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Go Home Gramm Doubles Down--or At Least 1.5s Downs

JULY 11, 2008

Gramm Doubles Down--or At Least 1.5s Downs

BY NOAM SCHEIBER

Looks like Phil Gramm is refusing to admit his "mental recession" comments were off-base. (You can watch Gramm deliver his original monologue here.) As reported in The Trail:

Former senator Phil Gramm -- under fire for saying the United States has "become a nation of whiners" -- said in an interview today that he meant the nation's leaders were whiners, not its citizens.

But the top adviser to Sen. John McCain repeated his assertion that the economy is not in recession, and he declined to retract the comments quoted yesterday in the Washington Times.

"I'm not going to retract any of it. Every word I said was true," Gramm said. ...

He said his staff had told him the Washington Times misquoted his "whiners" comment.

"When I said we've become a nation of whiners, I'm talking about our leaders. I'm not talking about our people," he said. "We've got every kind of excuse in the world about oil prices -- we've got speculators, the oil companies to blame -- but too many people don't have a program to get on with a job of producing."

Obviously not what the McCain campaign wants to deal with today...

Semi-relatedly, this whole controversy's gotten me thinking about the famous Kinsley maxim about Washington gaffes, which, according to Kinsley, happens when a politician speaks the truth. Except that Kinsley's maxim seems inoperative here. Most people probably think Gramm was wrong (voters, of course, but also an increasing number of economists, who worry about median incomes and volatility as opposed to just macro numbers like GDP growth). So the problem wasn't that Gramm was telling an impolitic truth so much as an impolitic falsehood he took to be the truth.

But, when you put it that way, there's nothing really ironic about this sort of Washington gaffe. Kinsley's definition implies there's something unfair about piling on a politician for being impolitic. But why shouldn't they get bashed for telling an impolitic falsehood? (Think also Trent Lott on Strom Thurmond, or any number of pronouncements by Jesse Helms...)

I think Mickey Kaus actually has the better clever definition of a gaffe. Back in March he wrote (scroll down to March 24):

A Kinsley Gaffe is offically defined as

when a politician tells the truth.

To cover the Obama race speech, we may need a second kind of Kinsley Gaffe, call it KG II, that would apply to the trouble generated

when a politican says what he or she actually thinks (whether or not it's the truth).

But even this is slightly imprecise. If you think about it, the KG II should just be the overall definition of a political gaffe--an impolitic statement of what you think. Then there would be two sub-categories: the traditional Kinsley gaffe (when what the politician thinks is true) and the Lott-Gramm gaffe (when what they think is wrong).

Glad we got that cleared up...

Update: Commenter austinexpat makes an important point (in the context of this otherwise trivial discussion, of course): "a 'gaffe' is defined as when a politician *inadvertantly* tells the truth." Right on. I should have inserted the word "inadvertently" into all the above definitions.  

Incidentally, while googling around just now, I noticed that Kinsley refined his definition of a gaffe in a column for Time last year, so that it now basically corresponds to what I was getting at (except that he refined it before I actually got at it, of course...). Kinsely wrote that "a gaffe, it has been said, is when a politician tells the truth--or more precisely, when he or she accidentally reveals something truthful about what is going on in his or her head."

--Noam Scheiber

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13 comments

Wow, even MY nits got picked clean reading this one...

- GSpinks

July 11, 2008 at 12:05pm

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And a KG #5 can be when a politician unfurls a guttural wail at the ceiling of the Rotunda, then goes around headbutting his fellow lawmakers to get them fired up.

- adaglas

July 11, 2008 at 12:11pm

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The dictionary on my mac says a gaffe is "an unintentional act or remark causing embarrassment to its originator; a blunder." Gramm's statement was clearly embarrassing and a blunder, but I doubt it was unintentional. So it's no kind of gaffe. It's just a falsity.

- chrismealy

July 11, 2008 at 12:18pm

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not just a falsity or a gaffe, but a "let them eat cake" moment, which for McCain, is far worse.  And in Gramm's mind, it's not a falsity. He's probably of the school that thinks that anybody who isn't as financially successful as he is by definition a loser and beneath contempt. Calling most Americans whiners falls into that line of thinking.

- scire

July 11, 2008 at 12:51pm

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This is the *second* time I have seen Kinsley's Maxim mis-stated.  (The first was in Slate a week or so ago.)  What has become of our nation's commentariat?

Kinsley's Maxim says that a "gaffe" is defined as when a politician /inadvertantly/ tells the truth.  Without that key word, the elegance and specificity of the definition is lost.

- austinexpat

July 11, 2008 at 12:52pm

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Why don't we just call this type of thing a "Gramm"atical mistake. You gotta kind of use the quotes there otherwise it doesn't really work.

Jonah Goldberg is the only one who opined over it at NRO and he said it was correct but impolitic. The stock market is about where it was when Bush came in office, Oil has risen dramatically, a surplus turned into record debt, and I could go on and on. How the hell does pointing out Bush's tremendous failure equate to a whine. Ok, I will make a deal with Gramm, I won't whine, just give me 10 rounds in a ring with his old sorry ass. I don't care he is old, he definitely needs the stuffing beat out of him. (ok, I know he will just cower in a corner so I don't actually have to hit him)

- blackton

July 11, 2008 at 1:15pm

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A gaffe isn't a gaffe unless the politician making it would take it back if he could.  Since Gramm is clearly unapologetic, I would put him rather in the "loose cannon brazenly shooting his mouth off and embarrassing the campaign" category.  Right along with Gerri Ferraro.

The fact that McCain was seriously considering this maroon for Treasury Secretary speaks volumes, doesn't it?

- WayneJM

July 11, 2008 at 2:34pm

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So when does the "main stream media" really hammer this story which is really a big deal?  They sure didn't let Clark off the hook so easily.  But I forget, a publican can't say anything wrong.  IF a Dem said something like this the press would bury them.  More Faux news treatment from the MSM.

- tnmats

July 11, 2008 at 3:50pm

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When I read Gramm's statement I thought, "It's about time somebody spoke a little truth to the American people." I'm just sorry he back-pedaled and tried to shift the blame to politicians.

We've been living a fantasy for a good dozen years, first leveraging non-existent Internet bubble money, then non-existent housing inflation bubble money. Our energy prices are finally starting to catch up to where they should be. We're quite happy to authorize wars on credit. Our failures to address dual entitlement time-bombs, fix health care, and invest in education and infrastructure have exacerbated each of those problems. Instead of savings some money and using the rest to buy a bicycle or a good pair of walking shoes, we've bought SUVs with no money down so we can take our fatso children to the drive-up window and buy them double-cheeseburgers with our VISA cards. Nobody's put a gun to our heads and forced us to do these things. Better, more prudent and socially, economically, and environmentally responsible alternatives have been available, and we have exercised our Goddess-given right to say, "No thanks, I'm good."

And we're bitching because we don't like the "direction of the country"? Well, who the fuck is at the wheel?

Certainly not the President of the United States, or the Congress, or our governors or state legislators. They never are, they never have been, and they never will be. They work for us. We drive. (I say "we" in this context knowing that many people do all they can to live responsible, constructive lives. Problem is, "we" includes all of us, and too many of us are lazy, irresponsible, self-centered, ignorant hogs lined up at the trough bellowing "More slop!")

Lots of folks wake up with the mother of all hangovers. Only a fool blames the bartender.

- williamyard

July 11, 2008 at 4:13pm

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And then there's the comparative issue: tens if not hundreds of millions of human beings who showed the poor judgment to be born in Haiti or North Korea or Afghanistan or Albania or Cameroon or Cambodia or Honduras or Botswana or Ghana or Columbia or Madagasca or India or dozens of other countries will go to bed hungry tonight, millions of them dangerously so.

And Americans are bitching about gas prices?

Give me a fucking break.

- williamyard

July 11, 2008 at 4:20pm

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You go williamyard -- I LOVE this!  But I have some caveats. First, there are some innocents out there -- the responsible people you spoke of, or the uneducated; those who, out of ignorance, got suckered into a bad mortgage deal (something Gramm is personally responsible for to a degree); or those whose jobs got shipped overseas.  Second, I completely agree that the people are ultimately the drivers, but the bus is broken down in so many ways that it is hard for us to control it anymore. Yes, we broke it -- over decades, centuries, not years.  And simply calling us whiners reveals that Gramm does not begin to comprehend the basic institutional , social, and cultural problems that are running us off the road. I think the "fantasy" you speak of is a part of our basic national make up, part of the warped side of the "American dream." Name-calling won't help -- even if the names are accurate -- especially when they are coming from someone who feels no effects of the problem and has even profited from it. We need some seriously tough love from someone who understands the scope of the change that need to happen.  

- amhistprof

July 11, 2008 at 5:16pm

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TNR.com loves the smell of policy reversals in the morning. This week, John McCain promised to balance

- Anonymous

July 11, 2008 at 5:17pm

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Now that Phil Gramm is back on the national radar (and, hence, The Stump ), we thought we'd dig up

- Anonymous

July 11, 2008 at 6:46pm

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