The 2008 race and the "Right Words" on Iraq

Frank Luntz's new book, "Words That Work," is a must-read for Democrats and Republicans seeking the presidency in 2008. Luntz, the brilliant pollster and master of the sound bite, was the author of the key words in the Contract with America and key adviser to Newt Gingrich prior to the startling 1994 GOP takeover of the House.

Luntz teaches the importance of "framing" issues in fine-tuned and poll-tested words and phrases that most "resonate" with voters, as opposed to similar words that don't have the political kick or "salience," to use the pollster's preferred word. Luntz is the Republican counterpart to George Lakoff, whose post-2000 little book on "framing" taught liberals that the abortion issue should be framed as about "individual liberty," not about whether one is "pro-life" or "pro-choice" (the latter being depicted by anti-abortion movement leaders as being about "anti-life").

But if you are a Democratic presidential candidate, picking the "right words" to "frame" an issue most effectively can be tricky, depending on whether you just want to be nominated or whether you want to be successful and win the presidency in the general election.

Take the issue of the Iraq war, for example. I learned a few lessons about the difference in framing the war working for Joe Lieberman in his Connecticut reelection campaign, when he successfully ran as an Independent.

In primaries, the "winning words" are about appealing to a slice of a slice of a slice of the electorate: i.e.,
— First slice: all party voters;
— Slice of that slice: party voters who sometimes vote in primaries vs. those who rarely do;
— Slice of a slice of a slice: those party members (otherwise known in both parties as the "activist base") who always vote in primaries — i.e., the majority of the small minority who will decide who wins the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries and, therefore, the most likely Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, based on past history.

For Democrats in 2008 on the issue of Iraq — which will probably be the most "salient" issue of all — that slice of a slice of a slice will likely require a candidate to use just two words: Get out. Current polls show those two words are supported by margins as high as 2:1 or 3:1 of the Democratic primary voting "base."

Another slightly longer sound bite that is likely to be required in the primary voting base, at least in Iowa and New Hampshire, I will guess, by even greater margins, will be: "Knowing what I know now I never would have voted for the Iraq war resolution."

Any Democrat not willing to use those words — "get out" or "I was wrong knowing what I know now" — will, I predict, have great difficulty winning or coming in second in either, much less both, of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries. And history shows a candidate who does neither is not likely to go on to win the nomination.

But what about the general election? Here, the "right words" are likely to be different. "Get out no matter what" — even if al Qaeda is waiting in Baghdad's suburbs to follow the last U.S. soldier to establish a terrorist state — is likely to be supported by only a third of all voters — that is, with a general electorate that included non-primary voting (usually more conservative) Democrats, independents (the largest segment of voters in most states), and Republicans. This was the case in the fairly liberal-moderate state of Connecticut in the general election.

So among these general-election voters, who actually decide who will be president in 2008, "get out" will sound like the Republicans' favorite "right words" to hurt Democrats — i.e., "cut and run."

So a Democrat who survives the primaries by supporting "get out" may need to "re-frame" and speak of "get out but re-deploy" — meaning not "cut and run" but remove U.S. G.I.s from the "cross-fire of a civil war" (the latter good framing by Democrats and thus bad words for Republicans who are forced to defend the administration's war policies).

The good word for Democrats in the general election, therefore, is "redeploy," as in "transferring" G.I.s to "safe Iraqi desert bases or friendly countries like Kuwait or the Gulf States" to be "out of harm's way" — BUT — and these next right words are important in a general election — "being ready to carpet-bomb al Qaeda's terrorists if and when they set up shop in downtown Baghdad."

In short, "redeploy" is the triangulation word between "cut and run" and "keep our soldiers in a civil war cross-fire."

Of course, the greatest hope for Democrats facing the inevitable primary vs. general electorate conundrum on the Iraq war is that Republican candidates face an even greater one on the war issue — trying to defend the word "surge," which I am sure Frank Luntz is advising is a better word than "escalation." But either word will likely be politically devastating to defend in 2008 if by next year the Sunnis and Shiites and the Sadr Army are still shooting at each other and young American men and women are getting "killed and maimed in the cross-fire."

If so, then any Republican who supported the "surge" will have a hard time getting elected president and even probably a hard time getting nominated, even by their conservative slice-of-a-slice-of-a-slice primary voting electorate. For by then, the only people left to defend exposing U.S. G.I.s to danger and getting killed in Iraq to will be a slice of a slice of a slice of a slice of a slice of a slice, etc. — i.e., even Utah would likely be available as a Blue State.

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