I picked up Kusnet’s book after reading his New Republic article on the Inaugural speech. Kusnet, a former speechwriter for Clinton, Dukakis, and Mondale, is well-placed to comment on how Democrats continue to “get it wrong” when speaking on the issues. Speaking American is an older book, from right before the 1992 elections, and this was the book’s real attraction. Kusnet was writing at a time when Democrats had last won the White House in 1976, and had fielded two lackluster candidates in a row. Clinton’s magical ability to connect with people on both sides of the aisle was yet unknown to most of us.
And Kusnet’s message was that Democrats had been getting away from their roots, and were losing the middle class through a lack of populism. Dukakis was the epitome of this problem — perceived widely as an Eastern elitist, he failed to convince the middle class that he firmly grasped their interests, mostly because the rhetoric of the Democrats since McGovern had drifted towards talk of the poor, rather than the working middle class.
I won’t go through the details here, because in fact I read the book to anchor some thoughts I hope to post on Progressive Commons. Suffice it to say that in looking at a wholly unrepresentative sample of Democratic speeches from the 2004 campaign, I think we’ve learned some of the lessons Kusnet discusses but not all, and Kerry in particular was unable to project the right image even though he said many of the right words.
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