Thomas
Sowell sums up our frustration with conservative leaders who can't communicate a simple point to save their lives:
When the government was shut down during the Clinton administration, Republican leaders who went on television to tell their side of the story talked about “OMB numbers” versus “CBO numbers”—as if most people beyond the Beltway knew what these abbreviations meant or why the statistics in question were relevant to the shutdown. Why talk to them in Beltway-speak?
When Speaker Boehner today goes around talking about the “CR,” that is just more of the same thinking—or lack of thinking. Policy wonks inside the Beltway know that he is talking about the continuing resolution that authorizes the existing level of government spending to continue, pending a new budget agreement.
I've worked with way too many lawyers like this: addicted to meaningless acronyms. Would it kill Boehner to get in the habit of calling it a "blank check" instead of a clean CR?
This tends to happen with people who live in a closed universe and interact only with people inside that same universe. People in certain companies with a high market share, for example, tend to talk in acronyms and phrases which are meaningful to other employees and to long-time customers, but are gobbledygook to prospects and industry members outside the circle. Such behavior does not portend a bright future.
ReplyDeleteRepublican politicians are generally speaking terrible marketeers. Romney improved a little bit from what he had been doing earlier, but he still talked too much like a PowerPoint presentation, and not a very good one.