for the hard work they have done to contribute something others find valuable enough to voluntarily pay for. So our efforts to reduce envy may very well reduce long-term growth by discouraging effort, invention and discovery in the most talented among us.” But that doesn’t mean Gekko had it quite right, he concludes. “Greed — the pursuit of embarrassing riches — is not good; it’s a deadly sin just like envy is,” Claar said in his speech. “But pursuing self-interest in a system that allows you to be rewarded for pursuit of your own self-interest and at the same time in the service of others? That’s certainly better than the alternative.”
— Carlos Lozada
lozadac@washpost.com
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