Moderates are lousy leaders, failing followers (redux)

The problem with moderates in America? We’re content to allow polarized rhetoric to dominate election cycles and then spend our time grumbling as we try to clean up the mess. 

Here we are, the level-headed 3Ms (mushy middle moderates), holding the cards for a winning hand in the high-stakes game of presidential politics … yet always getting fooled by the bluff of the latest candidate promising, with a wink and a nod, to be a centrist who governs from the middle. 

Here’s the line we’ve fallen for with every candidate since Carter: “Hey, look … I have to say certain things to lock down the base. Then when I get in there, that’s when we’ll really pull it together.” 

In recent times, it just hasn't worked out that way. We moderates wasted valuable time allowing the shrill rhetoric of The Far Left ("Trust us! We're the smart ones!") and the angry rhetoric of The Far Right ("Down with the sissy elitists!") to dominate the political arena. 

I used to think that the ratio of liberal/moderate/conservative thinking was 20/60/20. But to hear the shrill voices of The Left and the angry voices of The Right, it sounds more like 45/10/45. 

Nevertheless, whether it’s our passion void or blind faith in a passive-aggressive strategy, we’re always left with a White House sweepstakes winner that we find wanting. We don’t muster enough strength to place the right candidates in the finals, so for decades we’ve been left with the task of adjusting the rudder, time after time. And as we executed that chore, we grumbled and groaned, sputtered and moaned. 

But we did our course-correcting duty, all the while muttering to ourselves, “Next time, we’ll show ‘em, by golly.” 

Regrettably, adjusting the rudder has shifted to a violent tug of war with each election cycle. The combatants on either end of the political rope are bigger, stronger and more intense now, so moderates, previously accustomed to applying modest tugs on either side of the flag in the middle, now must take longer leaps back and forth and use vicious yanks of the rope in an effort to establish any semblance of equilibrium. 

And the muscle strain is beginning to show, with moderate fatigue setting in. It isn’t that party politics isn’t working; it’s that party politics is working too effectively - against us. Can a third party in the middle - official or unofficial - figure out how to have a real voice in politics? In this generation, the moderate voice is barely audible, and when it's heard, it's condemned. 

We have only ourselves to blame unless we start listening more carefully and responding to reasonable leadership with much more energy and a much higher decibel level.

"Relentless Explanation" Must Bridge a Rhetoric Gap

Ironically, most dictionary definitions of word "rhetoric" resemble the very art they are defining. With one exception, descriptions of the science of language usage are high-minded, attractive - you definitely want to be associated with rhetoric.

Unless, that is, you are being linked to its exceptional characterization: "the undue use of exaggeration or display; bombast."

Unfortunately for us all, particularly those of us who are subjected to lots and lots of media stimuli (in other words, virtually all sentient beings), the unflattering form of rhetoric seems to be the prevailing form. From inflammatory political oratory to contrived corporate messaging, an over-abundance of utter bombast is cluttering our air space ... and head space.

Today's language landfill is accumulating because too many top-end rhetoricians are failing to bother with the back-end support that is critical to their triangulated messaging. You can develop all the flowery rhetoric and capture the perfect three words or expressions, but without a solid ground game in place to explain and then highlight the benefits, those top-end words may as well be "blah blah blah."

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham highlighted modern rhetoric's explanation deficiency in a recent essay in which he credited Bill Clinton with coining the compelling expression "relentless explanation." Meacham, always erudite and unerringly fair and polite on cable gabfests (truly a behavioral rarity on cable), referred to Clinton's rhetorical genius while decrying the Obama administration's failings in the important part of messaging, the back-end fulfillment.

Meacham said Clinton used that expression while noting that "if you explain something to me, even if I don’t agree with you, you have nevertheless honored me.”

Obama's problem, said Meacham, is that he has been “professorial without teaching us and eloquent without moving us.” And that malady in Obama's communications plan is what plagues too many "quick draw" message development coaches. They can supply powerful words that leap from what Clinton referred to as "pretty speeches," but many of them don't seem to bother with the piece of the puzzle that involves concise, authentic answers to people's key follow-up questions.

The result is political stumping and corporate campaigns that ring hollow, that don't engender strong support because the intended audiences feel they're being "talked down to."

And when that happens, no amount of "pretty" words can bridge the rhetoric gap. Only deeds and authenticity can do that.