Politicians haven’t just been debasing our currency; they have also been debasing our language. Over time presidents have been talking more and more (see Jeff Tulis’ excellent book, The Rhetorical Presidency), but they’ve been saying less and less.
This point struck me as I read the inscriptions on the Lincoln and FDR memorials during a recent visit to DC. On Lincoln’s memorial is inscribed the entire text of two speeches, the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. The Gettysburg Address is only 244 words and the Second Inaugural has only 698. But in less than a thousand words, these speeches say so much.
The FDR memorial has 21 quotations drawn from 18 different speeches prepared by Roosevelt. Presumably those 559 words are the most memorable and important portions of those speeches. Yet even these greatest hits sound empty compared to the full text of speeches inscribed on the Lincoln memorial.
For example, one inscription on the FDR memorial reads: “In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice, the path of faith, the path of hope and the path of love toward our fellow men.” These are certainly lofty sentiments, but what exactly do they mean? What are we supposed to do to pursue social justice, faith, hope, and love?
Here are more bits of empty rhetoric from the FDR memorial: “This Generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny…” and “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a New Deal for the American People.” and “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.” and “More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.” They all sound great, but I have no idea what any of them really mean.
But I know exactly what Lincoln means when he says: “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.” Lincoln has an extremely high meaning to word ratio. The same is true of speeches given by Washington or Jefferson.
More recent speeches by presidents are crammed with words but remarkably lacking in meaning. George W. Bush’s second inaugural address comes in at 2,073 words, more than eight times as long as Lincoln’s. Barack Obama’s inaugural address was 2,399 words, almost ten times as long as Lincoln’s second inaugural. What has produced this bloat? Empty lines like this: “On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”
Just as there is a real cost to inflation (Keynes described it as: “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens… There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.”), there is also a cost to the debasement of political rhetoric. Politicians talk so much and say so little that almost no one outside of those who derive a living or entertainment from it bother to pay attention. What will happen when politicians really have something important to tell us? Will they be the politicians who cried wolf?
This is why it is worthwhile to note and denounce empty rhetoric from politicians. We have to increase the meaning to word ratio.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 