Words over messages
ROSEVILLE, Mich.—After 17 years at the same company, Dawn Wilson has just lost her job. The petite blonde stands in the parking lot of Roseville Towne Center, a strip mall with a WalMart, a Dollar Tree, a jewelry pawn shop and what was Hillary Clinton’s campaign office, where a bright yellow sidewalk tent now hawks free cell phones. A few people wait to sign up for one.
Wilson explained: “I’ve worked there for 17 years. I was on vacation when I got a text from my boss on Good Friday to call him. He told me don’t come back to work on Monday, you no longer have a job.”
Of her ability to get another job as a purchaser and customer service professional, she sounds pragmatic, saying: “I’m confident I’ll find something. I am an incredibly hard worker, I have had two job interviews this week, it will happen.”
Of her town’s fortunes, she sounds blunt. “It was once middle class, now I would call it lower middle class,” she says.
Roseville is in Macomb County, the heart of Reagan Democrat country, of socially conservative white Democrats who are anxious about their economic future. It’s like so many places where candidate Donald Trump exceeded expectations—an economically anxious, culturally conservative tight-knit community that doesn’t understand how elite-driven change will benefit it.
For the Hillary Clinton campaign to send Hollywood liberals here in the closing days of the race to preach about climate change was tonedeaf on a Guinness World Records level.
The decisions we make on how to communicate to people are fragile: They can change lives, cause chaos and regret, or take us to a better place by tapping into something deep.
Last week two politicians made news for the ways they communicated to Americans: Clinton’s words were crafted, deliberate and dishonest; President Trump’s words were a string of thoughts bouncing everywhere, with no craft and no massaging and great gaps of context.
The press reacted wistfully to the former. To the latter, it went into full meltdown. Again.
Michael Kinsley once observed, “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.” By this definition—and this is how the press appears to view it—Trump speaks in gaffes.
That doesn’t mean Trump is always accurate in what he says, but he says (or tweets) what he truly thinks at that moment.
We in the press are just not accustomed to this type of honesty. Most politicians are loath to veer from carefully vetted talking points; they don’t commit gaffes because they never tell you what they really think. Instead, they talk around the point or tell you what they think you want to hear. Trump never does this.
Compare this to Clinton’s interview last Monday with Christiane Amanpour. She conceded to mistakes during the campaign, said she is writing her “confessions” in a new book and seeking “absolution,” and then blamed it all on former FBI Director James Comey.
Words delivered with honesty, despite being loose with facts, sometimes are more appealing to people than a perfectly crafted message that is dishonest at its core.
That’s why Wilson chose Trump over Clinton. And that’s why Trump is president and Clinton is not.