Done with it, they can still come back over. And sometimes they do treat big apartment buildings with heating, but how it works that depends. The freezing stuff from my understanding, doesnt work as well. Its not as good as the heat. You guys had a lot of questions. [laughter] and i guess thats it. So thanks. Thanks for coming. [applause] thank you guys again for coming. We have copies of the book at the register available for sale, and if you would like your copy signed i think brookes going to be right here. Maybe if we could line up in that center aisle . Lets have one more round of applause. [applause] every weekend booktv brings you 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on cspan2. Keep watching for more television for serious readers. Booktv attends book festivals throughout the year across the country. Coming up next, from the 2015 gaithersburg book festival in maryland, david mark and Chuck Mccutcheon talk about their book dog whistles, walkbacksn and washington handshakes. [inaudible conversations] good morning, everyone, and welcome to the gaithersburg book festival. Im a gaithersburg resident and a volunteer on the book festival committee. Gaithersburg is a vibrant, diverse city that celebrates and supports the arts and humanities. We are pleased to bring you this fabulous event thanks to the generous support of our sponsors. As you see them throughout the course of the day, please visit and say thank you for sponsoring this festival. For the consideration of everyone here please silence all devices. Also in order to keep this event free, we need your feedback. There are surveys that are available here and at the information booth throughout the festival and online at our webd site. Your thoughts are important to usbo so please take a couple ofli minutes to fill one out and submit it to the festival committee. Mr. Mccutcheon and mr. Mark will be signing books immediately after this presentation. Copies of their book are also available at the politics prose tent at the festival here. And prose tent at the festival here. A quick word about buying books. Even though this is a free event and we want to keep it that way it does help the book festival if you buy a book here. The more books we sell for our events the more publishers will want to send their authors to speak with us, and purchasing books from politics and prose benefits the local economy, supports jobs and the book festival. So if you enjoy the program and youre in the position to do so, please purchase a book. Mr. Mccutcheon is the coauthor of the 2012 and 2014 editions of National Journals almanac of american politics and was coeditor of congressional quarterlys politics in america 2010. Mr. Mark is a former Senior Editor at politico and political journalist. Hes the author of going dirty the art of negative campaigning. Theyve written a very entertaining book that explains the political jargon we hear by all of our elected and appointed officials. And at the same time helps our understanding of politics. In addition to enjoying the book, their web site is also great and includes a jargon of the week quote. Last week it was the meaning on its a long way from tip area. So please welcome chuck and david. Thank you. [applause] well thanks, everybody for showing up and allowing us to be the opening act here the kick ah event at the book festival. It is our privilege and pleasure to be able to appear here and speak to such a wonderful crowd about whats becoming whats always an interesting topic, but particularly now as the president ial primaries start to ramp up and we head into debate season and theres more increasing coverage of the candidates. And political language has something that i think has been an interest of both of us with our backgrounds as political journalists. Chuck and i met years ago as colleagues at the old congressional quarterly, staking out members of congress in hallways, trying to reconstruct what was going on in closeddoor meetings, and at least i noticed repeatedly that members, elected officials of both parties would often give very similar answers, cliches, you might say where it really was in jargon. No matter what the subject, it could be about health care, Telecom Policy you name it. They would come out of a meeting, and or youd catch them off the floor of the house of representatives and theyd give these kind offed, clicheed answers. Many of these individuals often came from successful careers professionally before they got elected to congress. They might have been successful trial attorneys, wealthy business executives, doctors, military officers and you just know that when they were dealing with clients or business contacts, suppliers, etc. , you know they didnt speak in this kind of coded way. So thats how i got interested in trying to decipher what these elected officials were actually saying. And just want to run through a couple of highlights in the title in the book and then pass it over to my colleague. Ill leave the first one dog whistles to my colleague chuck. But a walkback is something that were probably all familiar with. When you hear an elected official Say Something that they werent supposed to say out loud but they really meant. Committing candor, in other words. Yes exactly. Senate democratic leader harry reid is sort of a master at this. Hes almost built a career saying things out loud that then his staff has to walk back and say, well, he didnt really mean it. Or often what theyll claim is, well, he didnt mean to say that out loud [laughter] which is different from saying he didnt actually mean it. Former governor jeb bush of florida, a likely 2016 republican president ial candidate, has dealt with this issue himself just this last week where hes had three or four iterations of whether he would have supported the invasion of iraq back in 2003 as his thenpresident brother led at the time. And hes kind of had to twist himself into contortions to explain whether he would have taken the same actions as his brother. Finally saying, you know, if id been in office, no, i would not have led, i would not have ordered up the invasion of iraq and everything thats come after that. So thats a great example a recent example of a walkback. A washington handshake is something that many of us are also probably quite familiar with. Its shorthand for the sort of insincerity that we often encounter in politics. Technically, its when youre shaking somebodys hand and theyre kind of look over their shoulder to see if theres somebody more important in the room who can help out your career. Right. And just a couple of other highlights from the book that we often heard over the years and are probably familiar if youve ever watched congress on television or just the evening news, etc. , when youll hear a member of congress refer to, quoteunquote my good friend. Often thats from somebody across the aisle, and thats really shorthand for i cant stand this person, but you cant say that in congressional parlance. And i would just note how that compares to parliamentary tactics in other countries and in ore democracies in other democracies where theyre actually not afraid to go directly at the opponents and really throw out some rather unkind monikers and names. So i think thats actually in some sense a reflection of these sort of civility and genteelness of our political system compared to other places. Another one that you hear often from elected officials is we need to have a conversation about fill in the blank subject matter. This is something that president obama likes to use when hes confronted with a question that he doesnt really want to tackle. It came up a couple of years ago when Edward Snowden had leaked nsa documents fellowed the country. President obama fled the country. President obama was asked repeatedly about privacy concerns and the president said something to the effect yeah, we need to have a conversation about that. Or when the states of colorado and washington both voted to legalize marijuana and he was asked should the federal government legalize marijuana or is your Justice Department going to crack down on these states for violating federal law, and the president said we need to have a conversation about that which is basically means get it off my plate [inaudible] it means i dont really want to talk about this. Right. Its the last thing on earth i want to be discussing. Right. And id just add as i mentioned jeb bush has had to confront some of these issues, political language issues the last couple weeks or so. Hillary clinton, to the degree that shes answered any media questions, has also had to deal with. And just a couple that come to mind that weve had some fun with in the last few weeks, when Hillary Clinton made her announcement, put out her announcement video that she was going to seek the democratic president ial nomination which was about as surprising as the sun rising in the morning but nonetheless we were still parsing her language she referred to Everyday Americans which is sort of a take on a a cousin of a derivation of common people, ordinary americans, something that elected officials particularly at the federal level like to come up with and say the american people. Yeah. You dont want to call them average americans or ordinary americans. So now the terminology is Everyday Americans. Right. Its sort of a work of art because as chuck just alluded to, you dont want to sound condescending, but theres only so many ways to get this across. And one other that came up just recently its not something that Hillary Clinton actually said but it was something that commentators said about her when Hillary Clinton went to nevada and said, basically, we should allow for legalization of undocumented immigrants. We should allow them to stay in the country. Some path to citizenship which was actually getting to the left of the stance of president obama. Many media commentators suggested that she was quoting, setting a trap for her republican rivals. And this was one that had been out in the movies, and its just interesting to see how its taken on a life of its own. I think its entirely accurate, but you just hear one phrase gets out there and it often gets repeated many times over. So with that, ill turn it over to my colleague. Well thanks, dave. Just getting back to the origins of the book, for me, this book started with a word, and that word is disingenuous. Its a word you hear constantly in politics, and you dont hear it much in everyday life. It dawned on me that its code for liar. [laughter] and not just a liar, but kind of a clueless, outoftouch brainless liar. And so pay attention, and youll hear disingenuous. Because its not really considered good form to directly call someone a liar. So disingenuous is kind of the nice, polite way of saying it. But getting back to the title of our book, a dog whistle which has become a pretty common parlance in politics is basically term for code words. During his administration, george w. Bush would use the phrase wonderworking power in speeches. And it was aligned from an old gospel hymn. And it was seen as a dog whistle that was intended to appeal to christian conservatives who would recognize that terminology and language. Youre hearing some talk now about fairness and redistribution which i think some people on the conservative side in the tea party, they would consider that a dog whistle for socialism. So we just thought it would be interesting to kind of catalog these words and phrases. Some of my other favorite ones that dave didnt cover and this is one that you perpetually hear from people in government when theyre about to be fired or theyre resigning from a job and they dont want to give the real reason why. Its always i want to spend more time with my family. I mean its this perennial excuse that, you know, people know is just holds no meaning whatsoever. And as we quote someone in the book who studies work and family life, it kind of doesnt ring true because these are powerful people and presumably they should be in positions to be able to spend more time with their family already in their jobs. And it kind of undermines this whole idea that you cant have work and a family life as well. A couple of other expressions that youre going to be hearing a lot more of and youre already starting to hear on the campaign trail is hillary used this and jeb bush used a form of this is we want to have conversations with citizens, you know . We dont can want to just unilaterally we dont want to just unilrl assay oh, were running for president because we know best. No we want to appear to get the informed consent of people. So we want to ask them about. And so, hence we want to have conversations with citizens. Another new one that just came up which were seeing a lot of and that we just wrote about for our Christian Science monitor weekly column is actually since this is a book festival its pretty appropriate. Its from the Childrens Book alexander and the horrible terrible nogood, very bad day. This has now become horrible, terrible, nogood very bad has now become the instant political pundits cliche for something that has just become absolutely awful. Theyve used it for jeb bush for his recent explanations on iraq, theyve used it to apply to obama they used it for nancy pelosi after the democrats wipe out in the 2014 midterm elections, and i think its just one of those political punditry loves to draw from pop culture and they also like to render very swift and sweeping definitive judgments. And using this phrase enables them to bolster that. So again, the point of our book is not we dont have a political agenda but we just thought it would be interesting since both parties use these kinds of words and expressions and phrases. And i think weve just got to get lost. And the media, as i indicated, is just as guilty of it as the politicians themselves. And so we thought it would just be interesting to collect a lot of these and continue to collect a lot of these and try to give some insight and explanation into what they really mean. Yeah. And i would just add on its interesting, each prominent elected official in leadership capacities on capitol hill and elsewhere kind of has their own verbal ticks and habits and its been interesting. I mentioned senator harry reid, the democratic leader whos retiring now next year after hell have been in the leadership for a dozen years or so much of that time as majority leader. His rhetorical style is rather blunt. He just bludgeons opponents. Critics would say that hes discan inagain juice disingenuous to, like going on the senate floor maybe thats a signal from senator reid. [laughter] and suggesting that the thenrepublican president ial nominee mitt romney had not paid income taxes in ten years without any supporting evidence of it. And hes at various times called thenpresident george w. Bush a liar, Supreme Court Justice Clarence thomas a loser maybe im confusing those. Some variation of not very complimentary terms for his political opponents. The Incoming Senate democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of new york has somewhat of a different style. He rarely has to issue walkbacks, per se. Hes a lot more careful with his words. Or at least with senator reid maybe hes doing that deliberately and he doesnt really care, but schumers style is more to issue a sweeping indictment of the Republican Opposition a more sorrow than an anger type tone. Like i wish we could work across the aisle with our republican friends, but theyre not being reasonable. And were devoted to the middle class whereas our republican colleagues are want to only help out the rich, that kind of thing. You might agree or disagree with that assessment right. But its interesting how he, hes a little more savvy about that language. Yeah. Another schumerism is out of the mainstream, you know . That theres a mainstream and that only the democrats are swimming in it, and any republican who is, deviates from that mainstream is, therefore, not worthy of consideration. Thats right. We have spoken a good deal wed actually love to hear some of your questions and thoughts on political language anything that might have come up, you might have seen over the last several years. Yeah. And we, as i said, are collecting these on an ongoing basis. If you go to our web site and we have cards out at the front table that show our web site, its dogwhistlebook. Com, we welcome suggestions and solicitations for any political expressions that really set your teeth on edge. And as i said, we have a weekly column for the Christian Science monitor, and we like to use contributions from the public in those as well. [inaudible conversations] i think theres a microphone coming around. Or up here. Im curious what happens when you have like a male candidate versus a female candidate [inaudible] minefields they can get into involving language and [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] really attractive. Yeah, thats right. This is not surprisingly, this really is a political minefield for a lot of candidates. Otherwise progressive liberaldemocratic senator tom harkin of iowa whos just retired actually got into some trouble last fall just before the campaign. The republican nominee was a state senator who, objectively speaking, might say was rather attractive. And senator harkin basically said in a speech to supporters that was not supposed to be public if im remembering this correctly said, yeah basically all she has going for her is that she has a pretty face and shes really attractive. I dont want to misquote too far, but that was the gist of it. And he got quite a lot of brushback for this. Now, his own favorite candidate, a democratic congressman, ended up losing that senate race and i doubt that one comment was dispositive that actually made the difference. But senator harkin had to walk that back at a time and it was kind of somewhat surprising coming from him because hes otherwise known as a champion of womens issues, prochoice on abortion, sponsor of the Lily Ledbetter fair pay act down the line. But it just shows how anybody can get into trouble. And it is interesting to to see these dynamics as more women thankfully, get into the political process. And its really notable to watch when you have two female candidates going up against each other which has actually happened on an increasing basis. And just one other note about that i think so far some of the republican president ial candidates have had to be really careful how theyve criticized Hillary Clinton, whoever the eventual nominee is going to have to walk that minefield. The one republican candidate whos been rather forceful and forthright in her criticism of Hillary Clinton has been, is the one republican female in the race, Carly Fiorina the former hewlettpackard executive who has not been shy about going directly after Hillary Clinton. Why dont we take another question. Yep. Hi. Can you talk about how people learn about this way of talking and whether newlyelected official, you know, are less deceptive in terms of the way they communicate . Um, theres kind of a group mentality, ive found and people just automatically when you start going around congress and capitol hill and the White House Press room, they just start speaking this way, and they just kind of assume youre going to speak that way too. I always, we say in the introduction of the book that i think it really takes about a year to really learn fluently or maybe not so fluently the language. And thats kind of why we wanted to write our book, is to sort of be kind of a guide book to, you know cutting through this kind of language. Is so so hopefully it avoids that herd group think mentality. Yeah. Did you intend your book to be a manual to learn to speak this way . [laughter] how not to speak this way. Right. How to avoid the trap. [inaudible] yeah. Well, what to listen for if youre watching politics on tv if you happen to go up to capitol hill and youre lobbying members of congress, if its a town hall meeting. Another one that im always wary of when you hear an elected official, a member of Congress Come to a town hall meeting or a public forum, theyll say theyll get asked a question about some subject favorable, well i introduced a bill about that which is technically accurate, but it doesnt really mean much in congressional parlance because anybody whos in congress can introduce a bill. It doesnt mean its even going to get a Committee Hearing or go anywhere. Its like an attorney filing a lawsuit. All you have to do is be a licensed attorney, you can file a lawsuit. It can get the suit can get thrown out of court quickly, but you can say well, i still filed suit over this. So were trying to give people a heads up and weve been fortunate enough to speak to several Interest Groups who are going up to talk to members of congress about their important issues and to say hey, this is what you want to be this is what you want to be listening for. Right. I would just add very quickly onto whether elected officials kind of are trained to say this, in some sense yes they actually have consultants who when theyre running for office if theyre in even a reasonably contested race, the Party Committees the Democratic Congressional campaign committee, the National Republican congressional committee, will have consultants that tell them what to say, what not to say. At least if you catch them in their first year or so in office as chuck alluded to, you can sometimes get some truth out of them. I noticed folks i started covering when i was following, when i was covering the house of representatives who are now Major Players on the National Scene congressman darrell issa from California Republican who was a committee chairman, now governor mike pence of indiana who started out in congress, he was first elected in 2000. I remember talking to these guys you used to be able to get em call em up and talk to them on the phone. Now you can barely get them on the line, and its all canned answers. Any ore questions . [inaudible] microphone. I wonder if you have i wonder if you have any examples from historic figures like john kennedy or Lyndon Johnson. You want to take that . Of these come many of these come from history. Some of them actually are derived from other areas. Im thinking of its not precisely from an historic figure, but i mentioned the grade my good friend. Thats a derivation of british parliament, the right honorable gentleman where you try to put something out there. Can you think of any other historic figures . Well, i mean, i think youve had throughout history politicians who will use when they come out of a meeting, um, words like if theyve had a meeting with we have an example in the book, i think it was an ohio politician who when he came out of a meeting he would say the meeting was cordial, which is meaningless. And basically means we didnt resort to punching each other in the face. Right. And so thats one i think that youve heard throughout history. Happy warrior is a familiar one. Right. That was Hubert Humphrey who described himself as the happy warrior, and now its kind of seen as, oh, im above the political fray. Right. It actually originated with al smith back in the 1928 campaign when he was the first catholic nominee, and he faced a lot of criticism at the time. Right. Its another way of brushing off reporters when an elected official doesnt want to answer a question, theyll say im just a happy warrior. Speaker john boehner use. You hear me . Yeah. Yes. I believe it was a quote from Lyndon Johnson and this is particularly it had a particular purpose, i think, in he said
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