The other night I was watching a television biography of Richard Nixon, and it reminded me of how much he contributed to our political vocabulary. Whatever else you think about the colossal corruption of Watergate, it taught us how to obscure our speech effectively.
If I mention a common term of recent vintage, you may get the message. No politician in his right mind ever talks about taxes anymore, especially if he wants to raise them. Instead, he outlines various programs of "revenue enhancement." The hope is that this will go over the head of the average guy, who will not realize what is happening until he gets the bill, and the politician, who is trying to be realistic about his job, will not see his political career go down the drain. By the time the average Joe gets the bill, he will not be able to remember which politician is responsible.So the obscurity of speech performs a hidden service.
Looking at the Watergate vocabularly tells us just how many of these insidious words and phrases have been adopted permanently. Some of them can now be applied to the Iran-Contra problem.
The term "break-in" was referred to in the Senate Watergate hearings as an "entry operation," and the term "burglary" was a "surreptitious entry." Using terms that have not already acquired a connotation in society makes it possible for the government to justify those activities, maybe on "national security" grounds.
Another gangster-type word like "alibi" was renamed "deniability," and it suddenly sounded neutral. Even "casing the joint" was justified as a "vulnerability and feasibility study." A "cover-up" was a way of "containing the situation." A death was renamed "terminal event." "Destroying evidence" was considered a "shredding activity."
Someone in government who was "fired" was actually being "selected out." If there was a need to give money to someone, it was better to "disburse to an individual." What might otherwise be called a "half-truth" was actually a "limited hang-out." "Hush money" was better described as "increments in the form of currency."
"Internal spies" were more comfortably referred to as "domestic intelligence," and general spying was an "intelligence activity." "Questions" were actually "interrogatories" or "queries," and a "criminal conspiracy" was actually a "game plan."
Anyone who watched the Watergate hearings on TV during those dark days of 1973 knows that no one ever "remembered" anything happpening - they tried to "recollect" or "test the chronology of their knowledge." And we didn't use the word "memory" anymore. It was "independent recollection." A "phone call" was actually "telephonic information" and a "wiretap" was a "telephonic interception device," or simply "electronic surveillance."
Simple "suggestions" became "feedback" or "input." Perhaps the most famous Watergate phrase was "at this point in time" to substitute for the more direct "now." We didn't "increase" anything, we "maximized," and we didn't "lessen" anything, we "minimized." Claims were no longer "invalid," they were "inoperative." We didn't "describe," we "characterized."
The master of obscurity in the Nixon administration was actually Alexander Haig, the military man who became the president's most important confidant in the days before his resignation. Haig spoke in circumlocutions that are unparalleled:
"I want to say this very carefully and very precisely, but certainly, certainly any foreign leader, whether he be friend or potential foe, must in a period of turmoil here at home make his calculations without the unity, the permanency, the strength and resilience of this government in a way that had to take consideration of this tape issue into mind."
What? If Alexander Haig were now president, he would be sure to properly obscure every bit of input gained by means of telephonic interception so that all individual citizens could maximize their understanding to the best of their recollection and thus find it unnecessary to pose any interrogatories at all.
I rest my case.