Gaffe Watch

There is something we like about watching Donald Trump.    He talks like a real person.

The Ohio State band marches in precision.   A single foot out of a ruler-straight line would be an error--a gaffe.  The Harvard College band parading down Massachusetts Avenue does not march.  Instead they amble down the street in the general direction they agreed to go.   They can never make a gaffe.

Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz make gaffes.   Trump does not.

Ted Cruz, in a casual remark in Indiana this week, referred to a basketball hoop as a "ring".   Breaking News!!!   Two days later it was sufficiently top of mind that President Obama  could use this as the basis for three jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

He said "ring"!!!

The jokes got laughs.   Everyone in the audience prominent enough to be at the dinner knew the basis for the joke: the Cruz gaffe.    Ted Cruz referred to the rim of a basketball hoop as a ring.   Of course, it is in fact a ring of steel but it is referred to as a "hoop", not a ring.  

Obama used it as the setup for saying that Cruz might refer to a baseball bat as a stick, a football helmut as a hat, boxing gloves as mittens.  "And I'm the foreigner," Obama asked?  The crowd roared.

By any objective standard Cruz's comment was utterly trivial--but in a campaign it was an error, a gaffe, something to echo around a news cycle or two, and thanks to it being revived at the Correspondents Dinner, a third cycle.

Uttered "off the reservation"   Outrage!

Hillary Clinton gaffe.   Meanwhile, about the time Cruz set the news on fire by saying "ring", Hillary Clinton was answering a press question about whether she was bothered by Trump's comments on "the woman card" and she said that she was accustomed to men "going off the reservation" and saying some foolish things.   Whatever she had to say about Trump became irrelevant.

"Off the reservation."  Gaffe!  Outrage!  Native Americans insulted!

I have watched 5 live performances by Hillary Clinton totaling about 7 hours and 2 live performances by Ted Cruz totaling about 3 hours.  Both of them give very disciplined speeches.   Hillary Clinton's speeches are a list of policy planks: problem identified legislation proposed to remedy it.    She describes careful, realistic, incremental improvement, which Obama joked about last night, showing this spoof of the Hillary Clinton program.  From the first speech I heard in August of last year, through her victory speech after New York, Hillary sounds in-authentic because her language seems so careful and "lawyered", with every bit of spontaneity and guileless natural speech buffed out.   She simulates passion by adopting the politician's shout.

Steady, disciplined, careful:  avoid gaffes

Cruz voices very practiced lines, a series of 20-second chunks, then a pause for laughter or applause.  (He gives a tiny self-satisfied heh-heh after each of these, something an campaign confidant should bring to his attention and suggest he suppress--which of course would be yet another iteration of speech-buffing.)

Donald Trump is interesting because his speeches go over familiar ground but he uses different words to express them.   He is extemporaneous.   It offends many people but it simultaneously seems genuine and unguarded.  He gets endless airtime because audiences are drawn to it, even MSNBC's audience.

Trump speaks in fragments.  I took at random 20 seconds I taped in Nevada and transcribed verbatim.   When spoken the words make sense--Trump is saying that America's war in Iraq was costly in lives, but in transcript form it is nearly gibberish:

“We lost lives, thousands and thousands of lives—you could say on both sides in all fairness, OK—thousands and thousands, we lost thousands more—they don’t even know—wounded warriors, they are the greatest—thousands, thousands of lives lost.   We have nothing.   What, what do we have?   Nothing.”

Massachusetts Avenue

Donald Trump has done more than reposition the Republican Party.   He has shown a way to reposition campaign speech.  Donald Trump has nearly reversed--for himself--the polarity of the notion of "gaffe".  His presentations (I have seen 5 in person) are spontaneous free association and so full of awkward phrases that the notion of "gaffe" no longer applies.    





Trump dismisses all the gaffe-watching as tiresome political correctness.   Gaffes are good.  They are honest.    They are what a great many people really think when they aren't running a gaffe filter at full speed.

For a great many Americans Trump represents freedom, a Miller-time sigh of relief where one can take off polite constraints and let yourself think (and watch Trump say) what you really think.  Trump says it:   Muslims are scary and maybe a whole lot of them hate us.  Mexicans in America should learn English, and actually they shouldn't even be here if they came illegally.  The wrong sorts of people are getting government benefits.--lazy people and foreigners.  China and Japan are taking our jobs.   Women (or blacks or Hispanics) are too quick to take offense to every little thing.   Gay people make me uncomfortable and transgender people seem weird.

Harvard Band:  PEN 15.  Nothing wrong with that.

Not everyone feels that way or thinks those thoughts, but many do, and Trump defines the expression of those things as honest communication, not fatal gaffes.  Trump has a constituency.

Hillary and Cruz are attempting to play by the rules of a marching band and to be responsible, electable candidates.   Trump is attempting to be the Harvard band.   The Harvard band never makes mistakes because when the Harvard band parades out of step it is on purpose.