Last week, Slate posted a response to some criticisms of its Kerryisms column, including to my criticisms. Kerryisms, the author says, aren’t really attempts to translate Kerry’s words into “plain English,” though they were originally billed that way.
OK, that’s fine — but what then are they? The response talks about “get[ting] the joke,” but what’s the joke? The Kerryism columns continue to say that they focus on Kerry’s “caveats,” “curlicues,” and “embellishments.” The terms “curlicues” and “embellishments” seem to suggest that the material the columns point to is unnecessary (redundant or otherwise surplus). But often, it’s not; it’s needed to make Kerry’s point politically effective or even simply accurate.
The term “caveats” seems to suggest that the removed material may be necessary, but somehow limits or takes away from Kerry’s main point — but what’s wrong, funny, or even noteworthy about Kerry’s acknowledging that his answers are more complex than a simple “yes” or “no”?
Just to further illustrate this, let’s consider today’s Kerryism. Kerry said:
The strong spending caps in my plan will ensure that spending doesn’t grow faster than inflation. And if Congress fails to keep spending in line, the budget caps will mean across-the-board cuts in every area except security and education and mandatory programs like health care, Social Security, and Medicare. So when I say “a cap on spending,” I mean it.
Here’s the Kerryisms version:
The strong spending caps in my plan will ensure that spending doesn’t grow. And if Congress fails to keep spending in line, the budget caps will mean across-the-board cuts in every area. So when I say “a cap on spending,” I mean it.
Where’s the joke? Kerry, to his credit, candidly said that he’s talking about spending in real dollars, not nominal dollars (“faster than inflation”). If that’s his plan (and it’s a plan that’s quite consistent with “a cap on spending”), he should make it clear. It seems to me that such candor and precision is to be praised, not condemned; and while it might make his prose less punchy, it may actually be politically wise, as well as more honest: It keeps his adversaries from faulting him for inaccuracy.
He also didn’t say that he’d institute across-the-board cuts; he said he’d institute such cuts in all programs except some that he seems to think are too important to cut. Again, if that’s his view, it’s good that he reveals it — and it may be politically quite important for him to reveal it, since otherwise people might fault him for threatening to cut Social Security, national defense, and the like. How is it clearer, in any other way better, or even funny to edit that out?
Maybe the claim is that with these “caveats,” Kerry’s last sentence (“So when I say ‘cap on spending,’ I mean it”) is no longer accurate. But that’s not right, either. First, as I mentioned above, even if “cap on spending” is treated as “stabilizing spending,” it’s quite fair — even economically more sensible — to focus on spending in real dollars, not nominal dollars, and still call stabilization a “cap.” Second, I take it that Kerry’s point in the next sense is that if “Congress fails to keep spending in line,” his “budget caps” would mean huge cuts in what he sees as the optional areas, but not in the really important areas. It may or may not be good budget economics, but I don’t see much by way of “curlicues,” “embellishments,” or even “caveats,” unless by “caveat” you mean any nuance or retreat from an absolutist position.
So just what’s the point here? Here’s the columnist’s response to my specific past criticisms, which I take it would also apply to the criticism here:
Another blogger, Eugene Volokh, gets the joke and doesn’t like it. “Another possibility is that ‘Kerryisms’ has evolved into an attempt to show simply that Kerry uses a lot of qualifiers, instead of giving very simple answers,” Volokh writes. “But often, as in this case, the right answer isn’t simple. It’s actually not terribly complex, but it’s not one-word simple. Is it really good to fault a politician for refusing to oversimplify?”
That’s a good and fair question. I prefer to let each reader decide for herself, case by case. I should have explained the general idea more clearly. Now I have. The rest of the judgments are up to you.
Can that possibly make sense? Surely the author must be trying to say something with his column. It can’t just be: “Here’s a Kerry statement, and a version without qualifiers. Decide for yourself if the qualifiers were necessary / useful / important.” (This would be like the Bushisms column giving a bunch of Bush statements, some wrong and funny but some perfectly accurate or at worst slightly off, rather than focusing just on material that’s worth criticizing or mocking. Oh, wait, that is what the Bushisms column does . . . .)
Presumably the columnist must have chosen this particular quote not because the quote simply reflects Kerry’s praiseworthy refusal to oversimplify. The columnist must have chosen it because he thinks something about these particular qualifiers should lead some readers to think there’s something wrong with what Kerry said. Well, what is that?
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