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Thursday, September 9, 2004

By Ralf Seiffe

Scribblers are calling George Bush’s acceptance speech his best effort or second only to his masterful talk with the American people from the World Trade Center site on September 20, 2001.

I watched it on a huge screen at the Chicago Hilton, standing next to Bush supporters who whooped it up like college cheerleaders whose team scored the go-ahead touch down.

Yet, as good - and improved - as the president was, I kept comparing his speech to Zell Miller’s and frankly, the Georgia Democrat’s was better. Illinois Leader readers agree according to their poll, probably because Miller offered concrete evidence to support his case, while the President was short on specifics.

It was easy to understand exactly what Senator Miller meant, while it took imagination to complete the president’s thoughts. Dubya should take notice because if he sharpens his rhetorical imagery to become just half as effective as Miller’s, he’ll win in a landslide.

Miller was as unlikely as he was effective. He had been the prototypical southern Democrat since taking up politics as a twenty-something and served as a fairly useless example of that species for nearly 40 years.

Once in Washington, however, he proved Churchill’s observation that age and experience create conservatives, and the septuagenarian senator quit oozing his party’s line. His transformation now complete, he appeared last Wednesday night as a sinner, reformed.

Miller’s purpose at his second keynote address was to set the contrast between the Republicans and the Democrats to black and white.

First, he told us the reasons for his appearance were important and honorable and that he would remain a Democrat.

Then, instead of simply vilifying John Kerry’s voting record, the senator connected those votes to real, often timely consequences.

Instead of some abstract objection to Kerry’s pacifism, Zell told us that the bomber that Kerry voted to kill was the B-1, and it carried 40 percent of the ordinance dropped in Iraq.

Instead of stating some nuance about Kerry’s senate position on “weapons systems,” Zell told us that system was the B-2 bomber, which has just destroyed the Taliban.

He paralleled not with Kerry’s hostility to a nebulous “Air Force budget” but with a specific reference to the F-15 that covered the skies above the capital and “this very city” after 9/11.

By connecting Kerry’s votes with what they would have denied our troops, Miller linked Kerry directly to danger and achieved a communications triumph.

Can President Bush be as rhetorically effective as Zell Miller? The issues and communications task is much greater and much more difficult than the senator’s assignment, but if the president recognizes the challenge and succeeds, he’ll create a mandate.

Perhaps the president could borrow Adam Smith’s example and create a modern version of the world’s most famous economic tract. He could pick a product - wood screws instead of pins, for example -and make a modern object lesson that might have the same edifying effect in 2004 as it had in 1776.

He could observe that the Chinese land a box of screws in WalMart for $1.98 while an American company needs $5 to make the same product. He can tell us we are $3 overweight and to retain the jobs, we need to make the same product for a competitive price.

By identifying the costs and burdens American manufacturers face, the president could illustrate why we need each and every point in the list of programs he outlined in his speech. This example might start with the fact that we have abundant natural resources, metal and factories with which to make the screws.

He could move on the energy it takes to work the metal and note that the U.S. has not built a refinery in more than 30 years or a nuclear power plant in almost as long.

In contrast, he could tell us that the Chinese have just embarked on the Three Gorges Dam, which will supply them lots of low-cost electrical power.

He could tell us that the cost of making screws goes far beyond factory labor costs. He should demonstrate that each box carries 21 cents of addition costs for environmental inspectors, 19 cents for EEOC compliance employees, 12 cents for sex harassment trainers and 11 cents for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance officers.

Then, there are lawyers defending against customers who screw their finger to the wall and sue the manufacturer in courts that allow frivolous lawsuits. They add 2 cents to every box of screws - or maybe $1.75 per box if the case is tried in East St. Louis.

He could then tell us occupancy and income tax costs could be reduced another 43 cents by manufacturing the screws in enterprise zones that would carry less of the regulatory burden.

If the costs were still too high to sell them for a buck ninety-eight, he should tell us we’ll need to invent new ways to make them. For that, we must master the latest technologies, and that takes schooling. The likely outcome of trained American ingenuity will not only be lower priced screws but probably a labor-saving screw replacement system we can sell to the Chinese.

He should be careful to note that we do not need to give up all the protections of a modern society, but we can be much smarter about how we administer them.

Then, he needs to set our great challenge as preserving American living standards for the whole of this century, coupled with the notion that a bigger government is antithetical to that goal.

This concept can be extended to Social Security and taxes, capital formation and economically sound invention of new energy sources.

In 15 minutes, the president can hold out a box of screws and illustrate the practicality and worth of each and every one of his proposals.

Such a demonstration would be as compelling as Zell Miller’s speech and a powerful way for the president to “screw up” his opponent.

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Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader.