A large fraction of political messaging fits a single, underappreciated frame, which for lack of a better name I’ll call cluefulness. The idea is to take the well-established word “clueless”, give it the antonym “clueful”, and note that a huge fraction of political messaging amounts to:
- Showing that one is clueful.
- Accusing opponents of the opposite.
0. More precisely, what I mean by “cluefulness” (antonym: cluelessness) is the characteristic of truly understanding aspects of the world. Examples might include:
- Threats, for example from foreign adversaries, criminal brown-skinned immigrants, rioting black-skinned citizens, global climate change or trigger-happy police.
- Struggles, such as those faced by uneducated single mothers, over-educated baristas, low-net-worth Black families, or Christians afraid to say “Merry Christmas”.
- Facts, such as climate science, biology, the professional economists’ consensus that deficits are no big deal, the common-sense “fact” that deficits are horrible, the lesson of experience that government never does anything right, or the lesson of experience that government has vastly improved people’s lives.
- Biases, such as those of scientists, economists, Fox News or the mainstream media.
- Conspiracies, such as those carried out by the “Deep State”, the “billionaire class”, the “corporate media”, satanist pedophiles, or Vladimir Putin.
- Ways of life, like those of deer-hunting Christmas-celebrating rural Evangelical Christians.
Cluefulness messaging was central to Donald Trump’s success, was central to Republican 2020 Congressional campaigns too, and was crucial in the 2020 Democratic primary as well.
1. Let’s review some validating examples. The “clueless” theme fits:
- Epithets such as “crazy”, “stupid”, “libtard”, or “crazy radical socialist”.
- Epithets such as “science denier” or “conspiracy theorist”.
- Criticism of “out of touch” “elites”.
- Most accusations of being foolishly weak against national security threats.
Conversely, politicians try to appear “clueful” via, depending on their target constituency:
- “Social justice” or “culture war” pitches that resonate with groups who regard themselves as oppressed.
- “Economic justice” pitches that resonate with those who feel they have insufficient opportunity.
- Populist pitches that explain how the economy and/or government are purportedly “rigged”.
2. Being judged clueful or clueless affects the impact of almost any (other) message you send.
- If voters find you clueful, they can believe in your policy judgment, your competence, and the likelihood of your focusing on what’s most important.
- But if they judge you as clueless, then they can fear you will go awry. No matter how good their underlying intentions may be, somebody clueless could advocate bad policies, govern incompetently, or just ignore pressing constituent needs.
3. Donald Trump of course makes great use of cluefulness messaging. For example, in the 2016 campaign:
- He was supposedly a great businessman who understood the economy better than politicians do.
- He was supposedly a great dealmaker who could negotiate much better treaties than “stupid” Democratic politicians.
- He confessed to exploiting a rigged system for his own benefit — but claimed he would clean it up, “drain[ing] the swamp”, based on his knowledge of how it worked.
And along the way he claimed to be cleverer and more insightful than the traditional experts about … well, about almost everything.
4. Cluefulness messaging plays into left/right political polarization in multiple ways. One centers on the “choose your own facts” approach to news.
- To many on the right, if you believe anything on CNN or in the New York Times, you’re clueless.
- Conversely, believers in traditional authorities such as scholarly research, government experts or mainstream media see right-wing extremists as the ones without a clue.
5. Another major strand of cluefulness messaging is to directly attack left-wingers’ mentality, often in the nastiest of terms. On social media and talk radio alike, liberalism is a mental illness, leftists are “libtards”, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a complete and utter dunce.
Supporting these swipes are more specific accusations of cluelessness, for example:
- Not knowing how business works.
- Not realizing how other countries take advantage of us.
- Not understanding the need for secure borders.
- Not understanding how guns really work.
- Foolishly believing in the benevolence of thugs.
- Not knowing one sex from the other.
In particular, Trump has long attacked Democrats as being “crazy”, “stupid”, “clueless”, senile or otherwise mentally deficient.
6. Cluefulness messaging is also big on the left. Indeed – and this is one of the examples motivating my whole analysis — the decisive metaphor of the 2020 Democratic primaries was “knowing” the constituencies.
- Amy Klobuchar’s brief period as a serious contender started with her New Hampshire debate closing statement, in which she repeated three times “I know you and I will fight for you”.
- The key passage in Jim Clyburn’s campaign-swinging endorsement of Joe Biden was “We know Joe. But more importantly, Joe knows us.”
7. The cluefulness emphasis gets bigger the further left you go.
- Starting with her brilliant first video, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has based her appeal on understanding the real needs of people like her – financially struggling, urban, likely non-white, possibly young, possibly female.
- Elizabeth Warren’s campaign was based on her alleged understanding of how our whole, basically good system was rigged and broken, and how it could be fixed.
- Bernie Sanders’ even greater appeal generally followed both those strands.
8. While it’s blossomed in the eras of talk radio and social media, cluefulness messaging is hardly new. Since at least the 1950s “Red Scare” era, politicians have accused each other of insufficiently appreciating foreign or domestic dangers. So it was between Richard Nixon and Adlai Stevenson (in both directions, as outlined in my post on Accusations of recklessness or insufficient caring). So it was with many accusations of insufficient defense spending, or when Michael Dukakis looked ridiculous photographed with a tank. Republicans’ focus on China-bashing as a 2020 campaign issue was yet more of the same. And domestic-policy examples from the 20th Century include:
- The famous George Wallace line about “pointy-headed intellectuals who can’t park their bicycles straight”.
- The considerable political cost of George H. W. Bush’s alleged unfamiliarity with supermarket checkout scanners.
Related links:
- I think this is all pretty consistent with dictionary definitions or common usage of “clueless”.
- “Clueful” is akin to but doesn’t go as far as the concept of “grok”.
- Some motivating examples for this analysis are in my December, 2019 post The other side is crazy, and wants to take away your freedoms.
- “Cluefulness” is the most novel of the seven categories in my taxonomy of political messaging.
