EVEN SCHOOL KIDS ARE RIDICULING HIM:

The Candidates, Seen From the Classroom (STANLEY FISH, 9/24/04, NY Times)

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.

While it's good for Democrats to finally be waking up to the fact that George W. Bush could be exactly the moron they think he is except in one key regard--he's a political genius--there is a danger for them if they come to think his victories over Ann Richards, the Democratic legislature of Texas, John McCain, Al Gore, the (briefly) Democratic Senate, and John Kerry were all purely a function of style. The danger is that they will ignore the substance of what he's been saying and doing and the inadequacy of thir response to his ideas. If they spend 2007-08 looking for a candidate who can repackage their reactionary liberalism and present it with greater style they'll merely be putting off their day of reckoning, as Republicans did for decades after FDR made them a minority party.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 24, 2004 9:01 AM