Symptom-fighting. A German word that exists in order to criticize.
Das ist reine Symptombekämpfung — that is pure symptom-treatment — is a standard charge in German political and business argument. It means: you have not understood the problem, and what you are doing will not last.
A culture builds a word like that only when it needs to make the accusation often.
Mauscheln. To do a deal in the dark. Along with Kungelei and Klüngel, German words for an arrangement reached between the right people out of sight. They are used in political journalism constantly, always as an accusation, and they all name the same offence: the outcome was arranged rather than reasoned.
Americans who use direct communication are typically labelled as plain speakers. It is difficult for plain speakers to rise high in American politics, and one of the few to do so was Harry Truman.
Truman’s entrée into politics began in 1922, when he was elected to be a judge in the Jackson County Court. He served as a judge from 1922 to 1924, but despite his reputation for honesty and efficiency, was not reelected in 1924. Undeterred, Harry ran for judge again in 1926, this time winning his election.
In 1934, Truman became a senator, and in 1944 he was nominated to run as vice president with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The two men won their campaign, and Truman then came to office as president following FDR’s death in April 1945.
In 1948, Truman ran for reelection, and to the shock of the public (who considered his defeat inevitable), Truman won reelection. In fact, Truman’s defeat was so widely anticipated that some newspapers went to print with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” before the election results were known. As a result, there is a famous photograph of Truman smiling as he holds up one of these newspapers after winning the presidency.
Harry Truman left the presidency in 1953 and retired from political life. Some examples of Truman’s Plain-speech:
On why he opposed silencing dissenters: “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
On why he would not accept the Medal of Honor: “I don’t consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise.”
On politics: “We now see that other past presidents, have found a new level of success in cashing in on the presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Obviously, political offices are now for sale.”
On politics: “My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference. I, for one, believe the piano player job to be much more honorable than current politicians.“
Facing a Selfie Election, Presidential Hopefuls Grin and Bear It. July 4, 2015. Jeremy Peters and Ashley Parker. New York Times.
“Press that white button! This right here,” the former secretary of state instructed a technologically deficient fan in New Hampshire who was fumbling to work an iPhone camera. Her patience thinning, Hillary Rodham Clinton took matters into her own hands and jabbed the button herself.
Who wants their babies kissed or their yard signs autographed anymore? This is the Selfie Election. And if you are running for president, you have no choice but to submit.
Candidates can now spend an hour exhausting a line of eager selfie seekers. Jeb Bush has perfected a technique suited to his 6-foot-3 frame: For his shorter fans, he will take the picture with his own outstretched selfie stick of an arm.
“They just have to put up with it, because how do you decipher who is a fan and who wants to fill their profile with pictures of them with candidates?” said Mr. Robinson, editor of The Iowa Republican, a political publication.
Senator Marco Rubio will indulge people who want selfies. But he often travels with a professional photographer who takes photos of him with voters as an aide trails behind, handing out index cards listing a website where supporters can go to download their pictures.
The benefit? Not only does the photographer speed the process and produce higher-quality images, but voters are asked to provide personal information on Mr. Rubio’s website. Before they can view their photos, Rubio supporters have told the campaign their name, their home and email addresses, which issues matter most to them and if they are willing to volunteer.
On June 22, 2015 Juli Hirschfeld Davis authored an article in the New York Times under the title “Obama Lowers His Guard in Unusual Displays of Emotion.”
“His eyes well up without warning in private, thinking about his teenage daughters growing up. He choked back tears in public recently while delivering the eulogy for Beau Biden, the son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who died at 46.”
“My takeaway was, ‘Wow — where’s this guy been?’” said Kent Conrad, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota. “I turned to my wife and said, ‘My God, if he’d shown those kinds of feelings, and that kind of connection to others, I think he would have had a different experience as president,’ ” Mr. Conrad said. “If he could let himself show that, he would do much better with the American people, and much better with Congress.”
Days earlier, Mr. Obama had begun a health care speech with an uncommonly intimate greeting for Sister Carol Keehan, the chief executive of the Catholic Health Association of the United States and a political ally.
But even Mr. Obama has admitted that he has been blindsided recently by fits of sadness, many of them prompted by the thought of his daughters growing up. “I start tearing up in the middle of the day and I can’t explain it,” Mr. Obama told attendees at an Easter prayer breakfast in April. “Why am I so sad? They’re leaving me.”
He wiped away tears in February as he bade farewell to Eric H. Holder Jr., a confidant who served for six years as his attorney general. People close to the president say he is often unfairly tagged as apathetic simply because he does not carry on publicly about his feelings.
“This is, in many ways, a private man — he is not somebody who wears his emotions on his sleeve,” Mr. Connolly said of Mr. Obama. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have emotions.”
Germans don’t wear their emotions on their sleeves, either.
The essential link between message and messenger in American culture can be seen in the public behavior of elected officials. To be successful in the American political system a candidate often must embody their party’s political platform. The candidate is certainly more prominent than the party organization, and in some cases more so than its political platform.
The candidate is the Messenger-in-Chief, so to speak. Because they must connect with the voters on a personal level, the candidate’s character, personal life, their biography are examined carefully. American voters choose the candidate as person first, then the message as political platform.
With a weekly audience of 15 million people, famous conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has the highest ranked radio talk show in America. Beyond being an outspoken promoter of conservative values, he has gained his notoriety by being the man who supposedly says what everyone is thinking, but are too afraid to say out loud.
On the other hand, many consider a lot of his remarks to be at the very least distasteful and inaccurate. Nevertheless, the controversy he stirs up has made him one of the most well paid media figures in America. In 1992, Limbaugh published his first book, The Way Things Ought to Be, followed by See, I Told You So in 1993. Both became number one on the New York Times Best Seller list, The Way Things Ought to Be remaining there for 24 weeks.
On the other side of the political spectrum is a man often described as being the left liberal counterpart to Rush Limbaugh: documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. Michael Moore has produced three of the top ten highest grossing documentary films of all times (Farenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine, and Sicko) all of which take a critical standpoint of various American laws and social policies in topics such as topics such as globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, the Iraq War, the American health care system, and capitalism.
In 2005 Time magazine named Moore one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Moore’s films, and his ‘hands-on’ approach to getting evidence are so controversial that his films were all produced independently, largely from funding which he himself contributed or lobbied for. There are many who claim that he inaccurately represents issues by only supplying evidence to support his own point of view.
After the successful raid that killed Osama bin-Laden, the White House released a photo of the scene in the Situation Room during the raid. The raid was planned over a period of several months, during which the President was involved in the details of the raid.
According to counterterrorism chief John Brennan, “The president had to look at all the different scenarios, all the different contingencies that are out there,” he said.
In times of domestic crisis, U.S. leaders often make public visits to the stricken area to show personal concern for the affected people and to depict themselves as someone who leads from the front.
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, President Bush was criticized for his slow response to the storm. Rather than landing in New Orleans to look at the devastation from the ground, he viewed the damage from the air on the way from California to Washington. Many analysts criticized his leadership for failing to survey the damage on the ground.
In contrast, after Hurricane Sandy struck New York and New Jersey in 2012, Obama quickly visited the affected areas multiple times to meet with local leaders and affected families. President Obama was praised for working with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican who in the past has been extremely critical of Obama’s leadership.
Obama’s rapid response and both leaders’ willingness to put aside partisanship was put forward as an example of effective leadership at both the national and state level.
During the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, when individual state in the U.S. have elections to choose the party‘s candidate, there were several interactions between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama which made many feel uncomfortable. The interactions were direct, confrontational, critical, in some cases bordering on personal.
Within a week or so the two candidates had softened their tone. The media reported on it at length, speculating that senior people in the Democratic Party had advised Clinton and Obama to do so. They feared that if the attacks continued the winner of the primaries will be damaged going into the general election.
Candidates in the same party exposes each other‘s weaknesses offers opportunities for the opposing Republican Party. Hillary and Barack were asked to be more discrete.
American politicians have always had a close link between their politics and their personal lives, even from America’s first days as a nation. According to Gentlemen’s Blood: a History of Dueling by Barbara Holland, “In our early years a man’s political opinions were inseparable from the self, from personal character and reputation, and as central to his honor as a seventeenth-century Frenchman’s courage was to his. He called his opinions ‘principles’, and he was willing, almost eager, to die or to kill for them.”
As such, any insult to or disagreement with a politician was seen as a threat, and the politician usually responded by challenging his opponent to a duel. According to Joannie B. Freeman in Affairs of Honor, “Longtime political opponents almost expected duels, for there was no way that constant opposition to a man’s political career could leave his personal identity unaffected.”
The best known example of a political duel was the Burr-Hamilton Duel of 1804. Vice President Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton had been political enemies for some time, when rumors that Hamilton had been saying “despicable” things about Burr prompted Burr to challenge Hamilton to a duel.
The accounts of the duel are somewhat conflicting, however, it is generally believed that Hamilton fired first, aiming high and missing. Burr then returned fire – his bullet pierced Hamilton’s torso, lodging in the man’s spine. Hamilton died the following morning.
Other famous American political duels included the Jackson-Dickinson Duel, the Clay-Randolph Duel, and the Lincoln-Shields Duel.