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    Doubletalk: The Language, Code, and Jargon of a Presidential Election
    Doubletalk: The Language, Code, and Jargon of a Presidential Election
    Doubletalk: The Language, Code, and Jargon of a Presidential Election
    Ebook134 pages1 hour

    Doubletalk: The Language, Code, and Jargon of a Presidential Election

    By Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The only time most Americans care anything about politics is during the presidential election cycle. This quadrennial flood of posturing and blame, once confined to the July conventions and the November election, has spread like a greasy lake across the landscape and calendar of our politics. From the first exploratory rumblings of the hopefuls sometime after the midterm elections to the tsunami of Super Tuesday, the political language of the presidential election has become a reflecting pool of our polity. Doubletalk casts a warm ray of sunlight on the campaign trail as an add-on to last year’s Dog Whistles, Walk-backs, and Washington Handshakes, with over 100 new terms, phrases, and epithets combining wit, humor, truth, and dubious taste and propriety.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherForeEdge
    Release dateFeb 2, 2016
    ISBN9781611689532
    Doubletalk: The Language, Code, and Jargon of a Presidential Election
    Author

    Chuck McCutcheon

    Chuck McCutcheon is an award-winning journalist and author living and working in Washington, D.C.

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    Reviews for Doubletalk

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Doubletalk is an encyclopedia of political terms. The authors then explain each term with examples of the context in which the term was used (because all communication is contextual). The authors use bipartisan examples, so as not to offend readers. At 105 pages, readers can knock the book out in an hour or two.
    • 5/5
      I just finished DOUBLETALK: THE LANGUAGE, CODE, AND JARGON OF A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION by Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark. The book was sent to me by the University Press of New England in exchange for an unbiased review. Access points include an Introduction, Doubletalk (an alphabetical list of words, terms and phrases - a table of contents if you will), Notes and a List of Terms (index). The Notes section is (for me) a book in itself - the references and sources of all the ‘Doubletalk’ was as fascinating as reading the book. I accessed many of the references and was fully engaged in the articles, speeches and web sites. The index was helpful.I enjoyed this book immensely. It was interesting, humorous (although this is not a ‘comedy’ book), well-documented, a satire of sorts, an etymology lesson, and a crash course in presidential election politics, history and ridicule.Some of my favorite ‘Doubletalk’ terms are:Bateson candidate is a term “coined by political scientist/columnist Jonathan Bernstein to describe politicians who are ‘oddly out of sync with normal time’. Bateson candidate comes from Star Trek and refers to Captain Morgan Bateson of the starship USS Bozeman, which encountered a time warp that trapped it 90 years ahead of time.”Box Canyon is “a Wild West metaphor which describes a political situatiion from which you can’t easily extricate yourself and are vulnerable to attack.”Inspector Javert is “the primary antagonist of Victor Hugo’s LES MISERABLES, now applied to any investigator of a politician whose probing is perceived to be overzealous.” Hillary Clinton has faced several ‘Inspector Javert’.Schrodinger’s cat is a quantum physics term which “is a famous thought experiment describing a cat that might be both alive and dead in a box; in politics, shorthand for someone or something in a strangely paradoxical situation.”I could continue and ‘copy the entire book’ for this review, but I will stop and hope that you pick up the book yourself. It is so interesting and funny and intriguing - all rolled into one. Please look through the Notes and read as many references as you can - it is a fascinating look at out political system.
    • 4/5
      Really interesting encyclopedia or dictionary of political terms. It's a funny look of the political speech being thrown around, at the same time is written is the vein to be used to fit into the conversations going on on social media and physical media. I feel like there is a huge missing piece here, a political jargon drinking game bingo at the end. (just a suggestion) #feelthebern!
    • 3/5
      A small collection of word gems that spice up an election race - the essential phrases that contort, distort, and even belie. So we learn about 'adults in the room', 'autopsy reports', 'cuckservatives', 'earned media', a 'rope-a-dope' or what it means to 'poke the bear'.But when the author discusses the phrase 'job killing' and quotes arguments that try to tell us that 'regulation is not a significant factor affecting overall employment' or even better: 'environmental regualtion creates jobs!' then it is clear - he has not the slightest idea of economics.However, I read it to the end and enjoyed a few phrases.So: Three stars, not more, not less.
    • 4/5
      I will give credit to the author for trying to stay bipartisan, and doing a lot of research. I honestly thought there were be more than just terms and definitions., not that wasn't interesting but still. also it is a very quick read. Glad I took time to read it, probably wouldn't read it again. but would recommend to certain friends. overall I'm still giving credit for research and give this 3.5 or just a little under 4 stars
    • 3/5
      A good book to read a little at a time, otherwise it will seem overwhelming.
    • 4/5
      There is a lot of good information in these definitions and I liked how the author gave examples to demonstrate how the terms are used but I felt like it was a lot of jaron go to go through. I was expecting a more simple dictionary style book but including more information is a good thing. I was surprised by a lot of the words he had included in this book because some of the words I had never heard being used before or I had thought they were just simple phrases that didn't really need explaining. I had though that a lot more complicated terms that a lot of people misuses and misunderstand would be included in this book, like republic, democracy, liberalism, conservatism, socialism because a lot of politicians throw around these words and people just assume what they mean and end up misconstruding the words. I am giving 4 stars because it is good information and can be useful for people but I would have liked more political science terms to be explained that civilians use without understanding the full meaning.
    • 4/5
      Chuck McCutcheon’s and David Mark’s ‘Doubletalk’ is a timely addition to the political conversation.With Presidential Primary and Caucus elections currently taking place in the USA, this small ebook (148p at the resolution I used reading the book in iBooks on an iPad Mini) gives the casual, and more intense, observer an interesting insight into what the candidates and the spin doctors mean when they utter certain phrases.This reviewer lives in Australia where the Westminster Parliamentary system is used to elect a government. Hence, Australians don’t actually get to vote for the Head of Government (Prime Minister) nor for Head of State (that’s an English woman called Elizabeth II). However, much of the language explained in this book is certainly part of the electoral discourse in Australia.For some unknown reason, I thought this was going to be a funny read, and while there was the occasional chuckle at some of the phrases, the tone is far more explanatory than comedic.I was most impressed by the extensive notes included in the last quarter of the book, and took some time looking up (via hyperlink) the original texts where particular phrases had been used.I have not read the authors’ previous work on political speech, ‘Dog Whistles…’ but will now be on the lookout for it.
    • 4/5
      There is a lot of good information in these definitions and I liked how the author gave examples to demonstrate how the terms are used but I felt like it was a lot of jaron go to go through. I was expecting a more simple dictionary style book but including more information is a good thing. I was surprised by a lot of the words he had included in this book because some of the words I had never heard being used before or I had thought they were just simple phrases that didn't really need explaining. I had though that a lot more complicated terms that a lot of people misuses and misunderstand would be included in this book, like republic, democracy, liberalism, conservatism, socialism because a lot of politicians throw around these words and people just assume what they mean and end up misconstruding the words. I am giving 4 stars because it is good information and can be useful for people but I would have liked more political science terms to be explained that civilians use without understanding the full meaning.

    Book preview

    Doubletalk - Chuck McCutcheon

    Terms

    Introduction

    Here are one hundred political words and phrases to know before you head to the polls.

    This undertaking is a sequel and companion volume to our 2014 compendium Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs and Washington Handshakes: Decoding the Jargon, Slang and Bluster of American Political Speech. We covered a broader spectrum of language in that book—language used in the legislative process and the media, among other things—but we thought that with the presidential election approaching, a more specific guide might help anyone seeking a flashlight to shine on the deliberate darkness of the campaigns.

    Because—news flash—presidential elections can be highly confusing. Especially when, as of this writing, there are more than a dozen candidates just on the Republican side, all of them deploying many of the same verbal tricks. Donald Trump’s candidacy, which is surging as we write, is fueled in no small part by a resentful backlash to obfuscation. (He does, at times, resort to politispeak; see the evolve entry.) Trump doesn’t even use multisyllabic words much; he keeps things simple—and, of course, very direct.

    Most of the time, political doubletalk is deliberate. When someone dismisses a question as an opportunity, not a problem, or pledges to tell it like it is, or seeks to brush off a controversy with it’s just politics, it fits with the definition of spin—attempted control with the intent to deceive. But we also agree with Barton Swaim, a former speechwriter for Mark Sanford (yes, the South Carolina governor-turned-congressman of hiking the Appalachian Trail infamy). In his 2015 book The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics, Swaim said the all-encompassing demands of contemporary politics warrant being less than clear. Using vague, slippery or just meaningless language is not the same as lying; it’s not intended to deceive so much as to preserve options, buy time, distance oneself from others, or just to sound like you’re saying something instead of nothing, Swaim wrote. That occurs, he added, because politicians are required to weigh in on things of which they have little or no reliable knowledge, or about which they just don’t care.¹

    Just as we had with Dog Whistles, we used several criteria to select the terms we would bring to readers’ attention. We tried to avoid issue-specific phrases, such as anchor babies, and extremely familiar terms such as gaffe. We looked for definitions with staying power, staying away from the dated utterances of past campaigns, such as hanging chads and binders full of women. We did include a sprinkling of terms common in the political world—but less known to the public—that we thought would prove helpful. Several of these deal with polling, a field that has assumed near-holy status in understanding the election-year electorate, but remains widely misunderstood.

    And as in Dog Whistles, we have no political agenda. If there are more examples in these pages of language used by Republicans than by Democrats, it’s because Republicans have had many more members of their party running for the highest office in the land. We did, whenever possible, look for words and phrases that have been used on a bipartisan basis.

    Because the compiling of political words seems to have been a useful endeavor—and because it’s fun—we encourage and welcome your contributions to our ongoing efforts. Please visit our website, www.dogwhistlebook.com.

    —C. M. & D. M.

    September 2015

    Doubletalk

    Ad hominem attacks: A fancy-sounding defense mechanism in which a politician who’s the subject of criticism responds by targeting someone making the argument and not the argument itself. Ad hominem is Latin for to the person.

    Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz repeatedly portrays himself as a victim of what he considers ad hominem attacks. In March 2015, California governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, said that Cruz was absolutely unfit to run for office because of his direct falsification of the existing scientific data on climate change. In response, Cruz said that global warming alarmists like Brown engage in ad hominem attacks and don’t want to confront the data on climate change.² (The senator argued that weather satellites show that warming isn’t happening; climate science websites, however, noted that the latest satellite models indicate exactly the opposite.)³

    On the liberal Daily Kos blog, a commenter using the name Cassiodorus wrote a widely read dissection of ad hominem attacks, seeking, among other things, to distinguish them from purely personal ones.

    A personal attack occurs when you say that ‘so-and-so is bad’ for whatever reason, he wrote. Personal attacks . . . contribute nothing to rational, civil discussion—but they do not, by themselves, constitute ad hominem arguments. An ad hominem argument comes into being when one uses the implied presumption that bad people can only make bad arguments.⁴

    The adult in the room: A term applied favorably to candidates who can distinguish themselves by being serious and thoughtful, as opposed to bombastic and partisan.

    The phrase is a synonym for grownup and reasonable Republican, two terms that Democrats use to describe their model GOP legislator. But its usage goes beyond that party.

    Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia’s nonpartisan Center for Politics said of Ohio governor John Kasich in August 2015: I think he’s trying to be the adult in the room. And the adult in the room is not fire and brimstone.⁵

    An opportunity, not a problem: A popular political spin move that seeks to diminish the significance of a current or looming concern.

    Politics is all about projecting optimism. And increasingly, politicians in both parties have adopted, either publicly or tacitly, the famous maxim of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. That’s because, according to the former House member and White House chief of staff, it’s an opportunity to do things you could not do before.⁶

    In his first major economic speech in February 2015, presidential nominee Jeb Bush described immigration reform—an issue on which he differs dramatically from the GOP’s conservative base—as a huge opportunity . . . not a problem. In outlining his desire for annual economic growth of at least 4 percent, the former Florida governor said: While the political fights go on, we’re missing this opportunity. I view fixing a broken system as a huge opportunity to get to that 4 percent growth.⁷

    The New York Times also looked into whether Texas’s economic woes—the state lost twenty-five thousand jobs in March 2015, and the oil industry has coped with slumping prices for that commodity—could hurt former governor Rick Perry politically. Perry made the Lone Star State’s growth a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign. Not to worry, said Avik Roy, a senior adviser to Perry’s political action committee: It’s an opportunity, not a problem, because if the Texas economy continues to do reasonably well even though the energy sector gets hit, that is only going to strengthen his case, not weaken it.⁸ Yet it wasn’t enough of an opportunity for Perry, who subsequently dropped out of the race.

    None of this is new. In his 1991 book Sleepwalking through History: America in the Reagan Years, journalist Haynes Johnson wrote that Ronald Reagan’s budget guru David Stockman regarded the implicit failure of supply-side economic theory as an opportunity, not a problem. It provided a chance to have gigantic tax cuts and military increases—yet also dismantle despised social welfare programs that had accumulated since the New Deal.⁹

    (Also see related entry, opportunity.)

    Autopsy report: A political party’s internal examination of how it screwed up in a previous election.

    Autopsy comes from the autopsia, a seeing with one’s own eyes, and dates to the mid-seventeenth century.¹⁰ The parties themselves, of course, never use a phrase so closely related to death, preferring a more upbeat spin. (In fact, the Republican National Committee repeatedly cautioned the authors of the 2013 Growth and Opportunity Project report against using the A-word.¹¹) But the media and blogosphere love the term: It’s punchy and makes for an easy

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