Those who seek to persuade others often use the age-old art of starting their presentations with universally accepted generalities. They warm to their topic with references to such universals as “truth,”, “tradition,” “logic,” and “common sense.”
Only later, after the audience is perceived to be sufficiently acclimated, do they begin to venture into the specifics of what they really have in mind.
All influencers do this, academics in papers describing their ideas, pundits writing articles and op-eds, and lawyers presenting their cases in court. Yet the greatest practitioners of this artifice throughout history have been politicians. They know that by appealing to generalities in their quest for votes, they maximize the chances that more people will project onto the generalities what they want to hear, yet cannot do that with specifics. The more the specifics, the more likely potential voters may discover reasons to object.
Imagine the image of a pitcher. The politician describes his/her pitcher as having the widest possible opening, one into which not only pure, clean water can be poured, but also so many varieties of soups and stews. No mention need be, nor is, made of the foods that will not fit no matter how much pressure is exerted to squeeze them in. Every possible projection goes right through the top.
A good recent example was the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama. He proclaimed he was opening a “Big Tent.” Everyone was welcome to enter, regardless of party, political philosophy, race, ethnicity, background, or gender. Why, Republicans were welcome also! Everyone. The campaign’s slogan was: “Yes, we can”, and Obama took pains to make clear that “we” meant the broadest possible construction. “We” was in fact “everyone.” All were included, none excluded.
BUT! BUT! BUT! After the election it did not take long for Obama to get more specific. Who can forget that unhappy day when he invited the leaders of the new Congress to the White House and told them elections have consequences and “I won, you lost”? The “Big Tent” suddenly fell flat on the Republicans, and ever after they would be ignored (at best), and even silenced. The IRS was dispatched to harass some 200 to 400 conservative groups into defeat.
Biden performed his own version of this script in 2020. His major message was that he would be the great unifier, bringing everyone, yes, Everyone, together. We all know how that turned out after the election.
Some on the left might argue that Trump campaigned by the same script in 2024. After all, “Make America Great Again” has a very general resonance, capable of including a lot of greatness. Yet, Trump was actually very different. Before the election he was relentless in making sure voters knew the specifics of what he intended, whether it was in regard to closing the border, reversing unfair trade policies, digging down into the Deep State to root out its widespread weaponized lawfare, and eliminating government corruption and waste. He even took on cultural issues specifically: for example, Trump promised to forbid biological men from competing in sports against biological women.
Trump took a risk in deviating from the traditional generalities-only script as he campaigned on the above, and many other specific policy issues. Harris did not. Her campaign was so general that it soon struck the majority of voters as a parody of the age-old political art. Early on her rhetoric earned the new epithet “word salad” to describe her obvious aversion to specificity (mixed with a little seeming inebriation).
Trump’s political instincts told him, correctly we now know, that the times had changed dramatically. The left had made such a hot mess of everything that being specific about what needed to (and would) be corrected was likely to earn more votes than would be lost. It turned out that the left had indeed turned the world upside-down, and the election confirmed Trump’s political instincts.
So now there is no BUT! BUT! BUT! sweeping the land. Given his campaign promises, Trump now represents: AND! AND! AND!
Image: Free image, Pixabay license.