Yes, We (Republi) Can!

CNN's Political Ticker (February 9, 2012) suggests that conservatives -- that is, Republicans -- face an uphill struggle to win the White House. They are not "setting the Thames on fire", not kindling enough interest to get the vote out on election day in November. They are unable to state their message in a nutshell. (CNN's Political Ticker advocates no more than three sentences, as opposed to a 20-page document.) Their message has so far been negative and anti-Obama, instead of proposing a positive vision of their own.

I commented that three sentences seemed pretty simplistic. I wondered aloud whether political ideas must necessarily be conveyed in primer English, and if Americans were not perhaps smarter that.

Yet most of the Republican presidential candidates have, to some extent, captured their campaign themes in fairly succinct slogans and rhetorical devices.

Mitt Romney says this election is a battle for the soul of America. Newt Gingrich uses opposites, like pay checks versus food stamps. Rick Santorum's slogan speaks of the courage to fight for America.

(Mind you, Santorum seems to be something of a Miss Malaprop. After his "trifecta" win in Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota, he declared that the race was now a "no man's land". I assume he meant that no one candidate had it all sewn up or was destined to be crowned at the convention. But "no-man's land" is a term heavy with negative connotations, referring to a kind of demilitarized zone in wartime.)

Barack Obama was no slouch himself in 2008, when his "Yes, we can!" was chanted by enthusiastic crowds of supporters. "The Audacity of Hope" isn't too shabby, either, as a mission statement. Obama was carried to the White House on a tidal wave of hopes for reform and change in Washington. Unfortunately, the hopes were far too high to be met by any mortal human being, even the President of the United States.

We've come a long way since "A chicken in every pot" and "Happy days are here again", although Ronald Reagan's "It's morning in America" came pretty damn close. (And Reagan has been nicknamed The Great Communicator. Obviously, he said something Americans wanted to hear.)

CNN"s Political Ticker is right that candidates need to stand for, and not against, someone or something. Whether they can develop a positive vision that resonates with voters is one thing. Whether they can state that vision in three sentences is entirely something else.