Huckabee's dog whistle
by uwdomke
Sat Jan 05, 2008 at 10:49:24 AM PDT
An interesting discussion today on language used by Mike Huckabee in his campaign. He is fond of talking about "vertical" politics rather than "horizontal" politics. Josh Marshall brought this up over at Talking Points Memo, where he includes a video of this Huckabee answer on NBC's Meet the Press last January:
MR. RUSSERT: You said this to the Des Moines Register: "Let’s face it. In our lifetimes, we’ve seen our country go from ‘Leave it to Beaver’ to ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ from Barney Fife to Barney Frank." Why, why include Barney Frank, a gay congressman, in that reference?
GOV. HUCKABEE: I think it was a matter of a rhetorical device to talk about the different cultural shift that we have, and it wasn’t any particular attempt to be derisive of him. But, but there has been a huge cultural shift in this country, Tim. And I think that’s why many Americans are seeking leadership that has a positive and optimistic spirit, that wants to take this nation—what I call vertical politics rather than horizontal.
I just completed a book in which I talk about the difference between horizontal politics, where everything is left or right, everything is liberal or conservative, everything is Democrat or Republican. I think the American people are hungry for vertical politics, where we have leaders who lift us up rather than those who tear us down.
MR. RUSSERT: But some would suggest by including Barny Frank in that reference you are tearing a gay man down. You’re against gay marriage, you’re against gay civil unions. Is—do you have a problem with gay people?
GOV. HUCKABEE: No. I have a problem with changing institutions that have served us. And I, I think I would rather characterize not what I’m against, but what I’m for. Before we change the definition of marriage to mean something different, I think our real focus ought to be on trying to strengthen heterosexual marriages because half of them are ending in divorce. That’s a real problem in this country. There are a lot of kids who are growing up in a very, very confused and conflicted world because—not because we have same-sex marriage, but because we’re seeing a real failure in the tradition heterosexual marriage. That’s where our focus needs to be. Because if we want to end poverty, get a kid through high school, let him grow up in a stable, two-parent home and make sure that that child doesn’t have a child before he’s 21 and has a full-time job. That’s a 93 percent chance that child will never grow up in a single day of poverty if those are the criteria.
And there's more discussion at The Political Animal.
This is definitely dog-whistle politics -- that is, a message delivered in coded terminology and targeted to a particular subcultural group. Conservative evangelicals often talk about the need to prioritize their vertical relationships with God first and foremost before worrying about horizontal relationships among people. It's the individualized "get right with God" approach of conservative Protestantism.
In contrast, progressive people of faith reject the vertical-horizontal dichotomy as a false one, saying that in interpersonal relationships one's faith and spiritual teachings are made manifest. Such an outlook is wishy-washy, watered-down liberal theology in the minds of conservative evangelicals. Southern Baptist minister Huckabee knows this, and speaks evangelical-ese with his words. In fact, he's got it up on his website as well.
I know this is so because I've been present a number of times when "vertical" rhetoric -- the exact word -- has been used in evangelical circles. It's indeed a way of speaking one hears in many churches, part of the faith vocabulary of the evangelical and fundamentalist subculture.
The word, of course, comes off as benign (interesting, but benign) to the general public -- that's the whole point. It's a perfect narrowcast message, exactly what Kevin Coe and I talk about in part of our The God Strategy: How Religion Became A Political Weapon in America:
That’s the power of narrowcasting. Targeted, under-the-radar messages denote who is part of the club. It’s like a secret handshake, writ large and electoral: politicians who narrowcast religious cues are assigned considerable credibility by voters in the targeted constituency.
And when you link the dogwhistle directly with a coveted issue position held by the group -- anti-gay marriage -- you've just sealed the dogwhistle. The man is a very, very good politician.
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