Because Authenticity ≠ Spontaneity

A Defense of Rhetoric – Michael Gerson – The Washington Post.

In today’s Washington Post, Michael Gerson—a speechwriter for BushII—called a recent Santorum speech, “a 20-minute ramble of lame jokes, patriotic platitudes and half-developed campaign themes.” Gerson goes on to say that,

on the evidence of these remarks, Santorum’s guiding philosophy is “free enterprise” and “free people” held together by free association. He vaguely honored Ronald Reagan for saying inspiring words, without bothering to contribute any of his own. He praised the “greatest generation” without crafting a single phrase that captured their accomplishments.

Santorum is, indeed, representative of our times. And, perhaps also proving in this speech that he sees no value in a college education because he received no benefit from his own?

When I taught high school, students came in as freshmen with the same ills—inability to craft an argument, a vague vagueness about their writing which referred to “taking it to the next level” and “important goals” and “deeper meanings” without ever defining those levels, goals, or meanings.——this is, by the way, not a criticism of those students. We all enter high school similarly——But by the time those NYC students left our school, they were quite capable of identifying a thesis and then setting out to prove that thesis by using proof from the texts they selected or were given. This skill—which I compared to a scavenger-hunt for meaning—of being able to analyze a text, come to a conclusion, then prove that conclusion, is, quite frankly, something I want in a leader. I find it disturbing that the more complex the world’s problems get, the more we seem to gravitate toward the guy we want to have a beer with rather than the leader who might actually have the intellectual power to keep the world from going ‘blewie’!

Gerson continues:

Santorum — fresh from spewing on John Kennedy’s shoes and questioning the value of a college education — has an interest in praising the virtues of impulsive, unfiltered language. It is the backhanded praise of his own failures.

But Santorum is also making a public argument. “You’re voting for someone who is going to be the leader of our government,” he says. “It’s important for you to understand who that person is in their own words, see them, look them in the eye. . . . You’re choosing a leader. A leader isn’t just about what’s written on a piece of paper.” The great enemies of authenticity, contends Santorum, are “speechwriters.”

I’m under no illusions about the popularity of my former profession. But let me rise in defense of “what’s written on a piece of paper” and the people who help produce it.

The idea that a leader should carefully craft his public words, sometimes with the advice and help of others, is not particularly new. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were known to polish George Washington’s prose. …Richard Goodwin helped Lyndon Johnson rise to the rhetorical demands of the civil rights struggle. “At times, history and fate,” said Johnson, “meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.”

Such collaboration is not a species of fraud. It is a process in which a leader refines his own thoughts, invites suggestions by trusted advisers and welcomes the contributions of literary craft to political communication. A very few presidents — Lincoln may exhaust the category — have no need of consultation on policy or style. But political mortals generally benefit from it.

This is true of everyone’s writing. Perhaps the most important thing I’ve drilled into the heads of my students is do not think for a moment that you can edit your own prose! Life is too fast and we don’t take enough walks or breaks or moments of idyll to let our brains percolate. We write what we thought was good at the time (or we wouldn’t have written it). But rare is the missive that couldn’t use some clarification, the blog post that is beyond a proofread, the paper that needs no editing. The brilliant thing we said so gracefully at lunch yesterday has long ago left our brain…but perhaps, if we send the document on to our lunch mate, she will recall the statement and help us refine it.

Santorum’s case for extemporaneousness depends on a questionable premise. He assumes that authenticity is identical to spontaneity. By this standard, the most authentic political communication would come after rousing a candidate from bed in the middle of the night, turning him around three times and asking him to share the deepest convictions of his heart. This elevation of instinct and impulse is deeply unconservative — akin to arguing that the only authentic love is free love. Conservatives generally assert that discipline and preparation reveal authentic commitments, not discredit them.

It is actually a form of pride — in a politician or anyone else — to believe that every thought produced by the firing of one’s neurons is immediately fit for public consumption. The craft of rhetoric involves the humility of repeated revision.

That humility is not something we’ve seen much of—for a long time. “History,” as Gerson says, “is not shaped or moved by mediocre words.” I wish that were true, but I’m starting to believe that our current history IS indeed shaped by mediocrity—and will continue to be. And, sadly, I fear that it will get us into more and bloodier wars, and deeper and more intractable economic crises that must be met with a less and less flexible or fixable infrastructure.

Or we could start demanding more thoughtful, literate, and well-spoken leaders.

I know. My breath isn’t held either.