One Word

Have you noticed that “change” is in the air? Our president-elect, Barack Obama, took that word, wrung it out, spiced it with hope and made it his own. And he will probably offer a few more powerful phrases in his inaugural address. Witnessing the transformation of “change” from catchy slogan to overused political buzzword to revolutionary reality made me wonder if a single word can have the power to conjure up images of speci%uFB01c presidents. I think … yes.
If you asked me to come up with a single word that expresses the legacy of George W. Bush’s presidency, for example, I would offer: “Newkular” I know, it’s not really a word. It’s the president’s version of “nuclear,” the correct pronunciation of which follows its root word, “nucleus.” According to Merriam-Webster, he isn’t the %uFB01rst to torture the word; the book notes that at least two other presidents have favored the incorrect pronunciation.
My dad worked in PR for a power company, and always cringed whenever someone—a politician, a reporter, even one vice-president of his own company—would say something about “NOOK-ular power.” Bush’s “newkular” may be a metaphor for the unful%uFB01lled search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or it may be a conscious effort to camou%uFB02age his Ivy League pedigree by sounding like one of the guys. Perhaps no one has told the emperor that he has no phonetic clothes. I’m not searching for deeper meaning. I’m just playing a word-association game.
As I thought about it some more, I pondered past presidents and words that became uniquely theirs. Given the constantly growing size of our vocabulary, having a single word attached to one’s presidency is an impressive, although not always intentional, accomplishment. Historians and etymologists will quickly point to Ohio Sen. Warren G. Harding’s use of “normalcy” during the campaign of 1920 as unique. And contrary to what Harding’s critics asserted (they preferred “normality”), he didn’t invent the word. It had been around and used, albeit sparingly, since 1857. Harding was promising voters a return to the pre-Woodrow Wilson days, before World War I, when America enjoyed a more serene existence. Harding won by a landslide, but the trip to normalcy was waylaid by Teapot Dome and the president’s death two years into his term. Cynics might offer the scandal of Harding’s term as status quo, but whatever your assessment of POTUS No. 29, he owns the word “normalcy” forever.
You might say “poe-TAY-toe” and I might say “poe-TAH-toe” (and Dan Quayle might spell it “potatoe”) but before we call the whole thing off, try to say “militaryindustrialcomplex.” I believe this is really two words, “military-industrial” and “complex,” and I’m pretty sure that “military-industrial” is not really a single word. But I’ll guess that you immediately thought of President Dwight Eisenhower when you read it/them.
In his farewell address to the nation in 1961, POTUS No. 34 warned, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted in%uFB02uence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Oliver Stone chose to use the phrase in his 1991 movie, JFK. It’s now the sesquipedalian arrow in the quiver of military spending critics. I mean, what could be sweeter than a Republican president warning against the growing power of people who manufacture the machines of war and those who use them? Big business and big military in one blow … BLAMMO! So Eisenhower will forever be linked with “militaryindustrialcomplex.”
In contrast to the lengthy Ike-ism, I’d like to offer the shortest presidential word: “is.” You thought of Bill Clinton, didn’t you? Any number of special words might also be Friends of Bill: “pain” (as in “I feel yours”), “saxophone,” “Whitewater” and “comeback” come to mind. But no individual has ever forced us to use a linguistic microscope on so simple a set of letters.
In his January 1997 testimony before a grand jury, Clinton was asked, “The statement that there was ‘no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form, with President Clinton,’ was an utterly false statement. Is that correct?” Then-POTUS No. 42 responded, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the—if he—if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement….Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.”
Whew! Leeuwenhoek divined less looking through his lenses at animalcules. So for me, the very short bottom line for President Bill Clinton’s word is “is.” The most recent of President Clinton’s Democratic ancestors was Jimmy Carter. You could make a case that his campaign statements in Playboy would give us a juicy word. In that November 1976 interview, then-Gov. Carter said, “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” You could make a case that “lust” could be his word, but that was so atypical of Jimmy Carter’s persona that I toss it aside. Plus, he was just a governor at the time.
I will characterize his term with a word he never used speci%uFB01cally, but which became associated with the Carter presidency: “malaise.” On July 19, 1979, President Carter addressed a national TV audience, calling attention to what he called “a fundamental threat to our democracy,” and saying, “The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of con%uFB01dence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our con%uFB01dence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”
Likely he was sincere and earnest, but he and I have not spoken about this speech (or anything else for that matter), so I’ll just give POTUS No. 39 the bene%uFB01t of the doubt. But typically Americans don’t like being told, “Hey, you’re the problem.” The address earned the nickname of “the malaise speech” and the moniker stuck. Fair? Probably not, but for me, Carter and “malaise” are on the same page of the presidential dictionary.
The last multi-term Democratic president before Bill Clinton was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His tenure was rife with new words and phrases: “%uFB01reside chats” (coined by journalist Robert Trout), “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” “arsenal of democracy,” and a veritable alphabet soup of programs, like CCC and WPA. However, if the seminal event of the 20th century was World War II, then FDR’s word for the match that lit the powder keg is his presidential word: “infamy.”
On Dec. 8, 1941, POTUS No. 32 told Congress and a national radio audience, “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” Never was a word so aptly applied, nor has anyone since wrested association of the word from the memory of FDR. Just say “Infamy!” Ask, “President?” and the answer comes back “Roosevelt.”
FDR’s reluctant successor, Harry S. Truman, never aspired to the presidency. He never shirked its responsibilities and pressures, either. A sign on his desk read, “The buck stops here,” and coined the famous phrase, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” He referred to the 80th Congress as “The do-nothing Congress,” and said that “if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”
And perhaps the most enduring image of POTUS No. 33 is his brandishing the premature and embarrassingly inaccurate Chicago Daily Tribune post-election issue declaring “Dewey Defeats Truman!” So, what word makes me think of Harry Truman? “Hell!” (and it needs to have the exclamation point!) Supporters along the route of his whistle-stop campaign in 1948 used to shout, “Give ’em hell, Harry!” His response was, “I don’t give them hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s hell!” To me, that word encapsulates the brevity, irreverence, forthrightness and earthiness of Truman’s approach to the presidency. Perhaps Harry’s “hell!” would be a little bit of heaven for contemporary politicos. So for me, Truman’s word is “hell!”
Before the war to end all wars in the 20th century, the con%uFB02ict that re-shaped America most dramatically unfolded between 1861 and 1865. Call it the Civil War, the War Between the States, the War of Northern Aggression, or “The Recent Unpleasantness” as they say now in the South, few would argue that the man who occupied the White House during the war’s bloody execution was the greatest wordsmith of all presidents. Abraham Lincoln authored the Emancipation Proclamation, a document that contained little of the simple, soaring oratory so characteristic of his speeches. Yet the power of its purpose nominates “emancipation” as the word of Lincoln’s presidency.
Another potential phrase comes from his second inaugural address, which urged Americans to “bind up the nation’s wounds … with malice toward none; with charity for all.” However, when it comes to POTUS No. 16, the word is “fourscore.” It’s the very %uFB01rst word in the Gettysburg Address, the %uFB01rst of only 272 words in what is considered the %uFB01nest speech ever crafted and delivered. I’m pretty sure that, rather than “fourscore and seven years ago,” most speakers would have opted for “about 87 years ago.”
The %uFB01rst time I saw the word “fourscore” I had to look up “score” to %uFB01nd out that it meant 20 years. Its de%uFB01nition is not so important as the trigger it squeezes. Anyone who hears “fourscore” thinks “Gettysburg Address,” and is reminded of the primary test administered to a young nation, and how we passed the test (barely) sevenscore and four years ago.
I got so caught up in the FDR and Lincoln legacies that you might think I was skipping more recent presidents and their companion words. Let me offer them up with some shorter descriptors: George (the non-“newkular”) Bush: POTUS No. 41 had the “thousand points of light” and “prudent.” But how about “lips”? As in “read my …”? That probably has made more of an imprint on our minds than any of his other utterances. I’ll take “lips” for the win.Ronald Reagan: POTUS No. 48 defeated the Jimmy Carter “malaise” with “morning in America” optimism. He also used the phrase, “There you go again” to effectively parry Carter’s thrusts in the 1980 debates. Reagan also thought of himself as mayor of the “shining city on the hill.” His advocates called him “The Great Communicator.” Yet I can’t help myself—my word for him is “well.” I have yet to hear a mimic, professional or otherwise, do a Reagan impersonation without starting with that word. Go ahead, try it. You can’t, can you?Gerald Ford: In his short time in of%uFB01ce, POTUS No. 38 offered us the comical WIN (Whip In%uFB02ation Now)
buttons, and a ready target for Saturday Night Live’s Chevy Chase’s pratfalls. But his word has to be “pardon” for his full pardon for whatever his predecessor, Richard Nixon, may have done while he was president.Richard Nixon: Surely the most complex political character of the 20th century must have some special word to encapsulate a term that quickly morphed from a second-term landslide reaf%uFB01rmation to resignation in disgrace. “Watergate” probably does it best. Although it’s the name of an of%uFB01ce/apartment complex, and not really a word, it has spawned a generational predisposition to adding “–gate” as a suf%uFB01x of shame.Lyndon Johnson: It’s “Vietnam,” hands down. He didn’t start it, he sure didn’t end it, but POTUS No. 36
became so involved in Southeast Asia that it became the elephant in the Oval Of%uFB01ce for his term in of%uFB01ce. What started in tragedy and shadow when LBJ inherited the presidency from the assassinated JFK evolved into a presidency that was all about Johnson, and not Kennedy. But Vietnam became the pit bull grabbing Johnson’s leg and the reason he chose not to run for re-election. “Vietnam” is the word for President Johnson.John F. Kennedy: Probably no president in recent memory has given us phrases that resonate so much with the American character. In his inaugural speech, JFK charged Americans, “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans,” and “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” And that was just on Day 1, Hour 1 after being sworn in.
Just %uFB01ve month later, he asked Congress to set a goal of landing an American on the moon and returning him safely to earth before the end of the decade. I defy anyone to pick a single word among all those. He also had a few issues with the Bay of Pigs, congressional inaction on his legislative suggestions, an unsteady foreign policy and, on a much more trivial level, Marilyn Monroe’s dress at his Madison Square Garden birthday party. (One can only imagine what word or two passed from the %uFB01rst lady to the president on that occasion).
All that was so great about John Kennedy is overwhelmed by what was so terrible about his assassination. Its suddenness, and the perceived mystery surrounding it, means that the word for POTUS No. 35 is “conspiracy.” The word speaks not so much about the man, or the president, as it does the legacy of mistrust that his murder and the subsequent investigations engendered.
As Obama prepares for Inauguration Day, his wordsmith Jon Favreau is preparing to give us all new words to associate with POTUS No. 44. I hope so. I’m anxious to retire “change” from the campaign discussion.
We have had 42 presidents. I have suggested the de%uFB01ning words for 14 of them. I am certain that: (1) You have alternative words for all or some of those 14, and (2) You have ideas for all or some of the other 28. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Meanwhile, I’m going to newkulerate some leftover pizza while I await your response.Tim Farley hosts the “Morning Brie%uFB01ng” on Sirius-XM’s POTUS channel.