To Tell the Truth
Paula Scher contributes an essay to the December/January issue of Monocle for its special 2009 Global Forecast. Scher’s piece, “Truth Be Told: How to Rule in 2009,” looks at the language used by our leaders and its effect on foreign policy. Following the presidential election, Scher writes: “Call me an optimist, but I believe we may have reached a time in history when our major expectation of leaders is that they talk to us intelligently, as adults…I believe that the public will finally perceive strength in honesty and reason, rather than swagger.”
The essay is posted on the Monocle site (subscribers only) or read it here in full after the jump.
Truth Be Told
How to Rule in 2009
By Paula Scher
Call me an optimist, but I believe we may have reached a time in history when our major expectation of leaders is that they talk to us intelligently, as adults. What this means is that information has to be provided to us in honest, logical, non-manipulative manner, and then a course of action should be recommended based on the leader’s best reasoning – with a strong, inspirational appeal to our better human natures.
In the US, for over 20 years, our presidents have used the biblical and inflammatory language of “good” and “evil” to describe difficult international relationships. In the days of Reagan and Thatcher, Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union “The Evil Empire” while he accelerated the arms race.
The threatened Soviet Union, after years of covering up its economic dissolution, couldn’t match the US dollar for dollar in terms of arms expenditure, and came apart. Reagan’s timing was lucky. If President Nixon had called the Soviet Union “The Evil Empire” during the economically healthier Brezhnev administration there would have been no détente, no Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, no peace with China, and that rhetoric could have potentially launched a third world war.
But Reagan got away with it and conservative Americans loved it. US politicians then seized on this “good vs. evil” rhetoric to demonstrate their strength and resolve in all conflicts. International affairs were described to the public in black and white terms: “win or lose,” “with us or against us.”
This became the daily foreign policy speak of the George Bush administration. Bush referred to an “Axis of Evil” that included Iraq, Iran and North Korea. “Evil” must be destroyed so “good” can prevail. So, we found ourselves at war in Iraq, at a nuclear stand-off with North Korea, and trying to prevent a hostile Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.
Slowly, Americans have begun to see that this moralistic explanation of things that are actually very complicated (for instance, the relationship between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq) is inadequate.
Americans have realized that they were misinformed, misled into war; Bush’s incendiary rhetoric hasn’t served them well, and they are sick of it. I believe that the public will finally perceive strength in honesty and reason, rather than swagger.
In the US, this form of leadership is best demonstrated by president elect Barack Obama, and it was practiced by Al Gore. Gore had always been an uncomfortable, pedantic speaker, but he overcame it all in the documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, in which he featured.
Here, he made the case for dangers of global warming in a grown-up and teacherly way, without vituperative fear mongering. He followed it with a call to action that became eloquent in relation to the case he had already made. Now, while it’s true that our premiers and presidents cannot run out and make feature films every time they need to address their public, it is still possible for them to follow a similar format. They have to devote time to making the case. Like all good teachers, they have to lesson-plan before standing in front of the class.
Obama, a former college professor, is great at this. His campaign messaging has been masterfully clear due to superb planning. He has been brilliant at pivotal crisis moments, such as his address on race during the Reverend Wright controversy. Obama used the crisis as an opportunity to teach a national lesson. He also used the current economic crisis as a chance to prove his position on the failed economic policies of President Bush.
While Obama initially inspired young people to become politically active, he won the election because he appeared calm, knowledgeable and confident during a real crisis. He behaved like a college professor, not a rabble-rouser. He seemed like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, calmly telling us a well-known truth with a moral.
John McCain, by contrast, seemed like a mild hysteric, waving, flailing and continually changing his position. During the campaign, he was more incendiary, and it backfired. McCain’s strong suit was supposed to be foreign policy, but in the debates McCain kept talking about “winning” in Iraq and suggested that Obama was in favor of “losing.” The polling showed that Obama won all three televised debates and that he won on foreign policy as well as his views on the economy. I suspect this was partly because of McCain’s language. He created a black and white scenario for something gray.
The seriousness of the times demands serious dialogues. We need teachers, not demagogues, we need reason without apparent bias, and we need to be called to action by self-evident truths, not blind faith or what’s in the leader’s gut. The times will make (or break) the man.