Rhetorical Ruin
Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig: Israel: Rhetorical Ruin
Here’s a not-too-theoretical question: who would you prefer to lead your nation – a mumbling politician who is well-versed in legislative matters and gets things done, or a charismatic political speaker whose policy failures are legion? Unfortunately, recent events in Israel and the United States provide a clear answer: the rhetorician.
President Joe Biden is no orator, to put it mildly. During these last few years, his speeches have been marked by a weak voice and occasional memory gaffes. The debate against Donald Trump a few weeks ago proved to be the electoral nail in Biden’s political coffin with his mumbling and stumbling. VP Kamala Harris, his replacement on the ticket, has garnered immediate Democratic support – not so much for any policy achievements (vice presidents aren’t supposed to overshadow their president) but rather due to her feisty – even hard-hitting – speechifying. That’s just what the Democrats feel is called for to neutralize Trump’s overly bellicose verbal attacks.
And yet, a close look at Joe Biden’s achievements as president shows someone who knows how to get things done – even in the face of a highly partisan and split Congress. His “Inflation Reduction Act” is a huge and marvelous piece of anti-global warming legislation that has already jump-started large-scale research and development in that critical area, thereby reinvigorating several Rust Belt areas in the U.S. Second, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden shepherded the economy through those trying times with minimal economic damage – indeed, with hardly a recession of any sort. Even better, this past year America has had historically low unemployment numbers. And of course, from Israel’s perspective, there has never (it’s worth repeating: never) been a president who so quickly and overwhelmingly came to Israel’s aid in war materiel as well as diplomatic support, even in the face of opposition within his own party. Not only a “doer”, but a man of principle too.
PM Netanyahu is almost a mirror image of his American counterpart. If anyone had doubts about Bibi’s rhetorical skills, his speech in Congress last week should have put them to rest. From an oratorical standpoint, it was brilliant – hitting the right spots with parallels to Churchill’s WW2 alliance with America and other such political pearls. This is basically why he has been elected to six terms (overall) by the Israeli public, projecting an image of authority and strong leadership.
And then we look at his actual record. Other than economics (high marks), Bibi has been a disaster for Israel. Two main (yet related) existential issues illustrate this. First: the Iranian nuclear program. By convincing President Trump to dump the nuclear deal with Iran that had been painstakingly put together by Obama and the major European countries, halting Iran’s nuclear program progress, the outcome of trashing the deal is that today Iran is but a few weeks from being able to produce enough fissionable material for a nuclear bomb (it would still take some time after that to produce a workable nuclear delivery system).
No less catastrophic has been PM Netanyahu’s policy of surreptitiously supporting Hamas by enabling its continued financing through Qatar, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. All this so that Israel could continue to argue that there’s “no partner” to talk with. And now that Hamas proved how awful such a policy was and Israel has had to go to war post-Oct. 7, it is being unnecessarily dragged out as Bibi waited for several months to attack Khan Younis (falsely claiming that Biden pressured him into holding back). Why? Because the longer the war goes on, the less Netanyahu has to deal with the aftermath reckoning surely to come: the (not yet established) Commission of Inquiry’s findings as to his strategic culpability – this in addition to his party’s huge electoral defeat that every poll is predicting when the next elections take place.
Among other things, I teach political communication. It’s amusing that when strangers ask what I do and I tell them,, they almost invariably respond with “is that so important?” Unfortunately, voters (Israel, America, almost everywhere) don’t bother to look in the mirror. The problem of “pontification” vs. “policy” is due to most voters’ preference for the former. Human psychology is more attuned to the way people talk to us than what they say. The phenomenon called “Donald Trump” is proof of that. If he has a policy, it’s that of the playground seesaw: up one day, down the next; at best, it’s a vague “approach” e.g., MAGA (Make America Great Again), actually having no real content. Nevertheless, he has approximately half the country in his pocket! Why? Because he sounds forceful and “authentic”, even his rhetorical skills are minimal.
None of this is new (or news). The famous Kennedy/Nixon debate back in 1960 was the first time that communication researchers began to realize the extent to which rhetorical skills are central to political success. Those who watched the debate on TV said that Kennedy won; those who only heard it on radio gave Nixon the nod. On television, all sorts of non-policy elements come into play (youth, body language, etc.), whereas on radio the focus is on content.
If this general phenomenon of political rhetoric beating policy record depresses you, it’s worth recalling the famous comic strip Pogo who once sagely stated while looking in the mirror: “We have met the enemy, and it us.”
