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2 | With All Due Respect, I Deeply Regret Holding You in Minimum High Regard
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★ 37 2 “With All Due Respect, I Deeply Regret Holding You in Minimum High Regard” Only-in-Politics Expressions Politicians used to be remembered for sweeping oratory that spoke of inclusion.Think John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you . . .” and Franklin Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” At the risk of sounding like we pine too much for the good old days, that’s not the case anymore. “There’s no longer the need to speak to a large constituency, so [politicians] develop hybrid political vocabularies that are, in a sense, as much to exclude as include,” Wayne Fields, an English professor at St. Louis’s Washington University who studies political argument, told one of us. “It goes across the board. It’s hard to say which comes first—whether politics corrupted the language, or the language has corrupted the politics.”1 As a result, the political right speaks of “San Francisco values” and “judicial activism.” The left substitutes “progressive” for “liberal ” and “investment” for “spending.” Both sides talk of “class warfare.” At the same time, when one side does reach out to the other, part of political speech is defined by putting sentiments behind a veneer of false courtesy or blatant euphemism. “My good friend” is the most obvious example. But again, there’s a wider array of words doing different work, so here’s our attempt to capture some of them. 38 ★ Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs & Washington hanDshakes Accountability: A high-minded, responsible-sounding word used against whichever party holds the White House. ★ The opposition party in Congress routinely demands accountability on any number of perceived misdeeds.Whatever the facts of the situation, calling for it can be enough to win all-important news coverage. In October 2013 the Obama administration’s botched rollout of HealthCare.gov, the website of its signature Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—provided plenty of fodder for congressional Republicans to demand accountability. House Speaker John Boehner said at the time, “Whether it’s Obamacare or issues with the Department of Defense, it’s our job to hold them accountable. . . . And when it comes to Obamacare, there’s a lot to be held accountable.”2 “As you know”: In politics this often means “as you sHOULD know.” It’s a subtle way of either reminding people of an accomplishment of yours, of pointing out something that someone, in fact, does not know, and of conferring the status of truth on what may be only a matter of opinion. ★ For the former, here’s Arizona senator John McCain at a November 2013 town-hall meeting on immigration reform: “I’ve tried very hard, as you know, and worked with seven other senators on a comprehensive reform bill that passed the Senate.”3 And for the latter, White House press secretary Jay Carney a month earlier in response to a question about the House Armed Services Committee’s position on the terrorist attack in Benghazi , Libya: “The ‘poor’ statement is a reflection of an assessment made by Republicans who have, as you know, attempted unfortunately to make this a partisan issue.”4 Bipartisanship: As we all learned in elementary school, bipartisanship is supposed to mean Republicans and Democrats—true believers, left-wing loonies, and the like— setting aside their differences—in other words, going all squishy and Neville Chamberlain—to team up on legislation for the good of the country. Charges of its absence often serve [3.238.62.119] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:01 GMT) ★ 39 Only-in-POlitics ExPrEssiOns as a way for partisans to try to shame the other side into going along. ★ Bipartisanship has long been considered a worthy goal. Political science professors routinely lament the decline of opposition party members working together. An entire think tank, the Bipartisan Policy Center, sprouted up in 2007 to promote the notion. But lawmakers on both sides see it differently. They routinely place their side’s policy priorities ahead of bipartisanship for its own sake. Consider then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s February 2009 statement about freshly inaugurated President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus bill. The California Democrat was trying to stave off Senate attempts to slash up to $100 billion in spending from the $819 billion package, which the House had recently passed. Pelosi dismissed calls from minority Republicans for bipartisanship as “process” arguments. “Washington seems consumed in the process argument of bipartisanship, when the rest of the country says they...