Luntz: Admirably Destroying Issues

Luntz-Speak at the State of the Union

Tonight in class we watched a video of Frank Luntz at work. Luntz is a Republican pollster and messaging guru. He is hired by many corporate clients (and politicians) to figure out an effective way to market or influence consumers and voters.

He does it through appealing to emotion saying "“80 percent of life is emotion and 20 percent is intellectual." By manipulating the language and verbiage, we can twist the negative into the positive.

Estate Tax = Death Tax

Tax Cut = Tax Relief

Global Warming = Climate Change

Luntz is doing some brilliant things with language, and I think his work is admirable. But can we really say that he's helping political discourse? By packaging politics under these vague terms, he's basically tricking people. (These are the same people that most consultants "claim" to want to educate about the "issues" of the election.)

Everyone agrees that we want healthy forests, which conjures up good images of a wilderness area. Very few people want logging on public land. If you're going to pass a bill to allow logging, tagging it with the word "healthy" will aid in developing public support. Thus, Luntz names policies under the names that everyone can agree with like "Healthy Forests Initiative."

He was instrumental in the 1994 Contract with America in which he claimed that at least 60 percent of Americans supported the Contract's policies. The problem was that Luntz's policies were so vague that almost all Americans found them favorable. In fact, it's amazing that Luntz's wording didn't give 100 percent agreement from the American people. For example, what person is going to say that they want to deprive any American child of a quality education? Or that they believe in dirty drinking water?

"[Words are] like fire," Luntz said. "It can be used to heat your house or burn it down."

Right now, I'd argue Luntz is burning it down.