Attributed variously to Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Arabic culture is an old saying that goes something like this.
Third rate people talk about people.
Second rate people talk about events.
First rate people talk about ideas.
We wonder if the concept cannot be extended to the speech of political candidates. And, perhaps, political reporters.
Third rate candidates talk about events.
Second rate candidates talk about issues.
First rate candidates talk about principles.
Think of Lincoln's Gettysburg address. It was an address about an event, yet it made only a passing reference to the event. No battle or general was mentioned, not even Gettysburg. Lincoln eschews talk about slavery as well. The speech is not about issues. Rather, Lincoln appeals to the noble principles upon which the nation was founded. He links the events and the issues to this set of noble principles. The language he uses is terse, precise, memorable, compelling, ennobling. In remembering it we are made better. This is the stuff of good political discourse.
Not all events call for speachifying at this level. But some of the principles hold. Aside from this example, there are several reasons to believe that speaking in terms of principles is desirable.
At one level we believe that intelligence is a desirable quality in a candidate. One important sign of intelligence is the ability to deal with abstractions. We note that issues tend to be abstractions about events. And principles tend to be abstractions about issues.
Candidates who are capable only of talking about events, we have reason to believe, are probably not terribly bright. If a candidate only talks about issues it may be that they are incapable of fitting arguments about issues into a principled framework. Or it could mean that they don't have a principled framework. The former is a sign of inadequate intelligence. The latter is a sign of a habit of expediency, laxity, sloppy thinking, or compromised principles.
The ability to speak articulately about principles and their relationships to issues and evvents is a clear sign of two essential forms of intelligence: the ability to make good distinctions and the ability to synthesize disparate facts into meaningful frameworks of knowledge.
The skill also confers a persuasive advantage. Politicians have who speak articulately in terms of principles frequently can get some broad agreement on a lofty principle long before they might be able to can get agreement on the policy details of an issue. And it is frequently true that when one gets agreement on principles, a good policy is easier to hammer out.
One of the great problems Hillary has had in her political carreer is that she has thought much more carefully about how to fix problems than she has about how to lead people toward a reasonable answer. She gets stuck in the details. She does not get early agreement on principles.
Her proposition for a single-payer health plan was among the most timely and important issues that faced Congress in 1992. Had it passed, it would have been seen decades later as Clinton's most profound political contribution. Had it passed, a significatn number of the problems the US healthcare system now faces would be less severe. Her failure was not in getting the right plan. Her failure was in getting other people to buy into it.
Instead of going about Congress getting people to buy into a set of governing principles and getting thoughtful people with access to the press to advocate for those governing principles, she attempted to sell a fully formed plan. The surprise is not that she failed. The surprise is that she came so close to success using methods doomed to failure. While it was true that Hillary wowed Congress with her command of the facts and with the compelling logic of her arguments, opponents exploited fear and greed and turned the public against the plan.
But, I think, this need not have happened if Hillary had made the case for a set of principles. For instance, that the US should not rank after Cuba in infant mortality. It's not even a first world ranking. Which politician is going to argue "No, no, America cannot afford to be as good as Cuba at protecting the health of the unborn and newlyborn?"
This statistic, by the way arises from and is suggestive of how access is severely limited for a substantial population of the poor. When they get very sick, they go to the emergency room where they are treated for five, ten or a hundred times what it would cost had they been given the right preventative care. The cost of treatment is higher and the outcomes are less favorable. We need solutions that simultaneously achieve better outcomes and ultimately cost less. Well, giving the right kind of free care to the indigent would absolutely achieve this end. The fact that the indigent do not pay for emergency care does not mean that we do not.
The kinds of arguments that can be made on the basis of principle here are extraordinarily compelling. They are principles like: treat people like people. And cure an ailing health-care system. But Hillary did not make them. ( A true cynic would argue that Hillary's approach assured that single payer would never be a political feasibility - not for another century. If one set out to create such an outocme Hillary could not have done a better job.)
I recently read a piece entitled "When Obama Channels Reagan." It was actually about Obama invoking Reagan, but it got me thinking. Reagan was pretty good at talking about principles. He was good at getting agreement on those principles. Now it is my own opinion that a significant number of the principles that he sold were cheap, tawdry, and ignoble. Many were swindles and cheats, lies and deceptions, frauds and fictions. But that's not the point. The point is his persuasive methods were effective. And it happened that I had just been thinking today that Obama does, in fact, share some of Reagan's ability to talk about principles and to get us all to agree on them.
Obama is skilled at finding common ground and starting a discussion about change from that point. This is a powerfully effective technique. It is a technique that has some hope of swaying people who may not already agree with you. It is a technique in which Hillary displays not quite so much skill as Obama. Nor, I think, does Hillary show quite so much skill at it as McCain.
For this reason, I think that Obama has a better chance in November against McCain. I will disagree with some of his policies; but I do believe that if he succeeds in advocating for a set of nobler principles to supplant the bankrupt ones of the Reagan legacy, the US and the world will be a better place for it.