Chuck McCutcheon is co-author of Dog Whistles, Walk Backs and Washington Handshakes and the election year follow-up e-book Doubletalk: The Language, Code and Jargon of a Presidential Election. At a GOP debate in January, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie joked about the need for a “Washington-to-English Dictionary.” McCutcheon replied, “We’ve got two out.” He is a veteran political observer and a past contributor to the Almanac of American Politics. McCutcheon corresponded with the Washington Examiner Friday and Saturday about Donald Trump, the Clintons and why folks in the rest of the country think people from Washington, D.C., talk funny.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: You and co-author David Mark have written a book and an e-book explaining political jargon in plain English. Why does Washington D.C., need to be translated for the rest of the country?
CHUCK MCCUTCHEON: The facile answer is “because politicians spin and shade the truth,” but we think there’s more to it than that. When they get elected, many seem to lose their sense of candor out of concern that they might offend the wrong people. So they resort to what’s known as “message discipline,” the art of saying the same thing over and over out of fear that wavering the slightest bit off course could somehow mark them as traitorous.
Another reason is one that Barton Swaim, a former aide to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, discussed in his excellent book The Speechwriter — the demands of this media age are such that politicians now are expected to have a ready opinion on so many different issues, many of which they know or care nothing about. As a result, they regularly fall back on vague and imprecise language.
EXAMINER: Do you think the way national politicians and wonks speak makes it harder for them to persuade American voters?
MCCUTCHEON: Very generally, I’d say yes. Too much of political jargon is grounded in patently obvious cliches and euphemisms — when two rivals meet, the outcome is inevitably described as “cordial” or “candid,” which covers every situation short of them punching each other in the face. And one of the phrases that everyone we interviewed agreed was the most infuriating was the old chestnut “I want to spend more time with my family” when someone is getting booted out of a job.
Our books don’t get heavily into parliamentary jargon, but some of the politicians we interviewed told us that voters found it maddening whenever those officials lapsed into that variety of Washington-speak back at home. For example, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill said that “Can we get cloture?” sounded to some of her constituents like an illegal sexual act.
But I don’t pin all of this on politicians — a lot of it also is the media adopting the language of political consultants and media advisers and bringing words like “pivot” and “optics” and “bridging” into everyday use.
EXAMINER: Donald Trump doesn’t usually talk in D.C.-isms. Does this help or hurt him — or both?
MCCUTCHEON: Trump does occasionally resort to Washington-speak — he says he’s “evolved” on the issue of abortion rather than saying he’s changed his mind about it. While it’s true he doesn’t talk like any other politician, he is a bit like other politicians in using phrases that can be open to a wide variety of interpretations from listeners, such as the term “political correctness.” He uses other phrases that reflect today’s angry populism, such as “rigged,” to project an “it’s us-against-them” attitude.
EXAMINER: How many terms have the Clintons contributed to our political lexicon over the years?
MCCUTCHEON: Bill Clinton, of course, will forever live in infamy for the phrase “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” But he’s made some other contributions. One of his favorite phrases was “high-class problem,” a forerunner of today’s “first-world problem.” He also helped popularize the phrase “committing candor,” which refers to when someone accidentally speaks the truth.
Hillary Clinton favors the term “evidence-based,” which is her way of approvingly describing something based on facts rather than pure emotion. Her campaign, along with many Democrats, now employs “putting families first” to appeal to couples with children, who are more likely to vote than unmarried people.
EXAMINER: Would you say your books picked up where Safire’s Political Dictionary left off?
MCCUTCHEON: Yes, Safire’s book was our inspiration but we tried to bring our own experiences as journalists to these books. We also tried to make them more contemporary instead of historical — we left out terms in Safire’s that no longer are everyday use such as “Mugwumps” or “hanging chads.”
EXAMINER: You write a regular column for the Christian Science Monitor that flows from the book. The latest entry was the “Party of Lincoln.” How come you didn’t work “and I’ll cry if I want to” in there somewhere?
MCCUTCHEON: Interestingly, we are continually struck how many political phrases these days are adapted from pop culture. So you hear “throwing shade,” along with “Calvinball” from the “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip and “Bizarro World” from Superman comics. And we could probably do an entire book just on Monty Python-inspired terms — the Black Knight, the Silly Party and “nudge nudge wink wink.”
EXAMINER: What is your very favorite definition?
MCCUTCHEON: I’m fascinated by the art of the non-apology apology. Phrases like “I misspoke” or “my comments were inartful” are all too often substituted for the more accurate “I said something really, really dumb.” There’s also the conditional “I’m sorry if I offended anyone” — any time the word “if” appears in an act of contrition, you know it’s not sincere.
But I would like readers to suggest their own favorite definitions. They can go to our website, www.dogwhistlebook.com
