The Luntz Lexicon

The Grand Old Party — the party of Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator — will face defeat in 2008 unless it fixes its communication gap with the Democrats.

So says the prominent pollster, Frank Luntz, who helped perfect Newt Gingrich's 1994 Contract with America that produced 12 years of Republican dominance on Capitol Hill. Mr. Luntz has come out with a new book on communication, "Words that Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear." The current crop of Republican presidential candidates would be wise to read it.

Central to Mr. Luntz's book is a list of 10 tenets of effective communication. Some of his recommendations include using small words and succinct sentences, being credible and consistent although varying language use, using alliteration, and creating verbal imagery. He offers case studies from the public and private sector to help explain his theories.

Almost hidden in the back of the book's index is a 10-page appendix outlining the problems Republicans had in making their case to the public in the 2006 election.

The appendix "will tell you how pathetic the Republican language became in 2006," Mr. Luntz says. "The GOP may be headed to losing the White House in 2008 unless they wake up now."

In the appendix, he writes that Republicans violated his tenets of effective communication. He uses a quote of the former majority leader, John Boehner, as an example of lifeless language: "I am working with our conference to develop a comprehensive vision, collective vision for our party. It is a long slow process" to demonstrate the party's weaknesses. Mr. Luntz writes, "At the very moment the American people were demanding real results, the Republican Majority Leader offered them incomprehensible pabulum. Where Republicans once offered vision and direction, they now offered process."

While Mr. Luntz does not yet endorse any of the candidates for the 2008 election, he does have something to say about a couple of the major candidates. "Republicans have to choose somebody who is not of Washington," he says. It's important to note that not all of Mr. Luntz's rules deal with the structure and content of speeches, but also with how a speech is delivered. Mr. Luntz notes that the credibility of a politician is as important as his or her philosophy. Rudolph Giuliani's speeches, for example, are not always the most eloquent, but their simple and straightforward messages and his engaging deliverance of speeches makes Mr. Giuliani, for whom Mr. Luntz once worked, an "accessible" and "engaging" politician, according to Mr. Luntz.

Of Senator McCain, Mr. Luntz writes, "if McCain is elected president in 2008 … they'll be with him because of his persona as a man of integrity, a straight shooter, and a courageous war veteran who says what he means and means what he says."

But it is the Democrats who carry the advantage of novelty going into the 2008 election, particularly Senator Obama. Mr. Luntz suggests that Mr. Obama's 2004 convention speech offers a good example of the communication techniques he advises. In one passage of that speech Mr. Obama declared, "We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States." Mr. Luntz gives Mr. Obama high marks for this speech for several reasons: Mr. Obama speaks to the 70% of nonpartisan Americans who hate both the blue and red states, he invokes God and Little League, and he paints memorable visual pictures.

The sentence where God is mentioned, Mr. Luntz says, "is designed for conservative independents and even some Republicans. That says Democrats are not Godless. That the Democrats have a sense of spirituality." As for Mr. Obama's Little League reference, Mr. Luntz gives him points because "What can be more Norman Rockwell than Little League?" One of the concluding sentences in Mr. Obama's speech, "We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America," is particularly effective because Mr. Luntz notes that it is descriptive. "Stars and stripes immediately brings to mind a flag with beautiful colors," Mr. Luntz says.

Republicans are not alone in their difficulty in clearly communicating their agenda to the public. Senator Clinton's rhetorical technique is to divide the two parties into "us and them" whereas Mr. Obama's speech brings people together. One of Mr. Luntz's rules is that public officials speak "aspirationally" to the bulk of voters, who want to see themselves as patriotic and part of the mainstream, not partisan agitators. Mr. Obama's "exact verbal opposite is Hillary Clinton. Left versus right, everyone else versus us, or wrong versus right. Her whole message is ‘we're ok, they're not.' Barack Obama is the uniter. Hillary Clinton is the divider," Mr. Luntz says.

Mr. Gitell (gitell.com) is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.