Read a scholarly-sounding piece last week on The Conversation, about how college and university presidents don’t communicate like they used to.
Amherst College Jurisprudence and Political Science Austin Sarat’s thesis: “Throughout the 20th century, college and university presidents spoke out on everything, from wars to civil rights struggles, with a sense of moral authority attempting to guide the course. Their language was typically direct and free of jargon.”
As an example, he offered a quote from Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, who said during a June 1940 convocation address, “Democracy is the best form of government. It is worth dying for.”
That’s the best example Sarat could come up with?
As we listen to our government officials roll out a series of justifications for starting a war in the Middle East, each more unlikely than the last and with gathering intellectual inconsistency, perhaps it’s simultaneously more comforting and instructive to study bad leadership communication of yore, than to pine nostalgic, for good.
Sarat’s Hutchins reference took me back to a piece I wrote a decade ago, that actually reached the opposite conclusion, arguing that contrary to the urgings of their spunky speechwriters, leaders have “a lot to be vague about.” After a holiday dip into a single issue of the magazine I publish, Vital Speeches of the Day, March 1, 1941, I wrote:
I read [the issue] closely. And I noticed that the ideas that were most clearly and memorably expressed were also the most laughable.
In a speech on railroad regulation, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company complained about business being complained about. “If one observes the undercurrents in political and social life of today,” M.W. Clement told the Pittsburgh Traffic Club, “it will be found that they deal with certain conceptions which are loosely expressed by catch phrases which ‘label’ them, and which people often do not analyze: such as ‘power’ and ‘wealth’; men who ‘run’ America; men who ‘control’ industry; men who ‘control’ wealth …”
Perhaps it was for this speech that “air quotes” were invented?
Most of the speeches in the issue, not surprisingly, debated whether or when the United States should enter what was referred to as “the war in Europe.” With Hitler on the march and England on the ropes, the majority of the speeches argued against U.S. involvement.
“They have been fighting in Europe for 2,000 years or more,” said Kansas Senator Arthur Capper in a radio address, “and probably they will fight for the next 10,000 years, for that is their philosophy—fighting is their philosophy.”
Though that sounds remarkably familiar to the rhetorical carpet bombing some of our politicians lay on the Middle East today, the sentiment is actually less embarrassing than the well-articulated argument for staying out of the war by Robert Maynard Hutchins, the young and powerful president of the University of Chicago.
“We Are Drifting Into Suicide,” was the title of Hutchins’ speech, also delivered over radio, on Jan. 23, 1941. His central argument was that the United States did not have democracy down well enough to go imposing it on other nations by intervening in the war. Hutchins listed human rights violations and democratic imperfections in America that “leave us a good deal short of that level of excellence which entitles us to convert the world by force of arms. … We Americans have hardly begun to understand and practice the ideals that we are urged to force on others.”
He called for a “new moral order in America,” concluded that refining American democracy was the first order of business, and warned that people calling for European intervention were “turning aside the true path to freedom because it is easier to blame Hitler for our troubles than to fight for democracy at home. As Hitler made the Jews his scapegoat, so we are making Hitler ours. But Hitler did not spring full-armed from the brow of Satan. He sprang from the materialism and paganism of our times. In the long run we can beat what Hitler stands for only by beating the materialism and paganism that produced him.”
What a magnificent load of imaginatively conceived, authoritatively expressed, sharply written poppycock! …
My dad used to say old people are quieter than young people, “Because old people have more to be quiet about.” The Trump administration isn’t being quiet, exactly. Its communications about Iran sound like an orchestra, warming up their instruments. Except these aren’t just stray sounds that will soon be forgotten, they’re words, that will echo. And as my writer-and-musician dad used to say, way back in the day: “You can say what you want with a slide trombone, but with words, you’ve gotta be careful.”
Leave a Reply