Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear

by Frank Luntz

He began by reminding Americans that he had promised to be a president “who feels your pain,” a line that will now forever be credited to Bill Clinton. But then the speech disintegrated. He spoke of “the crisis of the spirit in our country,” setting a political precedent that every downturn in anything important to the public would be labeled a crisis, and how we were no longer the nation of “the ballot, not the bullet,” that our armies were no longer “invincible,” that the economy was no longer “sound as a dollar.” Never in American history had a president attacked every essential American institution all in one speech. But it was his direct assault on American values that shook listeners to their very core. In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. Having reread the speech for the first time since hearing it as a child, even I got depressed. It was a litany of despair and defeat that Americans had never heard from their president until that night. And, while he took some responsibility, the message heard by the American people was that it was America’s fault. (Remember, it’s not what you say but what people hear that matters.) The speech was a reminder not of what Americans could be if they dared to dream, but rather a declaration of what they had in fact become in tha...