Guest AuthorFlorida Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera told us he would “bust his ass for Florida” this past summer at the state GOP’s Sunshine State Summit.
Several weeks ago, business mogul and presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged to “kick the hell of ISIS.” During the New Hampshire primaries, Trump called his fellow presidential contender Ted Cruz “a pussy.”
You notice a problem here? Let’s hope so. There has been a devolving standard of public substance and decorum.
In private, we can expect politicians to use salty, often abrasive language. No one ever said President Lyndon Johnson was a shrinking violet. Ditto JFK. Ditto Bill Clinton.
Because he was a WASP, perhaps George H.W. Bush was not so enamored with violence in language. But his son was.
In an enactment of his lifelong rebellion from the WASP creed, President George W. Bush once called a reporter “a major league asshole.”
During an argument on the Senate floor in 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney told Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy “to go fuck yourself.”
This is part of a long-term decline in public rhetoric, likely the result of the increase in mass communications, the early 20th century advent of advertising, the fracturing of culture, the dominance of cable TV, and any other culturally sophisticated explanation you can conjure up.
We know for certain that public addresses have declined in quality.
Compare the inaugural addresses of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama with the inaugural address of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln.
One may even compare the public addresses of Henry Clay or John Quincy Adams to the standard speeches of contemporary American politicians.
The expectation that the public can follow sophisticated arguments without soundbites is not one embraced by the Washington, D.C., consulting class that advises our politicians.
Such condescension has done a terrible injury to our democracy and those essential democratic requisites: a robust public square and faith in our institutions.
Need an example?
In a Gallup poll on public confidence in the nation’s public institutions – the presidency, for instance – only 17 percent of the American people had a great deal of confidence in it.
That should put presidential candidates on notice of the public need for high-mindedness and a composure that matches it.
That begins with a rhetoric that meets the standard of adult seriousness.
From ISIS to entitlement insolvency, the country demands greater rhetorical sobriety.
That’s especially because Trump’s brash, empty, combative rhetorical flair has advanced entertainment over substance this presidential cycle.
It’s unlikely this presidential cycle will produce wholesale changes in the art of public speaking. Nor should it.
What’s needed, really, is a sense of the large stakes involved in maintaining public liberty in the public talk of politicians.
Or, in the end, “busting our asses” will not be enough to preserve this as a serious country.
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Chris Timmons is a writer living in Crawfordville, Florida. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
