Margin Notes: Politics and Trust

During a visit to my college last weekend, I saw an exhibit in the art museum. One wall of the gallery displayed a series of eye charts, each assigned to a president up until George Bush. Instead of letters, words ran down the chart in decreasing font, the largest signifying the word that president said the most in his State of the Union addresses.

George Washington’s top word was “gentlemen.” James Buchanan’s was “slavery,” followed, unsurprisingly, by his successor Lincoln’s top word: “emancipation.” Many other top words were expected. A few, like Nixon’s “truly,” are somewhat funny when you consider the history. Some seem optimistic, like George Bush Sr.’s “idea” followed by “kids, deserve,” then “tomorrow, gains, everyone.” And then some, like Bush Jr.’s top word “terror,” are scarily prophetic.

It’s eerie how many of these words (James Madison’s third highest word “arms,” Herbert Hoover’s “unemployment”) our politicians still use so frequently. In many ways, this repetition makes sense — similar issues repeat over the course of years. Our democracy will always debate James Monroe’s “parties” or promise Martin Van Buren’s “results” or assert the present with calls for Lyndon Johnson’s “tonight.” I’m curious, though, as we increasingly analyze and doubt the public rhetoric of our politicians, how we’ve come to regard their words with such diminished sincerity.

In 2016, we have Donald Trump rousing urgency with his top debate word (according to Tech Insider): “eminent.” We have Hillary Clinton referencing the “systemic” issues in our country. We also have over a third of Clinton’s top 20 debate words referring to issues our country faces (“children,” “LGBT,” “discrimination,” “racism,” to name a few), compared to Trump’s zero percent (unless you’re counting “Mexico City” and “Japan” as the United States’ top political issues).

These words, of course, are only snapshots of our presidents and candidates. They are snapshots of the crafted rhetoric our politicians present to the public, words that we, cynical from the learning curve of history, are likely to take with a grain — or a whole mound — of salt. The joke of the untrustworthy, schmoozing politician feels ancient, so old and tired that it forgets, perhaps, where it even began. When did our leaders become people whose words we are so programmed to distrust?

Distrust. In some ways, I want to argue this is the wrong word. We’re simply careful and wary. We’ve learned to hold our representatives to their word and, moreover, to judge them by the trends and inconsistencies in their word. Like our perennially flighty friend who promises this time she’ll be there, we learn when to distrust people’s word. From Fox News to MSNBC, the media has helped us through these judgments, giving us various interpretations from which we pick and choose.

I wonder to what extent we’ve become smarter at judging these underlying layers. It seems instead we’ve become more cynical, so much so that we’ve let our distrust spread to supporters of the “other side.” We’ve decided our friend is a flake and always will be — and we’ve decided all her friends are too.

Maybe this distrust isn’t new. Maybe we’ve always had a deep distrust of those different from us, those who don’t believe and question the same things we do. Yet our distrust, like the politicians who fuel it, seems to have become more public now, thereby more acceptable, thereby more reckless. We’ve moved past smart wariness of rhetoric to a pervading distrust of a particular person (i.e. Trump, Clinton) and those who support them. One could argue this distrust is now deserved, but the deeper issue is how we got here in the first place — and if we’ll get out.

During a slow day at work last week, I watched presidential speeches. My favorite was Robert Kennedy’s impromptu speech in 1968 that broke the news of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination to a majority black crowd in Indianapolis. Standing in the back of a truck, in a neighborhood the police chief warned him not to address that night, Kennedy embodied a sincerity we no longer believe in our politicians. With no allusions to his presidential campaign or party (and without looking at his paper), he used the publicity to emphasize the prayer and unity the country needed right then.

Prophesying the “difficult times” to come, Kennedy urged people not to resort to greater racial polarization in their anger, but instead to maintain compassion for each other. Unlike other cities, Indianapolis did not burn that night. Other factors may have affected this, but there remains something unique in the fact that, once, a politician’s speech, in a time of high violence and emotion, did not prompt distrust, but rather created trust — not only in Kennedy’s words, but also, more importantly, between the people themselves.

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Posted by Rachael Allen on Aug 19 2016. Filed under Featured Content, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.