The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Power of the Word, the Phrase and the Image

Episode Date: November 8, 2019

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And hello there, I'm Peter Mansbridge. This is The Bridge on what is our new schedule, I guess, our new podcast broadcast schedule. Gone are the days of the daily podcast during the election campaign, replaced now by a weekly podcast that we're going to try and have some fun with. And the idea is to release it or drop it, as they say. We're going to drop the podcast on Friday nights. And it'll give you something to do on the weekend, something to listen to. I'm sure that you listen to many podcasts on the weekend when you have some downtime, and hopefully this will be one of them.

But we'll release it Friday nights. And something for you to have Saturday morning if you're up early and listening for something to have some fun with, get your mind going. This week, each week, it could be anything. You know, it could be Canadian politics, it could be world politics, it could be American politics, and in fact, on this day, we're going to talk a little Washington. And we're going to talk about the power of the word, or the power of a phrase, and the power of an image. Because all of that has become so dominant in the last, well, it's actually been a while. It's been a number of decades, but there's no question

that it has been dominant in these past few years since Donald Trump became president. So I want to talk about a few things, and we're going to start off with some discussion on the power of words, the power of a phrase. How did he get elected? Lots of debate about that, but there's no question that one of the ways he got elected was to engage people with words, with a phrase.

And you know them. Build that wall. Mexico will pay for it. Lock her up, drain the swamp. Those were all powerful phrases that made a difference in the election of 2016. In fact, for many Americans, you ask them, why did you vote for Donald Trump? Some will say, you know, quite apart from the whole issue about he's going to be different and he's not just one of the typical Washingtonians. They'll say, because he promised to build a wall.

Because he promised to lock her up. Because he promised to build a wall. Because he promised to lock her up. Because he promised to drain the swamp. Now, it's interesting when three plus years later, you look at those phrases and you go, well, okay, so what happened? Build a wall? Did he build a wall? He didn't build a wall? He didn't build a wall. No, he rebuilt a couple of dozen miles of the existing wall. And they say he built it so strong and so beautiful that nobody could ever get through it. Well, as we found out in the last couple of weeks, pretty well anybody

who wants to get through it can get through it with a $100 power tool. And they've been doing that. So build that wall was a shame. So was Mexico will pay for it. Mexico hasn't paid a dime for it. Never will pay a dime for it. Lock her up was a catchphrase. And the her, of course, was Hillary Clinton.

She never got locked up. She never got charged. Nothing ever happened there. And one would argue nothing ever could have happened there. But it was a phrase, and it was a chant. Drain the swamp? That may be the funniest one of all the promises. That swamp look drained to you?

I don't think so. In fact, the swamp looks more plugged up than it's ever been. And there are people in jail, Republicans in jail, friends of Donald Trump in jail, who can attest to that. But those were powerful phrases, and that's what we're talking about here. The impact of those phrases. So what about now? What's he using as a phrase now? He is a master at this.

Don't get me wrong. He is able to come up with these phrases. At a time when political parties and political candidates spend millions, millions of dollars on ads for television, on image consultants, all of that stuff. This guy wears what appears to be the same suit every day, with the same tie every day. Of course, they're not the same, but they look exactly the same. He never looks different.

And he has his phrases. So what's he tried to cash in phrase-wise now that he's in the midst of yet another apparent scandal? Let's not forget when it happened. You know, to get out of the Russian scandal, there was no collusion, no obstruction, right from the get-go, right from day one, that's what he was saying.

And that phrase stuck, and whenever you'd see him in a rally, there were signs all over the place, no collusion, no obstruction. Thanks to Bob Mueller and Bill Barr's interpretation of the Mueller report, he was able to stand there after the report and say, see, I told you, no collusion, no obstruction. A bit of a stretch. There was, Mueller found no collusion, certainly no collusion that he could take to court,

that he could make charges on. That was clear. Obstruction, not so clear. He had, I think, at least eight different cases where he said there was obstruction, but never enough to reach the threshold of taking it to court and prosecuting charges against Donald Trump. But that didn't matter.

Trump and his acolytes were able to go around and do the no collusion, no obstruction, using that phrase once again. And for many, that was all they needed to know. That's all they needed to understand. The Democrats agree it was a failure trying to push the Mueller report. People didn't read it. They didn't understand it. They just knew the bottom line.

To them, no collusion, no obstruction. So where are we now? Because we've moved on. You don't hear much talk about the Mueller report anymore. You don't hear much talk about the Russian investigation. You hear, of course, these days, everything is about Ukraine as we approach the public hearings on impeachment. So the big phrase out of Ukraine, the Ukraine story was quid pro quo. Now, is that catchy? Like, seriously. Is that like build the wall?

Is that like drain the swamp? Is that like lock her up? No. Quid pro quo. It's Latin. You know, we all sit around and talk Latin. It's translation, you know, roughly is something for something or this for that. That's quid pro quo.

And you know the this and the that in this story. So while Trump uses quid pro quo and the fact was there was no quid pro quo, as Trump and his people say, you see the Democrats now, some of them anyway, trying to slide that phrase and make it differently, so that it has more punch. And for them, the more punch is bribery for extortion. Not quid pro quo. Bribery.

In other words, here's the millions of dollars, $340 million, whatever it was, for defense materials for you in your fight against Russia. And the quo is you get out there and announce there's an investigation into the Bidens. And apparently the Clintons, they wanted them to say that as well. So bribery, bribe them with the cash for extortion. Extort out of them a guarantee, a promise to begin an investigation.

That's what you see some Democrats trying to change the channel on the phrase quid pro quo. So Trump has already started a second phrase. read the transcript. This, of course, all about the transcript, which is a misuse of the term, of a phone call between Trump, the U.S. president, and Zelensky, the Ukraine president,

where the quid pro quo was offered up. Now, read the transcript. That term is now popping up on T-shirts behind Trump at rallies, and from Trump himself. Read the transcript. Well, first of all, there is no transcript. Transcript is an actual reflection of the words that were used in the phone call.

This is a summary, and it's stamped right on it. This is a summary. It's not a transcript. Does a transcript exist? Does a transcript exist? Does a tape exist? You know, everybody talks about what was written down, what the summary of the conversation was. Where is the conversation?

I cannot believe in today's world that there is not a tape somewhere of that conversation, either at the Washington end or at the Kiev end. There's got to be a tape somewhere. You know, and perhaps we're going to hear it. Meanwhile, read the transcript as the new catchphrase.

Will that work? I don't know. Not sure. But then again, who would have thought those earlier phrases, build the wall, Mexico will pay for it, lock her up, train the swamp, who would have thought all those were going to work? Now, Trump's not a lot. You know, I watched a, he did one of those White House garden scrums the other day.

I think it was last weekend. And you watch it, and every 30 seconds, a phrase blows by that for the most part goes unchallenged by the media because of the awkward nature of the scrum. You can't stop it every 10 seconds to say, well, you know, that was not true or that's false or whatever. You sort of run it all. Sometimes it goes on and on, 30, 40 minutes.

And then you try to decipher it afterwards. But I was listening to it, and I jotted down some of the things he says. And they, you know, once again, they work for the guy. He'll stand there, and he'll say, As you know, as you know better than anybody. Could be about anything. But he'll say that, he'll look at a reporter and he'll say, as you know, as you know better than anybody, he just pulls that out of, you know, where, and it leaves the impression to the viewer, to some viewers,

he must be right because he just said the guy who's asked him the question knows that. Or he'll say, I don't know whether it's true or not. He says that a lot and then goes ahead and says whatever it is he says, he doesn't know whether it's true or not. Or he'll say, as he did last weekend, at one point he says, some people call it a fraud. I won't go that far. But when I read it closely, I probably would call it a fraud.

Like he has it always, right? He can say, I told you, I won't go that far. But then he goes that far. And another classic Trumpism is when he feels like he's kind of cornered on something, he's made some statement and he can't back it up, he'll say, well, we'll be showing that to you real soon. That's what he said when he smeared the lieutenant colonel, or as we call them, lieutenant colonels, who had testified to the extent of the phone call that had been made between the two presidents. And he started to raise these issues about the lieutenant colonel's background.

And when he was challenged, prove it, what have you got? What exactly can you tell us about him? And he said, well, we'll be showing that to you real soon. Well, what's real soon? That was a week ago. Nothing's happened. Nothing's been said except rumors on, you know, dark sites on the media or on the social media.

The other one he's gained some traction on, and, you know, it's Congressman Schiff's own problem and mistake. When Schiff kind of, you know, in describing the conversation between the two presidents, Schiff kind of made it sound like he had the actual transcript and he basically made up a conversation. It kind of fitted in general terms with what we knew about that conversation, but he made it sound like he had the actual words. So Trump pounced all over that. Called it treason that he made the actual words. So Trump pounced all over that. Called it treason.

They made up a conversation that the President of the United States had had. Why did he lie about what I said on the phone call? That's treason, is what Trump said. And then within two minutes, he was doing the same thing about Barack Obama. He basically made up a conversation that Obama had on some other issue. And nobody said boo. It was the same thing. In fact, if you Google online Trump making up Obama quotes, you'll see a bunch of them there. Nobody says anything. They're kind of used to it. That's what happens. He has this thing about Obama.

He's like totally freaked by Obama. And so he makes stuff up. Anyway. Obama. And so he makes stuff up. Anyway, you get what I'm saying. He has these little phrases and they actually work for him or they have worked for him. And you wonder whether that magic, if you want to call it that, that he had in the 2016 campaign with his supporters will continue with the new phrases and the new taglines that he comes up with. There are those who feel that those days are done. But many of those are the same people who said there's no way he could ever win in 2016.

He did, and we're looking at him as president now. So there you go. Those are some little chat on the power of the word. I want to say a few things about the power of the image, too, because I find this part of it all pretty fascinating as well. Let me go back, though, for a moment. I guess it was around 1986. Leslie Stahl was a CBS correspondent at the White House.

She was the main correspondent there. She's now with 60 Minutes. Great correspondent. In those days, she was the White House correspondent. And in around 86, 87, the president, Ronald Reagan, was in, kept finding himself mired in controversy. It was the kind of run-up to the Iran-Contra scandal. So, each night, Leslie Stahl would be the main hitter

on the CBS Evening News, with Dan Rather in those days, and she'd come on hard on whatever the latest scandal was, and she'd have the details. But over in the White House, in the Chief of Staff's office, it was, I believe, Donald Reagan at the time, they were smiling. They figured this is not a problem. Why?

Remember, in those days, the evening newscasts were the most watched newscasts in America. they figured this is not a problem. Why? Remember, in those days, the evening newscasts were the most watched newscasts in America on the three conventional networks, ABC, NBC, CBS. Why were they smiling? Why did they say, this is no problem? Here's why. Because when Leslie Stahl would run her item with a very toughly worded script, the producers would cover much of the item with what we at times call in the business wallpaper, pictures of Reagan. Reagan walking down the hall in the White House. Reagan at the podium. Reagan

riding a horse. Reagan shaking hands with other world leaders. If there was one thing about Ronald Reagan, he always, always looked like a president. He had that. I don't know, maybe it was from his movie star days. But the image was powerful. And he always looked the part. And there's an old saying in our business that in a battle between the eye and the ear, the eye always wins. So here you have a story being told by Leslie Stahl, a great correspondent,

that is powerful in its critique of the president for certain issues that he was dealing with. Married to pictures of the president looking fantastic, looking presidential, looking powerful. It was a conflict between the sound and the picture. And if you go by the old saying, in a conflict between the eye and the ear, the eye always wins out. And that's kind of what happened there. Reagan didn't lose power. Took a hit in the polls for a bit. But he was fine.

And he stayed president through to the end of his term. How do we translate that to 2019? Well, I've noticed a bit of a change in the way the American television networks, whether it's the main ones or the cable networks, tell the story. There used to be, through the Russia investigation and even in the initial parts of the Ukraine story, it used to be the same kind of thing. Tough script, wallpaper pictures, Trump at the podium, Trump walking, Trump shaking hands.

No Trump riding a horse. I haven't seen that one. But for the most part, Trump, who can look, you know, in spite of certain things, he can look pretty presidential in the pictures, especially in still photographs. And they were always kind of flattering the pictures. But that seems to have changed.

You tell me. You watch the programs. It seems to me that there are pictures less flattering that pop up in these stories now. Not, you know, not brutal. But not ones that look like they were handed out by the White House press office. So, there's the image. That's the power of the image

and the impact the image can have. So why have I dwelt on all this? Well, a little bit because I think we just came out of our own campaign. I'll let you think about it. You tell me. Did we see some similarities in the past couple of months, between the way the campaigns conducted themselves, what they were looking for in short, punchy phrases, whether those phrases stood up to fact-checking. And images.

I mean, it's been, we all know it's been quite a while now, 10, 15 years that we've seen political candidates standing in front of crowds, props. You know, we saw it in the past, I think it's probably more than 10 or 15 years, probably 20 or 30 years. And that's something we inherited from the Americans. We watched them do it successfully, and now you see prime ministers and opposition leaders, party leaders, standing in front of crowds. You know, it's kind of okay when it's, at least I find it kind of okay when it's party faithful,

or speaking at a crowd, and instead of just showing the shot of some guy on a podium or some woman on a podium and everybody in front of them, you put a bunch of them behind them, and it gives this image of a leader. I get it. I understand that. What I don't understand is how people like, you know, firefighters or armed forces people or what have you,

union groups, stand behind a political leader and just get used like that. I find that, I get used like that. I find that. I don't like that. I don't think it's right. We inherited that from the Americans too. I think that might have even been a Reagan thing. So much of the image stuff kind of started back then.

Well, what I found interesting in this past week is guess who's now also doing it? And I got to go with the British reporters who are telling me that hasn't happened before, but there was Bojo, Boris Johnson, launching his election campaign and a whole bunch of people behind him. So it's even crept over there into the birthplace of democracy.

Things to watch. And things to sort of question ourselves about whether we're falling into a trap or whether all this makes sense. Maybe there's no harm in all this. Maybe it engages people, whether it's the word or the image, in ways that they hadn't been engaged before.

And what about the media's role in transporting this message to voters? Endlessly playing those clips of the catchphrases. Boy, if you can say it in three words, build a wall. That fits into television time. So, I'm not sure. I'd love to hear your thoughts, so don't be shy about sending them along. Oh, and one last thing.

The other thing that Reagan instituted, that everybody's picked up in some small way. He used to get in trouble giving a scrum. Sam Donaldson, the great reporter from ABC, used to yell out questions to him as he left the White House. And he would be kind of trapped into answering them. And so what did they do? They started sending him out a different door

with the helicopter running in the background so there was all this helicopter noise and Reagan could kind of look at Sam and go, I can't hear you, you know, hold his hand up to his ear. And that's still used today. Trump goes out, he stands there, the helicopter's running. In the background, you can usually see it. You know, generator going, a bunch of noise. Sometimes the blades are

twirling. But Trump seems to thrive on that. He just walks up and down the reporter's line and takes which questions he wants and occasionally, very rarely, does the I can't hear you motion. Mulrooney didn't have a helicopter, but he had a staircase outside the House of Commons that led up to his office. And when he came out of the House of Commons, out of question period, and the reporters were all there yelling questions at him, he'd just sneak up the stairs and go about halfway up the flight of stairs and stop and look down. So he

had this image of this kind of all-powerful image looking down at the scrum of reporters yelling questions up to him. And occasionally he'd feign he couldn't hear them and keep walking, and other times he'd decide to take questions, but he'd have this image of kind of looking down, which for them worked better than him being at the same level as reporters. So they all pick and choose what works for them. Different people, they go for it. All right.

So that's your first kind of Friday night, Saturday morning version of the bridge, something for you to think over the weekend. And if you want to write me, ask questions about it, or let me know about your thoughts. Don't be shy. I got a lot of letters last week, and none of them were questions. They were all kind of your thoughts on stuff. And I'm trying to find a way to deal with that. Maybe somehow, maybe put them on the website.

I don't know. I haven't thought through it yet. But in any case, if you have thoughts about what I've said today, don't be shy. I'd love to read them. You can always reach me at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. And the website's doing a little work, you know, changing it over from the daily election look

to a different kind of look for our weekly podcast. And the website there is thepetermansbridge.com. So we'll get to that in the next week or two. In the meantime, don't be shy, write, love to hear from you. Have a great weekend. Hope it started with a listen to The Bridge. Have fun. It's getting cold out there. Seeing snow in Stratford. Never a good sign.

All right. Thanks for listening. Peter Mansbridge and The Bridge.