The public will believe a simple lie rather than a complex truth - Alexis de Toqueville
While the above observation may itself be a bit of an oversimplification, it should never be ignored, especially in a debate. So how do you defend against simple lies? You must come prepared with some simple truths before you try to explain the complex ones. And simple truths are not so easy to find. Mitt Romney is very familiar with the simple lie. President Obama is much better acquainted with the truth, but the truth is often complex. So we must recognize, Obama starts at a disadvantage, and therefore he must be better than Romney. So what do you do?
What prompted this diary was my own ignorance about the Romney Ryan medicare replacement plan. And that ignorance concerns Romney's plans on a variety of issues. Now part of my ignorance is understandable, because Romney's plans are so vague, you really cannot fully understand them, no matter how hard you try, because they really don't exist. But, in this case my ignorance was simply because I had never looked into the issue. I know Romney Ryan is a voucher plan, and that it will eventually shift the burden to individuals. So I am against it. So where is the problem?
The problem for me came with Romney's explanation of how it works. I had never looked at the details, so I listened. And here I think he was very clever in his choice of words, and I think deliberately so. Here is the transcript.
Number two is for people coming along that are young. What I'd do to make sure that we can keep Medicare in place for them is to allow them either to choose the current Medicare program or a private plan — their choice. They get to — and they'll have at least two plans that will be entirely at no cost to them. So they don't have to pay additional money, no additional $6,000. That's not going to happen.
What he never says is that you will have to pay for your medicare out of your voucher, provided the voucher covers its cost. Otherwise you will have to subsidize your voucher. To me when someone says you can keep your medicare, that means things are as they are now, you don't pay for it, you choose it. If you have to pay for it, it is no longer medicare it is a public option. In other words I am thinking the plan is just stay on medicare at no cost, or take your voucher to pay for a private plan.
And I imagine many people, when they hear they can just keep their medicare, assume that means nothing really changes if you choose that path. Of course just keeping your medicare made no sense in the framework of Romney Ryan, so I finally dragged myself to the Romney website, and after some navigation, because it's not easy to find, found the minimalist explanation of the plan, But the explanation does include the point that medicare will compete with private plans and you will have to choose it and pay for it. But a lot of people aren't going to check things out. They wanted to hear they could keep their medicare. They did, so they're happy.
But If Obama had just given us the simple truth that you don't just keep your medicare you pay for it, I think it would have a great impact in undermining the credibility of the plan for many people. I'm sure he assumed everyone understood that, but we don't, and that's why simple lies work.
In other words you cannot always thoroughly discredit a simple lie. That often requires a very complex truth. Instead you have to disect the simple lies to find where they are weak and where a simple truth can effectively discredit just a part of the lie, but in so doing you call into question the entire lie. And that requires going in to the debate understanding exactly what those weaknesses are, and being ready when they are being talked about.
Another point where a simple truth would have helped is when Romney was discussing his cross the board 20% tax cuts, which are not tax cuts. This is really a tough one to get a grasp of. We're going to give a tax cut that actually doesn't cut taxes. But what caught my ear was the following
I want to bring down the tax burden on middle-income families. And I'm going to work together with Congress to say, OK, what are the various ways we could bring down deductions, for instance? One way, for instance, would be to have a single number. Make up a number — 25,000 (dollars), $50,000. Anybody can have deductions up to that amount. And then that number disappears for high-income people. That's one way one could do it
Just make up a number. No you can't just make up a number. If you want to make the tax cut revenue neutral, even after you eliminate all deductions for the wealthy, the math tells you what that number will be. The number chooses you, you do not choose it. And it will be a lot less than 25,000. And therefore a lot of middle class people are going to be hurt by this "tax cut". It's a simple truth that everyone can understand. If you are just making up a number you do not have a real plan.
The point is Romney's plans often are deeply flawed, and you just have to find those flaws, and attack the individual flawed parts where possible with simple and straightforward arguments. Don't try to go after the grand schemes. It's too easy to deflect thaose arguments. In any case, and in Obama's defense, combating simple lies is never simple. For the next debate we need a few simple truths.