Text 2623, 125 rader
Skriven 2004-09-27 18:39:12 av Stan Hardegree (1:379/1.2)
Ärende: A good read
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I don't do a lot of reposts, but this is a good one...

The Candidates, Seen From the Classroom

The New York Times
September 24, 2004
By STANLEY FISH

CHICAGO - In an unofficial but very formal poll taken in my freshman writing
class the other day, George Bush beat
John Kerry by a vote of 13 to 2 (14 to 2, if you count me). My students were
not voting on the candidates' ideas.
They were voting on the skill (or lack of skill) displayed in the presentation
of those ideas.

The basis for their judgments was a side-by-side display in this newspaper on
Sept. 8 of excerpts from speeches
each man gave the previous day. Put aside whatever preferences you might have
for either candidate's positions, I instructed; just tell me who does a better
job of articulating his positions, and why.

The analysis was devastating. President Bush, the students pointed out, begins
with a perfect topic sentence - "Our strategy is succeeding"- that nicely sets
up a first paragraph describing how conditions in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Libya, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia four years ago aided terrorists. This is
followed by a paragraph explaining how
the administration's policies have produced a turnaround in each country
"because we acted." The paragraph's
conclusion is concise, brisk and earned: "We have led, many have joined, and
America and the world are safer."

It doesn't hurt that the names of the countries he lists all have the letter
"a," as do the words "America" and
"safer." He and his speechwriters deserve credit for using the accident of
euphony to give the argument
cohesiveness and force. There is of course no logical relationship between the
repetition of a sound and the
soundness of an argument, but if it is skillfully employed repetition can
enhance a logical point or even give the
illusion of one when none is present.

The students also found repetition in the Kerry speech, about the outsourcing
of jobs, but, as many pointed out,
when Mr. Kerry repeats the phrase "your tax dollars" it is because he has
become lost in his own sentence and has to begin again.

When he finally extracts himself from that sentence, he makes two big mistakes
in the next one: "That's bad
enough, but you know there's something worse, don't you?" No, Senator Kerry, we
don't know - because you haven't told us. He is asking people to respond to a
point he hasn't yet made and, even worse, by saying "don't you?" he is implying
they should know what this point is before he makes it. As a result, the
audience is made to feel stupid.

And if that wasn't "bad enough,'' consider his next two sentences. Up until now
Mr. Kerry's point (insofar as you
could discern one) had been that current tax policies reward companies for
moving their operations overseas. But
he goes on to add, "it gets worse than that in terms of choices." The audience
barely has time to wonder what and
whose choices he's talking about before it is entirely disoriented by the
declaration that "today the tax code
actually does something that's right." Excuse us, but how can getting something
"right" be "worse"? It turns out that there is an answer to that question later
in the speech - Mr. Kerry says that while the tax code now rewards
companies that export American products, Mr. Bush wants to eliminate that good
incentive - but it comes far too late for an audience discombobulated by the
sudden and unannounced change in the argument's direction.

Senator Kerry, my students observed with a mix of solemnity and glee, has
violated two cardinal rules of
exposition: don't presume your audience has information you haven't provided,
and always pay attention to the
expectations of your listeners. They also felt that when he concludes by
declaring that "when I'm president of the
United States, it'll take me about a nanosecond to ask the Congress to close
that stupid loophole," he undercuts the dignity both of his message and of the
office he aspires to by calling the loophole "stupid" (instead of
"unconscionable" or "unprincipled" or even "criminal"). "Stupid," one student
said, is not a "presidential kind of
word."

So what? What does it matter if Mr. Kerry's words stumble and halt, while Mr.
Bush's flow easily from sentence to
sentence and paragraph to paragraph? Well, listen to the composite judgments my
students made on the
Democratic challenger: "confused," "difficult to understand," "can't seem to
make his point clearly," "I'm not sure
what he's saying," and my favorite, "he's kind of 'skippy,' all over the
place."

Now of course it could be the case that every student who voted against Mr.
Kerry's speech in my little poll will
vote for him in the general election. After all, what we're talking about here
is merely a matter of style, not
substance, right? And - this is a common refrain among Kerry supporters -
doesn't Mr. Bush's directness and
simplicity of presentation reflect a simplicity of mind and an incapacity for
nuance, while Mr. Kerry's ideas are just
too complicated for the rhythms of publicly accessible prose?

Sorry, but that's dead wrong. If you can't explain an idea or a policy plainly
in one or two sentences, it's not
yours; and if it's not yours, no one you speak to will be persuaded of it, or
even know what it is, or (and this is
the real point) know what you are. Words are not just the cosmetic clothing of
some underlying integrity; they are
the operational vehicles of that integrity, the visible manifestation of the
character to which others respond. And
if the words you use fall apart, ring hollow, trail off and sound as if they
came from nowhere or anywhere (these are the same thing), the suspicion will
grow that what they lack is what you lack, and no one will follow you.

Nervous Democrats who see their candidate slipping in the polls console
themselves by saying, "Just wait, the
debates are coming.'' As someone who will vote for John Kerry even though I
voted against him in my class, that's
just what I'm worried about.

Stanley Fish is dean emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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 * Origin: George W. Bush - Four More in '04! (1:379/1.2)