In US presidential politics, does grammar matter?
Politicians jockeying for the top job are performing semantic gymnastics, writes Ken Thomas
For those trying to predict who will run for US president in 2016, scrutinising grammar has become something of a fixation. They’ll argue that verb tense matters. Until it doesn’t matter at all.
Nobody has formally announced a White House bid. But plenty of the country’s top politicians are obviously jockeying for position — all the while performing semantic gymnastics when directly asked The Question: Will you run for president?
Fortune magazine made a splash on Tuesday when it published an interview with Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, a liberal favourite who has said repeatedly she is “not running for president”.
That’s present tense, which grammatically means the Massachusetts senator is not now in the act of running for president. That answer seems to keep her options open, some have said, stoking the hopes of some liberals eager to see Sen Warren get into the race and challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton, the top Democratic contender should she run for a second time.
Yet in the Fortune interview, when Sen Warren was asked by Sheila Bair, the former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, “Are you going to run for president?” Sen Warren had a simple reply: “No.” Future tense. Done deal, right? Well, not by the standard set this past week by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Asked by a New York Times reporter in January 2014 whether he would seek the Republican nomination for a third time, Mr Romney seemed to offer a definitive answer.
“Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no,” Mr Romney told the newspaper. “People are always gracious and say, ‘Oh, you should run again’. “I’m not running again.” Except that on Friday, Mr Romney, who lost to President Barack Obama in 2012, sent the political world into a tizzy when he told donors at a private New York meeting that he was, in fact, now considering another run for president.
In the days since, Mr Romney has reached out to former staff and supporters in an effort that many think will end with a third White House campaign. That’s despite his using the word “no’’ 11 times in that single answer, which he capped with a statement — but in present tense! — summing up his intent not to run.
Perhaps no one has been asked the question more than Ms Clinton. Trying to figure out her intentions is a natural for those who see politics as comedy. During her recent book tour, late-night host Jon Stewart teased the former secretary of state with questions about her home office preferences, alluding to the Oval Office.
“Would you like that office ... to have corners? Or would you like it not to have corners?” Stewart asked.
Ms Clinton quipped, “The fewer corners that you can have, the better.”
Mr Obama’s words were frequently parsed during his days as a US senator from Illinois who pledged to serve his full term, which would have precluded a run for president in 2008. That changed in a memorable October 2006 appearance on Meet the Press, when he acknowledged he was thinking about a presidential bid.
Mr Obama and Mr Romney’s examples haven’t gone unnoticed by Sen Warren’s fans at MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, two liberal groups promoting her possible candidacy. “Warren has been clear for years that she isn’t planning on running,” they said in a statement responding to the Fortune interview. “If she were running, there wouldn’t be a need for a draft effort”.
Dealing with how politicians answer The Question has long been a part of the campaign for the White House. Journalists often seek a Shermanesque statement of certitude, derived from the pledge made by Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, a potential Republican candidate in the 1884 election, who said: “If drafted, I will not run. If nominated, I will not accept. If elected, I will not serve.”
Some prospective candidates have had fun when badgered to give such an answer. After struggling in his 1976 campaign, Democrat Mo Udall of Arizona shut the door to a 1980 challenge to then president Jimmy Carter with this: “If nominated, I will run — for the Mexican border. If elected, I will fight extradition.”