Politico

Drinking game sure thing: 'fundamental'

October 7th, 2008 · No Comments

Let’s talk fundamentals. Rather, let’s talk “fundamentals.”

Forget “maverick” or “change” or “Bush.” If you want a drinking-game term to guarantee insobriety, choose this one.

In their first presidential debate two weeks ago in Mississippi, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain used some derivative of “fundamental” 14 times.

Ron Faucheux, president of the Clarus Research Group, compares the term’s profligate use to “a poker game where people keep pushing more into the pot.”

These days, it may seem that if your “change” is not “fundamental,” and you do not “fundamentally” disagree with your opponent, then you aren’t running for president. But it’s not just the candidates who are fundamentally obsessed.

“I’m as guilty as anyone,” says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “Most of my analyses on my website begin with a discussion of the ‘fundamentals’ of election 2008!”

So profuse were “fundamentals” flying in Mississippi that debate moderator Jim Lehrer altered one of his questions to fit the rhetorical theme.

“Using your word ‘fundamental,’” he asked McCain, “are there fundamental differences between your approach and Sen. Obama’s approach to what you would do as president to lead this country out of the financial crisis?”

McCain seized upon the opportunity, espousing his and Obama’s “fundamental differences” on “runaway spending” and his desire to “have a tax system that is fundamentally fair.” On matters of foreign policy, McCain patted himself on the back for having discovered during his 2003 trip to Iraq that the U.S. needed a “fundamental” change in strategy.

“Look at thesaurus suggestions for complimentary words,” says Sabato. Fundamental “is the most powerful. ‘Elemental’ comes close, but it’s not quite there.”

“Fundamental has four syllables, and I learned in the classroom if you want to get somebody’s attention, use a multi-syllable word that you can stress one of the syllables,” he said.

Still, injudicious use of the term can cause problems. Nobody has learned that lesson this year quite like McCain, who spent the last month trying to gulp back a “fundamental” gone awry.

On Sep. 15, when the Dow fell by 504 points, McCain scanned the economic horizon and told a crowd of supporters that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong.” He later tried to make the case that the “fundamentals” he was referring to were American workers, but his explanation fell flat.

He took another stab at it in the first debate: “We’ve got fundamental problems in the system,” he said. “And Main Street is paying a penalty for the excesses and greed in Washington, D.C.,“ and on Wall Street, he added.

Still, McCain said he possessed a “fundamental belief in the goodness and strength of the American worker” and a “fundamental belief in the United States of America.”

That wasn’t McCain’s only rendezvous with the word. In a Wall Street Journal story last March, McCain described himself as “fundamentally a deregulator,” although he acknowledged an occasional “need for government oversight.”

“Fundamentalism” connotes a rigorous adherence to principle, and “fundamental” can be misunderstood to have a similarly religious, uncompromising gist, intended or not. 

Sabato and George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, both mused that one reason the word is getting big play, particularly by the McCain-Palin ticket, is its potential as a discreet, if not particularly subliminal, hat tip to Christian fundamentalists.

Despite the hazard of self-impalement, Lakoff thinks “fundamental” is the perfect word for this election. 

“‘Profound’ wouldn’t do it,” he says. “You’re talking about base principles, principles that are rock bottom. ‘Fundamental’ has to do with the foundation of the building. It is a very appropriate word. What has happened in the past is Democrats have been very namby-pamby about this,” while Republicans strived to underline their core beliefs.

Says former McCain strategist Mark McKinnon: “‘Fundamental’ means serious and significant, and voters are in a very serious frame of mind. So candidates are signaling to voters that the differences aren’t just narrow but grand canyons.”

In the four general election debates between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960, “fundamental” (or some form of it) was mentioned on only four occasions. In the three 1976 presidential debates between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, it wasn’t mentioned at all.

In 1984, Walter Mondale busted out a few, calling his faith “fundamental” and speaking of a “fundamental fairness crying out that needs to be achieved in our tax system.”

George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis used the term quite frequently in 1988, but when Bush faced Bill Clinton four years later, hardly a mention.

When the current president faced off against Al Gore in 2000, Bush was the only one to mention the word in their first debate. “It’s a fundamental difference of opinion here, folks,” he said. In the second debate, Gore borrowed the page, telling voters that they had a “fundamental choice to make” in the country’s direction.

In 2004’s debate, Bush attacked John Kerry for changing “positions on something as fundamental as what you believe in your core, in your heart of hearts, is right in Iraq.” In subsequent debates he posed what he called “fundamental questions,” which often tended to be rhetorical.

Lakoff says there are two ways that politicians use the word fundamental: First, when they are referring to “foundational ideas.” In this election, for instance, Lakoff regards the differences in the candidates’ economic philosophies to be fundamental, because they “have disagreements in principal at the highest level” about markets and deregulation that are “part of the most basic principles they have.”

The other way the word is often deployed is as a hedging device, he said, which could be a fundamental problem, given its widespread use in this campaign.

“A word like ‘fundamentally’ says this is not exactly right,” Lakoff says, “that what I’m saying is not precise and doesn’t precisely fit.” 

Cecile Dehesdin contributed to this report.