Policy or Pontification? The Public’s Preference

Who would you prefer to lead your country – a mumbling politician well-versed in legislative matters and who gets things done, or a charismatic political speaker whose policy failures are legion? If to go by recent events in Israel and the United States, the answer is unfortunately clear: the latter.
By all accounts, President Joe Biden is no orator, to put it mildly. Certainly, during these last few years his speeches have been marked by a weak voice and occasional gaffes. The debate against Donald Trump a few weeks ago proved to be the nail in Biden’s electorability coffin with his mumbling and stumbling. His replacement on the ticket, VP Kamala Harris has garnered immediate Democratic support, not so much for any policy achievements (vice presidents aren’t supposed to overshadow their president) but rather due to her feisty – even hard-hitting – speechifying. That’s just what the Democrats feel is called for to neutralize Trump’s overly bellicose verbal attacks.
And yet, a close look at Joe Biden’s achievements as president shows someone who knows how to get things done – even in the face of a highly partisan and split Congress. His “Inflation Reduction Act” is a huge and marvelous piece of anti-global warming legislation that has already jump-started large scale research and development in that critical area, reinvigorating previously Rust Belt sections of the country. Second, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden shepherded the economy through those trying times with minimal economic damage – indeed, with hardly a recession of any sort. Even better, this past year America has had historically low unemployment numbers. And of course, from Israel’s perspective there has never (I repeat never) been a president who so overwhelmingly came to Israel’s aid in war materiel and diplomatic support, even in the face of opposition within his own party. Not only a “doer”, but a man of principle as well.

PM Netanyahu is almost a mirror image of his American counterpart. If anyone had doubts about Bibi’s rhetorical skills, his speech in Congress last week should have put them to rest. From an oratorical standpoint it was brilliant – hitting the right spots with parallels to Churchill’s WW2 alliance with America and other such political pearls. This is basically why he has been elected to six terms (overall) by the Israeli public, projecting an image of authority and strong leadership.

And then we look at his actual record. Other than economics (high marks), Bibi has been a disaster for Israel. Two main (yet related) existential issues illustrate this. First: the Iranian nuclear program. By convincing President Trump to dump the nuclear deal with Iran that had been painstakingly put together by Obama and the major European countries, halting Iran’s nuclear program progress, the outcome is that today Iran is but a few weeks from being able to produce enough fissionable material for a nuclear bomb (it would still take some time after that to produce a workable nuclear delivery system).

No less catastrophic has been PM Netanyahu’s policy of surreptitiously supporting Hamas by enabling the continued financing of Hamas through Qatar, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority. All this so that Israel could continue to argue “no partner” to talk with. And now that Hamas proved how awful such a policy was and Israel had to go to war post-Oct. 7, the war is being unnecessarily dragged out as Bibi waited for several months to attack Khan Younis (falsely claiming that Biden forced him to wait). Why? Because the longer the war goes on, the less he has to deal with the aftermath reckoning that will surely come: the (not yet established) Commission of Inquiry’s findings as to his strategic culpability – not to mention his party’s huge electoral defeat that every poll is predicting when the next elections take place.

Among other things, I teach political communication. I find it amusing that when I mention this to strangers who ask what I do, they almost invariably respond: is that so important? Unfortunately, the public (Israel, America, almost everywhere) doesn’t bother to look in the mirror. The problem of “pontification” vs. “policy” is due to most voters’ preference for the former. Human psychology is more attuned to the way people talk to us than what they say. One need look no further than the phenomenon called “Donald Trump”. If he has a policy, it’s that of the playground seesaw: up one day, down the next; at best, it’s a vague “approach” e.g., MAGA (Make America Great Again), that means nothing concrete. Nevertheless, he has approximately half the country in his pocket! True, his rhetorical skills are minimal, but he sounds forceful.
None of this is new (or news). The famous Kennedy/Nixon debate back in 1960 was the first time that scholars began to realize how central to political success are rhetorical skills. Those who watched the debate on TV said that Kennedy won the debate; those who only heard it on radio gave Nixon the nod. On television, all sorts of non-policy elements come into play (youth, body language etc.), whereas on radio the focus is on content.

If this general phenomenon of political rhetoric beating policy record depresses you, it’s worth recalling the famous comic strip Pogo who once sagely stated: “We have met the enemy, and it us.”