Body language and tone: "Faith cometh by hearing."
"You can tell a lot about who is winning a political debate by watching it on TV with the sound turned off."
James Fallows
"Faith cometh by hearing."
St. Paul's letter to the Romans, 10:17
I agree with both statements. They are not contradictory.
An ongoing theme of this blog is that political communication that shapes the nation does so by sharing the internal emotional life of the speaker. Politicians have a brand, created in large part by their party affiliation. Beyond that, politicians fill in nuance through their biography, their tone, their posture, their gestures. During 99% of Trump's presidency Mike Pence backed everything Trump did, literally standing behind him. Yet we know Pence and Trump project entirely different political personas. Pence was Mr. Goody Goody; Trump was Mr. Bad Boy. We did not get that profound difference from policy statements. We got it from the rest of the communication signals, including body language.
The strong form of that statement is the comment by Fallows that you can evaluate who is winning a debate by watching with the sound off. I agree with a recent comment sent to this blog:
When you watch Trump with the sound off, you can see that he projects very strongly. Obama did as well, and so did George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. When I watch Biden with the sound off, there is nothing happening. Kamala Harris is even worse. She looks sad and very uncertain.
St. Paul did not mean faith came by "hearing about something" in the sense of learning about it. He literally meant that faith came from hearing the spoken word. In Biblical times, hearing the spoken word meant a person was in the immediate presence of the speaker. He was saying that reading his letters would not bring people to faith. Hearing preaching would. People change when they observe conviction and confidence, communicated by tone of voice, posture, and gestures. Trump reading a teleprompter was Trump going through the motions. Trump was real at his rallies. That is what moved opinion.
I am presenting a video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as an example of political communication. It came to mind because the contrast with Biden is so profound. I am not anti-Biden. Biden is not dangerous, and Trump was, and is. That is dispositive for me. Presidential scholar Richard Neustadt observed that "the power of the president is the power to persuade." I have watched Biden on TV the past 48 hours, saying important things about an improving economy and announcing a redirection in our struggle to contain COVID. He read weakly from a teleprompter. All the passion is stripped out.
I am uncomfortable with AOC's politics. She is more liberal, progressive and urban-oriented than is the country as a whole. She does not appear to appreciate the power of capitalism to create material abundance, and that turns off a great many Americans. She does not communicate bridges to people comfortable with traditional values. She pushes the edge. She is young. Maybe America will catch up with her.
The denoted message of the video below is the list of 21 things she rattled off in rapid fire. The real message--the one that matters--is that amid the overall sense that Democrats are hobbled by division and gridlock and COVID's slow grind, AOC is making positive changes with energy and optimism and joy. She is doing her job and things are happening!
She changes the narrative. Biden cannot do that. None of the 20+ Democrats I saw in New Hampshire or Iowa did it. Some Democrat had better get going on that.