What does it mean for a politician to be a “good communicator,” and how important is it?
You may have noticed that the left seems to think that politics mainly comes down to “messaging.” If something isn’t being accepted by the public, the left just needs to “message” it better – to communicate better with the public – perhaps to inform them, perhaps to misinform them, but in any case to affect their opinions by framing something with better words.
I certainly agree that communication is highly important. I wouldn’t be a writer if I didn’t think that, and I wouldn’t take time to craft my posts with care if I didn’t think that.
But there’s a great deal more than that to politics. The left has had a huge advantage in recent years because of the power to control the information that reaches the public in the first place, through control of the press, the entertainment media, education, and in recent years social media as well. It’s a huge power, and if the only communication that reaches the public is one-sided, it doesn’t need to be so very well done because it has no competition.
It also helps if the “message” makes sense and conforms to the observations people have in their daily lives, and that sometimes hurts the left. For example, saying that inflation isn’t really a Thing doesn’t convince people who are suffering from it in the real world, no matter how great your “messaging” is.
That brings us to a recent comment by “Bauxite”:
As a communicator, DeSantis is orders of magnitude more effective than Trump. I simply cannot fathom why anyone would support Trump over this guy in 2024. DeSantis has a chance to expand the base. Trump does not.
I partly agree and partly disagree. I like DeSantis and think he’s an excellent communicator: whip-smart and clear, tough yet not abusive. But I can easily fathom support for Trump: loyalty, fighting spirit, humor, foreign policy experience, just to name a few things. At the moment I lean towards DeSantis, but that could change.
I also submit that Trump did expand the base, particularly among minorities, although I think that DeSantis could expand the base among moderates.
Bauxite adds:
The last two Republican presidents were terrible communicators, not just below average, but really, unusually bad. That absolutely has something to do with why the left has been ascendent in the 21st century so far. I remember when the conventional wisdom was that the US was a center-right country. That was before Bush and Trump.
I disagree. Bush was a mediocre communicator – not “unusually bad.” And I think it has almost nothing to do with why the left has been ascendant recently. It was already happening for decades prior to his election, in education in particular, which indoctrinated the young who later became voters. And I think that the US is still a center-right country. It’s just that the media, education, and almost all other institutions (including many businesses) have become so indoctrinated by leftism that it’s hard for people to get straight facts.
Trump actually was able to cut through that; Bush was not. I think DeSantis can cut through it, too.
If something isn’t being accepted by the public, the left just needs to “message” it better – to communicate better with the public – perhaps to inform them, perhaps to misinform them, but in any case to affect their opinions by framing something with better words.
In other words, they need to lie better. This whole “messaging” thing to me is risible.
As for whether Trump was a good communicator or not, I guess it depends on the audience. He had a style, and he was faily understandable most of the time. But he would sometimes get himself into trouble by eliding words and phrases and speaking in short hand. This would often give the media and opportunity to jump on something and twist it or mangle it (we all remember “fine people” hoax) where if was said in a bit more polished of a way Trump’s enemies might not have had so many opportunities I guess. Trump needed and needs to be more careful in how he communicates. Not that I expect him to be more careful.
Trump actually was able to cut through that; Bush was not.
The media filters what Republicans and Democrats say, the detriment of Republicans and the benefit of Democrats. Because Trump was a celebrity for years before becoming a politician, he knew how to get his message through the jamming.
In most Presidential elections where there is no incumbent, few Americans know anything about either candidate except what they see in the media during the election year. People who follow politics as closely as the commenters here are quite rare and are not representative of the electorate as a whole.
In 2008, neither John McCain nor Barack Obama was the incumbent. McCain had previously been treated well by the media and was startled to find himself demonized. I’m sure we all remember what they did to Sarah Palin during the election year, but how many of us remember the favorable profile in Vogue in December 2007? And of course Obama was a blank slate against which any sort of puffery could be projected…
In 2016, every human being in this country knew all about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and had formed opinions about them for years previously. The media reframing of Trump and Clinton was not able to operate.
In 2024, every human being in this country will know who Joe Biden is, if he’s the candidate, and DeSantis has a shot at doing better than Trump would. But if it’s a new person, I would not think DeSantis would have as good a chance as Trump would have.
Frederick:
Trump’s communication in 2024 would be somewhat hampered by the Twitter ban.
Of course, if DeSantis were to run, I bet Twitter would ban him, too.
@Neo:somewhat hampered by the Twitter ban.
What I said about Americans in general about the attention they pay to politics and politicians goes quintuple for Twitter….
Even commenters here are not glued to Twitter.
Trump manipulated the press and “the shows” in addition to tweeting. He knew, for example, that if he said he had 10 billion dollars that journalists would fall all over themselves to point out that Trump only has two billion dollars and therefore is really not that rich. Which got his real message out… it’s easy enough to think of other examples.
What is different for 2024 and favors DeSantis is how many Americans are now just assuming the media is all lies. This is a new thing.
I think the problem with Trump, and to a lesser extent Bush. Was how the press not only amplifies the problem. In a way it never seems to with Democrats. But it always seems to . Take the least charitable interpretation of anything said.
In Trumps case it almost exclusively began with the idea that he had some obvious nefarious purpose.Look at the sheer number of “unprecedented” things he supposedly did. Which not only had precedent, but were often common exercises in governmental organization.
While I agree Trump was often purposely crass and vulgar. It still does not excuse the consistent misattribution of what he stated. Or the utter recklessness the press had when attempting to report on any negative aspect of what he did. Had they done so in an even remotely sober or responsible manner. It would have been possible to excuse an occasional mistake.
And yet it became obvious early on that the press was , as Trump accurately described, at war with a large swath of the American public
Talk about communication FUs…Ted Cruz stepped into a pile of doo doo by repeating every talking point of the left. He’s toast I would think. But Texas seems to be trending purple.
Listen to Dan Bongino’s opinion in today’s Dan Bongino Show podcast regarding Ted Cruz’s own goal from yesterday. Dan isn’t throwing Ted under the bus. But Ted certainly stepped on his own **** yesterday.
Texans will decide how serious it was; Democrats and the left are loving it. Who benefits?
Political rallies are not my cup of tea. I don’t like crowds and I don’t like being part of a mass gathering where everyone feels obliged to feel the same thing. If I played professional hockey, I would refuse to grow a playoff beard just because.
But political rallies are most definitely a form of communication and Trump has mastered the political rally like no politician I’ve ever seen. I would support DeSantis over Trump based on competence. But I don’t think DeSantis would generate the kind of excitement among people who don’t usually follow politics the way Trump has. And Trump has absolutely expanded the Republican base. I understand why people are turned off by Trump’s style but he commands a level of intense loyalty that will be hard to match.
Surely FDR was a great communicator and by all accounts it made a difference in holding the US together in the trying times of the Great Depression and World War II.
I’ve gone back and read/listened to some of his speeches and Fireside Chats and they seem shockingly adult and rational, yet also effective in keeping American spirits above water.
Here’s FDR’s speech after the Lend-Lease Act was passed — a pivotal moment which ended the pretense of US neutrality against the Axis and in favor of the Allies
_____________________________
The big news story of this week is this: The world has been told that we, as a united Nation, realize the danger that confronts us—and that to meet that danger our democracy has gone into action.
We know that although Prussian autocracy was bad enough in the first war, Nazism is far worse in this.
Nazi forces are not seeking mere modifications in colonial maps or in minor European boundaries. They openly seek the destruction of all elective systems of government on every continent—including our own; they seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers who have seized power by force.
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-15-1941-lend-lease
_____________________________
It often seems to me that today’s political leaders imitate FDR or Churchill in a cargo-cult manner — without putting thought into the words and deeds behind the words — yet expect to create history-changing moments.
I agree with all your points in this blog. There was a time right after 9/11 and before the Iraq War where Bush was very popular. His ‘Awe Sucks’ western style calmed the nation, for a while. I also agree that Trump brought people to the Republican Party that had been supporters of Democrats, POC and LBGTQ. It doesn’t matter if people like or dislike Trump, he has delivered better Republican candidates then their party has seen in decades. DeSantis is a great example.
Orators seduce, the plain spoken have no interest in persuasion. Rarest is those who combine plain speaking with the ability to articulately explain their thinking.
Obama was arguably, though only when in front of a teleprompter, the first. Trump the second and De Santis the third.
Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson also reside in the third category with Sowell the most skillful.
It’s just not the message that sway’s voters or opinions, it’s also their visual perceptions of the speaker. One’s visual perception of a speaker can literally render meaningless what is said or just turn it upside down.
There are two great example of this.
First, the Nixon/JFK debate; the very first televised presidential debates.
Those who watched the debate on TV thought JFK came out on top; those who heard the debate on the radio thought Nixon had prevailed.
The ONLY difference was that the radio listeners were unable to see Nixon sweating and looking nervous.
The other example is a play produced by NYU, entitled “HER OPPONENT.”
Basically, in the play, a female played the role of Trump and a male played the role of Hillary Clinton in their presidential debates. Each actor memorized the facial expressions and body movements of their real life characters, as well as the phraseology and words of the actual debates.
What was really interesting is that the audience was almost entirely NY city uber liberals; big fans of the real Hillary Clinton.
In short, they were shocked !! by what they saw, because they, in a million years would have ever believed they would be capable of disliking Hillary and liking (or perhaps more precisely, not hating) Trump.
Check it out here :
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/march/trump-clinton-debates-gender-reversal.html
IMHO, in this Hillary/Trump case, the NYC voters, at least in the real election, had already decided before any debates at all, that Trump = Hitler and Hillary = Jesus / Moses/ Mother Teresa/ Sara Barton/Eleanor Roosevelt ,, so it made ZERO difference what either of them said. They were all in for Hillary.
The message of Trump or Hillary was meaningless; all that mattered was they loved Hillary and hated Trump.
Unfortunately the play’s producers determined that the audience’s surprised reaction to the play was a result of gender issues; totally expected given that the producers are liberal progressive, uber woke , politically correct academics; i.e. clueless about the real world.
IMHO, the play was to some extent able to separate the message from the messenger and thus forced the audience to pay more attention than they normally would, to what was actually being said and how it was being said.
And because of the gender switch and the inability to sympathize with a gender switched Hillary, they were able to “see through” Hillary’s affected expressions and mannerisms.
@John Tyler:Those who watched the debate on TV thought JFK came out on top; those who heard the debate on the radio thought Nixon had prevailed.
“The myth of viewer-listener disagreement appears to have originated in a passage in The Make of the President, 1960, an award-winning book about the campaign written by journalist Theodore White.”
I am still unable to watch a Trump speech for more than a minute. My vote for him in 2016 was a brick through the window of what I expected to follow the election. I was pleasantly surprised at how he governed and realized the dilemma he found himself in trying to run a government fundamentally hostile to him.
His choices of cabinet members sounded OK until I saw that they were part of the “Swamp.” I still don ‘t understand Tillerson. Mattis showed how smart he was on Theranos’ Board. DeVos was an inspired choice and, like Trump, she had no obligations to donors. Flynn was ambushed because he knew too much. The only people around Trump he could trust were his family.
I watched the JFK-Nixon debate in 1960 and voted for Nixon. I agree about the effect of TV. I also watched the Ford-Carter debate and was yelling at the TV after Ford made his blunder.
@MikeK
It would be interesting to know your impressions of JFK and Nixon at that time back then and why you chose the way you did.
In 2008 I was so horrified by Obama’s Messiah campaign that I watched the first Kennedy-Nixon debate to refresh my memory on the relative sobriety of past presidential campaigns.
JFK was simply the more handsome man and more physically at ease than Nixon. No mystery there. Advantage, JFK.
Nixon looked like he could have used more powder around his eyes and nose, but I don’t know that it was a dealbreaker for the TV viewer over the radio listener.
But most of all I was struck that they both seemed like serious candidates interested in demonstrating their grasp of facts and arguments and their qualities to lead the United States in a difficult time.
I was also struck by the non-glitzy, minimalism of the debate. It looked like they were speaking in a high school auditorium.
–“Kennedy-Nixon First Presidential Debate, 1960”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbrcRKqLSRw
It’s worth watching for yourself.
Trump is actually a very good communicator given the circumstances of the time. That is the key qualifier. Rhetoric that is lofty and eloquent, detailed but captivating, sprinkled with subtle pathos…all is entirely inappropriate for successful communication to a widespread audience in present day America. The Right in especially handicapped since it has to break through all of the media gatekeeping, ‘fact checking’ and smearing. Nobody did that more effectively than Trump.
Lofty, Churchillian eloquence…that is best suited for a Hillsdale College commencement.
DeSantis is also quite adept; less so than Trump, from what I’ve seen, but still quite impressive. DeSantis should (and I think will) be the clear frontrunner if Trump declines to run. If Trump does run, the nomination is his, and I assume DeSantis will be agling for VP.*
*Yeah, yeah, Constitutional questions. Technically Trump is Florida domiciled. But Trump can easily make himself a New Yorker again.
I’ve considered that a Dream Team Ticket would be DeSantis/Trump: one to unite, advance and promote, one as Executioner. Trump in the #2 slot could restore the VP position to some degree of prominence and authority.
That it’s simultaneously a completely unworkable conjunction of styles, egos and ambitions and that any association with Trump would drown out anything positive by media overwhelming the message keeps it in Dream World.
But, we can dream, can we not?
^— It would be wonderful.
Good Cop / Bad Slob.
The sight of Trump playing second fiddle to someone else would stop the oceans rising and halt the music of the spheres.
Whether or not someone is a “great communicator” is as subjective as whether someone is a “movie star” so individual results may vary but box office is the determine factor. Both require a authentic personal charisma that can’t be taught and results in a widespread appeal. Few politicians have this as they mostly rely on their respective hype machines. Dems are especially deficient since their hype machine is so extensive and includes most of the media and academia. They ran Hillary Clinton for President after all. People kept saying Obama was a “great communicator” but – trying to be as objective as possible here – he just seems like a good reader. Story Time with Barack. Trump is authentically Trump at all times and he most definitely did strike a chord with a LOT of people. People not previously engaged with politics. People who had given up. For me, I’ve always liked his speaking voice and cadences as well as his authentic bluntness whereas readers like Obama are always monotonously predictable and uninteresting and passive aggressive. They can be when they’ve got the media explainers and hype on their side. De Santis also has a good delivery; not a reader! Very enthusiastic about De Santis and believe he will only get better. He’s definitely not “orders of magnitude great” than Trump though. He’s still an unproven quantity in the annals of Great Communicating. I think the writer of this story here is using the “good communicator” discussion dishonestly to trash Trump so I automatically distrust his judgment. Also, the use of tired hype terms like “orders of magnitude” tell me he’s not a Great Writer but, rather, a hack.
I would add a few points:
– From what I can see, I think that Bush may have been the most fundamentally decent human being to be president in the last few decades. I have no desire to denigrate him personally. I don’t think he was a great president, though. He was limited by his public speaking skills (which were really poor) and his timidity on pushing back against Democrats. He was the victim of bad intelligence on Iraq and of bad luck/timing on the financial crisis. Maybe that would have doomed any president, but Bush’s limitations made the situation unrecoverable and that led directly to President Obama.
– I think Trump is kind of like a pied piper. He communicates (and acts) in a way that appeals very strongly to a narrow slice of the electorate and repulses pretty much everyone else. Trump rarely has complete command of the facts of any given situation and speaks with very little discipline. He covers for not knowing the facts or having inconvenient facts by just making things up, which kills him. He’s the perfect mark for Democrats sophistry and spin. (How hard is it to talk about Zuckerberg and shady election law changes from 2020 without having Dominion thrown in your face?) When Democrats in office and in the media spin up a cloud of noxious BS about something Trump said, those of us who are either Trump fans or political junkies can recognize that Trump isn’t being treated fairly. Most the suburbanites who turned the elections in 2018 and 2020, however, just see two sets of blowhards.
Let me give an example. Trump can tell you that CRT is bad (although it took him nearly three years in office to even start taking about it). We know that CRT is bad, so it feels good to hear someone else say it. What about people who don’t understand CRT or don’t know what it is? Who will they believe? Trump, the guy who has a hard time communicating about white supremicists without making it sound like he’s defending them, or the reasonable-sounding bureaucrats who insist that CRT isn’t even being taught in the schools? I don’t think that Glenn Youngkin has demonstrated genius-level communication skills, but even his “never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake” strategy was more effective than Trump on CRT, at least in terms of winning elections. (And if you don’t win elections, the ideology of the other side triumphs.)
– Trump did increase Republican margins with minorities, which is a welcome and necessary thing. Kudos to Trump for doing that. I don’t think the evidence so far indicates that you need all of Trump’s baggage to win increased margins with minorities, though. There are some polls suggesting that Glenn Youngkin outright won Latino voters in Virginia. Also, DeSantis (and not Andrew Gillum) is the governor of Florida right now because of African American women in Miami (most likely because of DeSantis’s positions on school choice). I think the path forward is to look at the reasons why Trump, DeSantis, and Younkin succeeded where Romney failed.
Trump had acknowledged star power before he ran for President and during the primary when he was widely believed to be a stalking horse for the Clinton campaign. ONLY when it became clear that he posed a real threat to the Swamp did he become “loathsome” and “vulgar” and All Bad Things Forever. Minimizing Trump’s awesome communication skills for the purpose of promoting a preferred candidate is not convincing. Let De Santis stand on his own considerable credentials!
Sorry, I like DeSantis better before I knew of his “credentials”. Looks to me like someone checking boxes on the career path to senator-for-life.
From what I can see, I think that Bush may have been the most fundamentally decent human being to be president in the last few decades.
What indication is there that he compares favorably to his father, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, or Gerald Ford? His domestic life has been satisfactory, but he’s spent the last 12 years selling his constituency down the river.
He was limited by his public speaking skills (which were really poor) and his timidity on pushing back against Democrats. He was the victim of bad intelligence on Iraq and of bad luck/timing on the financial crisis. Maybe that would have doomed any president, but Bush’s limitations made the situation unrecoverable and that led directly to President Obama.
What made the situation unrecoverable was a slew of bad decisions, some his, some attributable to the military, some to administrative agencies, some to Congress. Had squat to do with his thick tongue. Got news for you, he wasn’t appreciably worse than Jimmy Carter or his father in this respect; the differences were stylistic. Gerald Ford’s good speeches required oodles of practice; he was soporific by default. Bilge Clinton left an ordinary person wanting to take a shower when they were done being exposed to his oleaginousness.
He communicates (and acts) in a way that appeals very strongly to a narrow slice of the electorate and repulses pretty much everyone else.
The term ‘narrow’ doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Trump would make a great VP Hatchet Man!
Just aim him at the upper levels of government and set him loose. I’m sure he knows where the dead, rotten wood is and his heart would be in the chopping.
It’s a dirty job but someone needs to do it, preferably someone at the end of their career with little concern of making enemies. Meanwhile POTUS could keep his hands clean.
I’m not sure Trump would be willing to be #2, but he has impressed me as a patriot, so I think it’s possible.
It might be the most important legacy of a 2024 Republican administration. Someone needs to put the fear of God into the Swamp.
Trump will stand down or he’ll run; it is impossible to imagine him accepting the 2d spot.
Richard Cheney (irritating as he is as we speak) had many of the qualities you want in a vice president. Able to take the top job as needed, but not actually interested in having it. Which suggests the VP nomination should repair to someone who has never run for the job (certainly someone who has never run recently or vigorously for it). Perhaps a governor, former governor, or former cabinet officer who is on board with America First, in their late 60s.
Trump would make a great VP Hatchet Man!
AFAICR, the only VPs who attempted to fill that role were Zhou Bai-den and Spiro Agnew. Not great precedents.
Art Deco – Narrow is less than 50%. That’s all that really matters.
@ Frederick Jan 7 @ 8:22
Here is a controlled study of visual vs audio-only audience reactions:
https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2010/09/the-1960-debates-did-jfk-win-on-visuals/
There simply is no doubt that a viewers visual perception of a speaker can be the deciding factor (or maybe even the largest factor) in deciding whether or not to support a candidate.
Unfortunately, some of the history’s greatest public speakers were real bad apples; e.g. Hitler. It is said he could hypnotize an audience and move them to action.
Abe Lincoln supposedly was a slow, deliberate speaker; not at all bombastic or showy or loud. But his words really had an impact on audiences; and he was not by any stretch a good looking guy.
If he was a participant in what passes today for political “debates,” he probably would never make it to the round two of the debates. His looks and manner of speaking would work totally against him.
Today’s political debates favor those with quick, witty-sounding responses who are adept at saying a lot of nothing or are good at “got-ya” remarks.
Imagine if Trump was a liberal progressive.
How would the media have covered him?
They most likely would have said things like:
“how refreshing to have a politician speak so plainly.”
“It’s about time we have a politician who says it like it is.”
“Here’s a politician that can reach the ordinary person and speaks their language.”
“Finally, a politician who pulls no punches.”
The media, like many ordinary folks, first determines whether or not they like a candidate, and then they decide to support or not a candidate.
Narrow is less than 50%.
You have insuperable problems with English usage. Give it up.
Art Deco – Good luck to you with a candidate whose ceiling is under 50%.
@John Tyler:There simply is no doubt that a viewers visual perception of a speaker can be the deciding factor (or maybe even the largest factor) in deciding whether or not to support a candidate.
No one said otherwise. But what you said, “Those who watched the debate on TV thought JFK came out on top; those who heard the debate on the radio thought Nixon had prevailed” is not supported by any contemporary evidence. It was a story written quite some time after the fact to explain what happened but there was no polling or study of listeners/viewers at the time to contrast. Sure, it could have happened, but there’s no evidence that it really did.
@Mike K:I watched the JFK-Nixon debate in 1960 and voted for Nixon. I agree about the effect of TV.
What you didn’t do, was write down your impression of the outcome of that debate, erase your memory of it, travel back in time, listen to the same debate on the radio, write down your impression of the outcome, and compare the two and find they were different. I’m pretty confident that no one who was alive in 1960 did that.
And there’s no way now to poll people in the moment back then, the people who only heard on the radio and the people who only saw on TV and compare the two. No one did that then and no one can do it now by talking to people alive then. Everyone who is alive now and saw one or the other has 60 years of retroactivity in their memories and impressions and have all heard the myth.
Art Deco – Good luck to you with a candidate whose ceiling is under 50%.
They’re all under 50% when the electorate has a choice of obtrusive third party options and when ballot security is sufficient to keep criminals from stuffing the boxes.