Presidential Doublespeak

IN 1946, before he became notorious for what he is notorious for today, George Orwell wrote an essay called "Politics and the English Language," in which he stated the following:

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it: Our civilization is decadent, and our language--so the argument runs--must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument we shape for our own purposes.

Perhaps the best example of Orwell's complaint lies in the public statements of our present Administration. Besides the fact that our President may well be the most illiterate man in America today--have you ever noticed the amount of effort it takes to reconstruct his sentences--his government is disconcertingly inept at saying anything clearly. But the dangerous truth behind Mr. Reagan's statements is not his careless sentences, but his careless thoughts.

Take for example, one of our government's favorite nouns, the word "this." Never meant to be a noun and defined as an indefinite pronoun at best, the word "this" is used by the Administration to avoid naming anything they'd rather not discuss. Reading the morning paper on the day after any press conference, one is sure to find the President commenting, "I have nothing to say on this," or (when he is disposed to talk) "Let me say this on that," if he is referring to something like Grenada, Lebanon, Nicaragua, or the Russians walking out of negotiations.

Our Administration also has a peculiar talent for calling their plans and operations by the name which most effectively describes what they are not doing. We have a "peacekeeping" force in Lebanon which does nothing but keep war, a national security directive intended to reduce national comprehension, and we sent a "rescue mission" to invade Grenada. Of course these kinds of names have been used before--we have had a Secretary and Department of Defense waging war for a long time--but our present Administration has carried even this kind of misnomer to an extreme. During the past year, the Environmental Protection Agency facilitated the dropping of industrial waste, and the Secretary of the Interior made strip-mining easier.

Reading the morning paper, more often than not, offers further examples of the President's particular brand of language. Last week, for example, the President defended the conduct of the chief of the United States Information Agency, Charles Wick:

I don't think that Charles Wick is a dishonorable man in any way. I can understand his forgetting sometimes when he was talking to people particularly that he knew, "[Wick's taping] was different... [from someone]" trying to keep a record on other people's conversations what he was actually trying to do was to immediately transcribe so that he could provide the suggestions that were being discussed to the people that would have to implement them...

Now this quotation is pieced together, but if one remembers the facts of the matter it is embarrassing to figure out what the President is actually saying. What, for example, does Reagan mean when he says. "I don't think Charles Wick is a dishonorable man in any way?" If "dishonorable" means anything it means lying and Mr. Wick lied several times when he told reporters early in the investigation of his taping that he had never taped without permission. The issue is not "forgetting"; one does not forget taping a conversation the way one forgets an address. And finally, what is the difference between "trying to keep a record on" and "immediately transcribing," if the tapes are still in existence?

The fact of the matter is that the President is playing a down limp game with words. He appeals to one's "understanding," to distract the listener from what's going on; the attempt may or may not be conscious, but the result is the same.

Orwell uses a quotation from Ecclesiastes to show the danger of modern English:

I returned, and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

which he translates into modern English as follows:

Objective consideration of modern phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must be taken into account.

With (I hope) as little insult to Mr. Orwell as possible, here it is at a Reagan news conference:

Mr. President, who do you think is most likely to gain from your economic programs?

Now let me just say this to that, Bob...and I think Mr. Meese was misheard on this before and I want this clear now... When I look at this great country, and let me say that at least 98.5 percent of this country is great and that's a real figure. . . I feel that it is the interests of this country in a great democracy ...and what Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said is applicable here, that "everyone should do their best in this" ... that we will off work together towards our common goal of making America great and it's just going to take time, that's all'...next?

Now this may sound absurd, but try reading any of the texts of the President's news conferences and imagining what he's really saying. Then try looking around you and see how few people actually network on his language at all.

Orwell notes in the same essay that the result of slovenly and misleading language is much like that of drink to an alcoholic:

A man may take to drink, because he is a failure and fail all the more completely became he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly or inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

WHEN WE HEAR the President speak, we are usually much disposed to accept what he is saying; we don't think twice about "peace-keeping" and about a "national security directive," and forget to consider what such words really mean. But if we remember for a second what we are really about, the business of electing decent Presidents, it should not be hard to get rid of this whiskey-semantic trance; carry a dictionary and a Constitution about when you listen to the President speak, and refer to them, not to your yearning for the frontier. Then let us hope that in 1985, we can send all the thises, peacekeeping forces and randomly cited percentages back to California, where they belong.