Democrats and Ten Words

All a of a sudden everyone is talking about how the Democrats need to focus their message into ten words or less.

This is not new.

But the idea has gained newness recently. Where did this come from?I wrote about this a over a year ago in Finding the right response : Ten Words in Ausgust, 2004. It came from a TV show...

To recap that post in it's entirety, here it is:

Luis makes a good point about the game of Ten Words

"There it is. That's the ten-word answer my staff's been looking for for two weeks. There it is. Ten-word answers can kill you in political campaigns. They're the tip of the sword. Here's my question: What are the next ten words of your answer? Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next ten words. How are we going to do it? Give me ten after that, I'll drop out of the race right now. Every once in a while... every once in a while, there's a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong, but those days almost always include body counts. Other than that, there aren't very many unnuanced moments in leading a country that's way too big for ten words."

--President Bartlet, in the West Wing episode "Game On"

In the game of "Ten Words," Bush has been winning the game.

Luis goes on to point out a few missed opportunities of the Kerry Campaign where they could have retorted to latest GOP smear without a non-nuanced response, i.e. many more words than ten.

Atrios details the upset many of us feel, the spokesmen for our side come across weak, ill- prepared to counter spurious charges.

...Okay, first, the short version of what they're doing wrong - a crappy job of dealing with the beltway journalists/cable news bobbleheads/talk radio set>

I think us bloggers can come up with those (please, don't call 'em slogans or memes) compact 10-word nuggets, those 10-word rispostes to counter those right-wing thrusts.

Do this in the spirit of shorter style, as long as we can avoid that problem that plagued Ovid: Brevis esse laboro obscurus fio, I try to be brief, but only become obscure.

I agree it is a lot like fencing - recognize the attack and craft the perfect response to quickly score home and draw blood. First touch or first blood? Yet be aware we are not dealing with gentlemen.

The problem is, Bush's great skill with the ten-word sword and the perception of Kerry unconditionally approving of what Bush did have been wounding Kerry in the media and in public perception recently.

Sometimes it is painful to know that your guy is right and the other guy is not only wrong, but also a lying, deceptive bastard, and yet you can still clearly understand how people can see it the other way around.

I think I will fight this ten words at a time...Want to join me?

I'm glad that people are finally talking about this.