The Bushism is challenging the malapropism as an eponym for lexical
near-misses: ''a system that suckles kids through,'' ''quotas vulcanize
society.'' Even cliches betray him: ''We ought to make the pie higher.''
Yet as lists of Bushisms circulate on the Internet,
Mr. Bush's support seems little damaged. A bit of background on how
language works can help explain why Mr. Bush's gaffes don't seem to
have hurt him.
First, many people know they can't believe everything they read. Dan
Quayle did not say on a trip to Latin America that he wished he had paid
more attention to Latin in high school. The story quickly jumped from a
comedian's monologue to the ''Quayle quotes'' making the electronic rounds.
Also, anyone who has experienced the horror of seeing his spoken words
transcribed knows that speech is meant to be heard, not read. Even among the
articulate, verbal give-and-take is filled with false starts, garbles and
statements that make no sense out of context. In 1991 the Supreme Court
upheld the common practice among journalists of doctoring the wording of
quotations, acknowledging that to reproduce a person's words verbatim often
is to make him look bad. Transcribed speech can look especially ludicrous
when it comes from a sleep-deprived candidate trying to sound lofty enough
to win sympathy and vague enough not to tie his own hands.
The comprehension of spoken language is a forgiving mental process that
seldom takes things literally. Only a snarky 13-year-old replies to ''Can
you pass the salt?'' with ''Yes, I'm able to do that,'' and even careful
listeners have trouble figuring out what is wrong with the sentence ''This
study fills a much-needed gap.'' That is why Mr. Bush's bloopers have
lost him so little support among the television-watching public (to the
bewilderment of ink-stained wretches): most people hear right through them.
When he says ''we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun''
or ''babies out of wedlock is a very difficult chore for mom and baby
alike,'' language lovers may wince, but everyone knows what he means.
A man who must rely on the charity of listeners to get his message across
may not seem like an ideal president. But consider the other extreme: a man
so verbally sharp that he can exploit the charity of listeners to keep his
message hidden -- for example, by using words like ''alone'' and ''sex,'' as
Bill Clinton did, in narrow legalistic senses that differ from those assumed
by ordinary listeners.
And the speech style of Mr. Bush's opponent, Al Gore, has
problems of its own. Psycholinguists have a name for it: ''motherese,'' the
language addressed to small children and other incompetent listeners.
Polling shows many people are far less forgiving of what they take to be Mr.
Gore's condescending tone than they are of Mr. Bush's garbles.
Where do these speech styles come from? Mr. Bush may have come by
his inarticulateness honestly: he is the son of a man who referred to a
spotted owl as ''that little furry-feathery guy'' and once explained, ''I
hope I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, anti-racism.'' Mr.
Gore, for his part, may be afraid that dry and abstruse ideas will
bore or confuse his listeners.
Do the language habits of a candidate matter? A president's words,
well-chosen and convincingly delivered, can be a powerful tool at home and
abroad: ''with malice toward none''; ''a day that will live in infamy'';
''ask not''; ''Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.'' One of the decisions
voters must make is which candidate is better able to use this important
lever of influence.
