“Senator Toomey, let's just get some headlines for you ...how important is it to avoid a government shutdown…would it be potentially a possible compromise to take the Planned Parenthood rider out of this agreement?”
That’s a candid sort of opening. I suppose I appreciated Mika Brzezinski’s direct statement of media intent on Friday, April 8th’s version of MSNBC’s MorningJoe.
Headlines.
Her guest, Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania), appearing from the US Capitol, was forced to hit back her ‘edge of the box’ verbal tennis serve. Planned Parenthood? On the verge of a possible government shutdown due to an unfinalized funding agreement, a question about a line item of great emotional - yet miniscule fiscal- importance.
Mika posed the question as a yes or no. Meaning that Toomey, who is known for endeavoring (and often succeeding at) robotically inspired facial expressions, had three choices of answer.
Yes. No. Or “the wide angle.” Perhaps unexpectedly, he chose door number 3.
**
Morning shows, regardless of network or leaning, are infernal affairs of unfinished answers, lack of context and urgent appeals for ratings. I consider anyone who guests on them to have a higher than average level of bravery.
Senator Toomey recently (early March 2011) hosted CNBC’s Squawkbox. In that role he had some control over the timing, sequence and content of the questioning. On Friday, standing in the firing line area of the US Capitol where electeds get pelted with lights, camera and questions of action film dialogue level, he had to hit back what he was served.
The test at such times is not to provide information. It’s to survive a timed pop test. And to make your appearance work for you. Toomey did.
But he got an interesting contextual gift from the network as well. Toomey was paired – not in debate – but in shared segment – with Dan Rather.
Viewing the objectives of the show’s hosts, Mr. Rather and Senator Toomey alongside each other offered a unique sort of light to how we view the words and beliefs of each. As organized, as moralized, and as rationally considered.
Toomey was speaking in a sleepless Capitol that even at that early hour of Friday morning felt more like a gathering around a weird smalltown bar’s pinball machine than the center of governance of the free world. There was a sense of surrealism, unpredictability, and shady characters. Of uncertain but time sensitive outcome.
As the show unfolded, a government shutdown – or near avoidance of it – was being contemplated and connived.
Toomey stood before a backdrop of classical marble and vertical columns and staircases. Dan Rather sat in the Morning Joe studio.
The two did not address each other. But it was impossible not to compare them.
So taking that comparison bait, I’ll look at four quick points:
Question 1) Besides scoop and ratings, What were Mika, Joe Scarborough and their guest panelists, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, authors of Game Change, trying to get out of Toomey and Rather?
Question 2) What did Toomey want?
Question 3) What did Rather want?
Question 4) How did Toomey and Rather inadvertently context (using that term as a verb) each other?
My objective in briefly answering these points isn’t to tout the positions of anyone specifically. I perform these analyses to see what is subtlely being communicated to audiences, not just via words, but by association of one speaker to another. Awareness of this enables a greater understanding of what is going on, and allows one to see beyond the narrative that’s being sold.
**
Question 1) What did the MoJo media want?
Answer: Duality; a world of Yes and No.
The MoJo media wanted to line up their points two by two. Dualities across all, especially in all exchanges with Senator Toomey:
- Brzezinski, in quote above, calls on Toomey to contrast a big budget with one miniscule component point.
- Halperin, in a number of direct dualities, asks Toomey if the prospect of a government shutdown makes him ‘scared or emboldened.’ He asks if the President, in this situation, looks ‘weak or strong.’
- Heilemann, also in a direct question to Toomey, makes a direct comparative between the ‘conservative tea party’ that helped elect the Senator and the ‘more moderate posture’ that his more open-minded actions appear to suggest. It's complimentary backhand, implies a conflict that may not exist, and again drives a wedge between one side and another.
- Scarborough, in yet another direct, asks Toomey the same question across a number of variations:
“Your focus would be on the numbers rather than the policy riders?”
One or the other. A multiple choice question. No essay allowed.
Why do they do this? Because news is chaos, information is plentiful and categorization creates headlines. Do they succeed in boxing up Toomey? No. Did they influence headlines? Yes.
Not moments later, headlines were hitting Twitter that said that Toomey’s focus was on the fiscal and he was willing to give in on Planned Parenthood. While Toomey did sequence these two, giving priority to the wider picture of rational fiscal solutioning rather than getting ‘mired’ in one small rider that was not time sensitive to the budget decision at hand, there was virtually zero evidence of caving in this matter or any other social issue.
Did it get leded that way, purely due to how the questions were posed to him? Yes.
Question 2) What did Toomey want?
Answer: To shift the topic lens from the Micro to the Macro.
“I think the debt limit is a bigger, more important fight.”
Toomey enjoys talking about the debt limit. It is in many ways the lens by which he views everything related to his recently begun Senate service. He raises his voice when he discusses it. He gets uncharacteristically animated and tends to show his teeth (I hesitate to call it “smiling”,) straighten his posture and open or extend his hands. Since his typical style is unexpressive in gesture, it’s clear that this is not a topic he was handed for PR purposes. It’s his brand. He believes it. He characterized the debt limit as a wall and the confrontation as a collision. Get out of the way. Here it comes.
Yet asked numerous times to leap through a narrow hoop into a confining box, Toomey wide angled the lens. He utilized words like ‘understand’ and ‘relatively’ and visuals like the big picture, noting that one party didn’t get to direct how everything happened. Asked repeatedly by Joe Scarborough if he would do this or reject that, he came back to the same answer:
“Within the context of what's doable, Joe.”
Toomey likes to discuss structure and procedure. He did so calmly, avoiding the substance of some hot button issue moments. To some, that’s a classic example of “kicking the can down the road” to borrow a line favored by Republican communications directors right now. To others, it’s an accurate answer. A specific answer prior to having all data on the situation makes a freshman Senator look naïve, like someone who doesn’t get the process. Toomey made sure those wouldn’t be the headlines by shifting each comment onto the macro subject of process and rational behavior.
He spoke of making the best effort to get what the Republicans wanted, in the knowledge that the system wasn’t going to give them everything they wanted. And wasn’t intended to.
This differentiated his comments quite entirely from Rather’s.
Question 3) What did Rather want?
Answer: To pass Judgment, and note high and unmet expectation.
“The country is almost a completely different country”
Asked how today's pending government shutdown was different from the real one back in 1995, Rather begins, in his senior news anchor sort of voice and cadence, with a dramatic and highly subjective statement. It is beyond proof or measure. It is not news. It is his opinion. And it’s given with emotive certainty.
Rather’s line 'A curse on both your houses' is paired with imagery about ‘complete revulsion’ at politicians ‘playing’ with power as a citizen watches from his home ‘that’s about to be foreclosed.’ He creates a deep duality , a Nero fiddled while Rome burned narrative – the only purpose of which is to tap into deep emotional and moral places in a viewer's mind, and manipulate them.
Rather assigns ‘victim virtue’ to the voter. Yet he involves no actual quotes, and no mentions of data, time or event.
It was dramatic narrative, plain and simple. It was not news. Saying ‘Washington is out of touch’ has never been news. The United States is a Republic. We elect imperfect people just like us to go up a hill into an impressive building and negotiate things on our behalf. That’s how it works. Creating dissatisfaction around that reality is a strange technique when viewed in that wider context.
This strange technique, however, gave some helpful contrast to the Senator standing in that impressive building.
Question 4) How did Toomey and Rather inadvertently context each other?
Rather was angry. He was darkly dramatic. Toomey was neither.
That impacted how each came across, in contrast to the other, to the viewers of the show. I must wonder whether this was intentional on the part of team MoJo. I tend to think that it wasn’t.
Both Rather and Toomey, speaking of a government on the verge of possible shutdown in a time of war, described a process gone wrong, with actors and bystanders. But that’s where the similarity ended.
In Rather's case, the bystanders are victims. They should lay blame. Toomey spoke of the bystanders doing what they could within the bigger picture. Picking the right battles, moving past grudges and realizing that you don’t get everything you want all of the time.
Rather spoke of a process beyond repair. Toomey spoke of repairing what one can.
**
What's being presented via this contrast are three different messaging methods for a political news audience, all of which are used often and effectively.
1) Organizing/concluding: projecting a sense of security by placing complex issues into resolved little boxes;
2) Moralizing/judging: Grabbing viewer emotion, rendering a situation as a battle of right and wrong;
3) Considering/wide-angling: knowing the larger process and picture and selecting what is important for one’s pursuit.
Now if I hadn’t given you any names, which one would you assume was the choice of the conservative Republican US Senator? Probably 1 or 2.
But actually it was the third one. Giving, within this case, a lesson on context. And a reminder to look a bit deeper at your political morning TV before you assume. Ask yourself these questions:
- What’s the goal of each speaker?
- How is that goal framed by other speakers alongside, and by the style of questions and the method of answer?
- Is the speaker organizing, moralizing or considering?
- Does their chosen method change the way you consume, accept and believe what you hear and see?