Chuck McCutcheon - Doubletalk: The Language, Code, and Jargon of a Presidential Election

About the Authors

Chuck McCutcheon is co-author of two editions of National Journals Almanac of American Politics (described by George Will as the Bible of American politics and by the New York Review of Books as invaluable). He was co-editor of Congressional Quarterlys reference book Politics in America 2010 and was a contributing writer for three textbooks published by CQ Press. He has written for the Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, and other publications.

David Mark is a political journalist, public speaker and commentator. He was a senior editor at POLITICO for six years. He is the author of Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning, and was editor-in-chief of Campaigns & Elections magazine, which covers the business and trends of politics. David has lectured about politics and policy in ten foreign countries.

Both authors live in Washington, DC.

McCutcheon and Mark also coauthored Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs, and Washington Handshakes: Decoding the Jargon, Slang, and Bluster of American Political Speech.

Acknowledgments

A number of the definitions here appeared in our weekly Talking Politics column on the Christian Science Monitors website. Were grateful to have had the chance to work with Gail Russell Chaddock and Mark Sappenfield on it.

Were also thankful for the people in the political, media, and academic worlds who have helped illuminate the weird world of presidential jargon: Reed Galen, Annelise Watt, Paul Stob, Geoff Nunberg, Ron Fournier, Ron Brownstein, Christy Setzer, Craig Shirley, and Christopher Hahn.

Once again, wed like to salute our agent, John Willig, and our editor at ForeEdge, Steve Hull, for believing in this project.

Chuck would like to thank his wife, Liisa Ecola, for her suggestions and patience, and the members of his DC Guild freelance writers group for their fellowship and encouragement.

ForeEdge

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2016 Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark

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Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61168-953-2

For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com

In memory of

Bud and Fran McCutcheon,

Dave Holden, and

Madeline Mark

Doubletalk

: A fancy-sounding defense mechanism in which a politician whos the subject of criticism responds by targeting someone making the argument and not the argument itself. Ad hominem is Latin for to the person.

Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz repeatedly portrays himself as a victim of what he considers ad hominem attacks. In March 2015, California governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, said that Cruz was absolutely unfit to run for office because of his direct falsification of the existing scientific data on climate change. In response, Cruz said that global warming alarmists like Brown engage in ad hominem attacks and dont want to confront the data on climate change.

On the liberal Daily Kos blog, a commenter using the name Cassiodorus wrote a widely read dissection of ad hominem attacks, seeking, among other things, to distinguish them from purely personal ones.

A personal attack occurs when you say that so-and-so is bad for whatever reason, he wrote. Personal attacks... contribute nothing to rational, civil discussionbut they do not, by themselves, constitute ad hominem arguments. An ad hominem argument comes into being when one uses the implied presumption that bad people can only make bad arguments.

: A term applied favorably to candidates who can distinguish themselves by being serious and thoughtful, as opposed to bombastic and partisan.

The phrase is a synonym for grownup and reasonable Republican, two terms that Democrats use to describe their model GOP legislator. But its usage goes beyond that party.

Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginias nonpartisan Center for Politics said of Ohio governor John Kasich in August 2015: I think hes trying to be the adult in the room. And the adult in the room is not fire and brimstone.

: A popular political spin move that seeks to diminish the significance of a current or looming concern.

Politics is all about projecting optimism. And increasingly, politicians in both parties have adopted, either publicly or tacitly, the famous maxim of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Thats because, according to the former House member and White House chief of staff, its an opportunity to do things you could not do before.

In his first major economic speech in February 2015, presidential nominee Jeb Bush described immigration reforman issue on which he differs dramatically from the GOPs conservative baseas a huge opportunity... not a problem. In outlining his desire for annual economic growth of at least 4 percent, the former Florida governor said: While the political fights go on, were missing this opportunity. I view fixing a broken system as a huge opportunity to get to that 4 percent growth.

The New York Times also looked into whether Texass economic woesthe state lost twenty-five thousand jobs in March 2015, and the oil industry has coped with slumping prices for that commoditycould hurt former governor Rick Perry politically. Perry made the Lone Star States growth a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign. Not to worry, said Avik Roy, a senior adviser to Perrys political action committee: Its an opportunity, not a problem, because if the Texas economy continues to do reasonably well even though the energy sector gets hit, that is only going to strengthen his case, not weaken it. Yet it wasnt enough of an opportunity for Perry, who subsequently dropped out of the race.

None of this is new. In his 1991 book Sleepwalking through History: America in the Reagan Years, journalist Haynes Johnson wrote that Ronald Reagans budget guru David Stockman regarded the implicit failure of supply-side economic theory as an opportunity, not a problem. It provided a chance to have gigantic tax cuts and military increasesyet also dismantle despised social welfare programs that had accumulated since the New Deal.

(Also see related entry, .)

: A political partys internal examination of how it screwed up in a previous election.

Autopsy comes from the autopsia, a seeing with ones own eyes, and dates to the mid-seventeenth century.) But the media and blogosphere love the term: Its punchy and makes for an easy headline.

An early use of autopsy report in a political context came in 2006, when Democratic attorney general Tom Reilly of Massachusetts was running for governor. After a crash that killed two daughters of a friend, he was found to have urged the Worcester district attorney not to release records that may have revealed whether the girls had been drinking. Therell be no hiding the pundits autopsy report if he flops in the Democratic caucuses, Boston magazine wrote after the ensuing furor. (Reilly finished a distant third.)

But the term didnt take hold in its current context until after the GOPs failure to oust President Obama led to the Growth and Opportunity Project, which bluntly assessed how the party needs to improve its future standing among minority voters. Two years later, after Democrats were crushed in the midterms, the Democratic National Committee commissioned its own in-house study concluding it needed to better focus its message and try to win back white Southerners.

Look for more autopsy reports after this race.

Bateson candidate comes from Star Trek: It refers to Capt. Morgan Bateson of the starship USS Bozeman