What Reagan Had and Obama Needs: Optimistic Slogans

Anyone writing about abortion knows how hard it is to find the right label to identify each side's position. Those who support reproductive rights call themselves pro-choice, but in a recent post, when I identified pro-life anti-abortion advocates as anti-choice, a colleague told me she found the term offensive. I can see her point. Pro-choicers don't like to be called anti-life, which would be the flip side of the phrase I had used as a matter of convenience, as opposed to ideology. So I changed my labeling system, but not everyone got the memo, as they say.

A popular bumper sticker says, "It's a child, not a choice," which can fairly be summed up as an anti-choice position. And Feminists for Life, where Jane Roberts, the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts, does pro-bono legal work and served on the board, uses the trademarked slogan, REFUSE TO CHOOSE. Either there's a touch of hypocrisy at work here, or to put it another way, "It's not what you say, it's what people hear."
That's the subtitle of Republican pollster Frank Luntz' book, "Words that Work." Luntz made his reputation advising Newt Gingrich and other GOP leaders on how to frame policies in appealing language, such as calling the estate tax "the death tax," implying that everyone is unfairly punished by the government for dying.

Kelly McDonald, a professor of communications at Arizona State University, uses the book in his classes. Emotionally charged language motivates people to act, "so slogans become ways to motivate the ideologically aligned or to push the ideologically neutral to act," says McDonald. He cites among the most successful President Reagan's '84 campaign slogan, "Morning in America," and the way he re-branded a weapon of war, the MX Missile, as "the peacekeeper." Barack Obama's "hope and change" slogan during the 2008 campaign built on what Reagan did, and brought hundreds of thousands of new voters to the polls.

McDonald says Obama could use more Reaganisms to convey a sense of optimism and conviction if he hopes to get voters to "stay the course" as they did with Reagan in 1982. Reagan faced a difficult midterm election with unemployment at 10.8 percent, and an approval rating of 42 percent, numbers much like those of Obama's today. Republicans lost 28 House seats that November, but held their own in the Senate, an outcome that in retrospect looks positively rosy given the gloomy forecasts that Obama is likely to experience.

Obama has so far failed to come up with a memorable slogan that could rally voters to come out and support Democrats this November like they did in '08. He seems to have a reflexive disdain for the packaging that has become such an important part of politics, almost as though he's above it. If he's to persuade voters, he's got to do a better job of connecting with their emotions. It's not enough to outline rational responses to difficult problems when the other side is waiting to pounce.

The November elections will be decided most pivotally on economic issues, but hot-button topics like abortion, immigration, gay marriage and gun rights will also be on people's minds. The California judge who overturned Proposition 8, California's ban on gay marriage, practically ensured the measure will go before the Supreme Court, which could be why opposition from the Right was remarkably measured. This battle over gay marriage is long from over.

The political hot buttons in this election touch on the overarching theme of government power that is roiling the electorate. Conservatives are popularizing the phrase "anchor babies" to inflame a debate about the right to citizenship of children born to illegal immigrants on American soil. McDonald is living and breathing these issues as a college professor in Arizona, epicenter of the debate over illegal immigration. He points out that the architect of the law that ignited the controversy, a state senator, wants to be seen as anti-illegal immigration without being anti-immigrant. It's a distinction that gets lost in the cable-news face-offs, but judging by the polls, the American people seem comfortable with the ambiguity. By almost two-to-one, they support the Arizona law, yet at the same time a substantial majority also supports comprehensive reform that would include a path to citizenship for the twelve million illegal immigrants already in the country.

Arizona is also the center of what could be called gun anxiety. Even though Obama supports gun rights and has done nothing to advance gun control, the period immediately before and after his election saw a stockpiling of ammunition and weapons in Arizona, and the state legislature has been active in overturning what few regulations existed, making sure all who wish can be armed. Underscoring Luntz' thesis that what matters is what people hear, in Arizona, says McDonald, "Every gun regulation is tantamount to confiscation."

People view issues through ideological lenses. When former GOP leader and conservative activist Dick Armey makes fun of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, he doesn't have to say liberal, and when liberals mention Fox News, they don't have to say conservative. We get it, just as we get what it means when politicians say they are pro-choice or pro-life. These labels tell us about one aspect of a politician's inclination to vote, and they remain strong indicators 37 years after the Supreme Court ruled that abortion is legal. A conflict between pro-choice Democrats and pro-life Democrats almost took down the health-care bill. An executive order issued by Obama reaffirmed language in the bill that nothing in the measure would change existing law that prohibits federal funds to be spent on abortion. Words matter even when all they do is maintain a carefully negotiated impasse and a veneer of civility between what we intend to say and what other people hear.