How Did Ambassador Bill Taylor Establish His Credibility in the Impeachment Hearing? Why Did He Need to?

Ambassador William Taylor

Good communication skills make a difference! A good speaker needs to be believable.

Bill Taylor, American Ambassador to Ukraine, testified before three congressional committees in closed session yesterday about the controversy that has led to serious talk of impeaching President Donald Trump: the accusation that he abused his power to involve the Ukrainian government 2020 American election. The testimony itself is still secret, but Taylor’s opening statement has been released. Like Ambassador Yovanovitch last week, he went to great efforts to establish his credibility. This was wise, for President Trump’s defenders, to this point, offer little defense on the substance of the Ukraine controversy, and instead busy themselves criticizing the investigative process and complaining about the witnesses.

What makes a speaker credible? My former professor Kenneth Andersen and his colleague Theodore Clevenger, Jr. published a landmark research article about the factors in source credibility. They discovered that credibility consists of expertise, good will, and dynamism. Dynamism is mostly a factor of delivery, and, unfortunately, we have no sound recordings of Taylor’s testimony. We can, however, look at how he established expertise and goodwill. 

First, right at the outset, to establish good will, Taylor explained that he was a nonpartisan public servant:

“I have dedicated my life to serving U. S. interests at home and abroad in both military and civilian roles. My background and experience are nonpartisan and I have been honored to serve under every administration, Republican and Democratic, since 1985.”

Since President Trump and supporters often accuse their critics of being left-wing Democrats, while Republican voters increasingly view the most basic facts through their partisan microscope, Taylor began by emphasizing that he had served under both Democratic and Republican presidents and had a long tradition of being nonpartisan. Continuing, Taylor gave evidence of his nonpartisan background:

“For 50 years, I have served the country, starting as a cadet at West Point, then as an infantry officer for six years, including with the 101^st Airborne Division in Vietnam; then at the Department of Energy; then as a member of a Senate staff; then at NATO ; then with the State Department here and abroad in Afghanistan, Iraq, Jerusalem, and Ukraine; and more recently, as Executive Vice President of the nonpartisan United States Institute of Peace.”

First, Taylor’s military education and experience make it more difficult to question his patriotism. Second, his experience shows a long record of acting on behalf of official United States policy. He emphasized that the United States Institute of Peace was “nonpartisan.” The specific examples of his experience helped Taylor establish that he was not a political hack. Furthermore, reviewing his extensive professional experience demonstrated that he had the background to speak knowledgeably about the incidents in question.

Only after establishing that point did he express his concern US policy in Ukraine had been influenced “by an irregular, informal channel of U. S. policy-making and by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons.”

Expertise includes the possession of first-hand knowledge. Was Taylor in a position to know about the contents of back-channel communication? Well, he specifically addressed that issue:

“I was clearly in the regular channel, but I was also in the irregular one to the extent that Ambassadors Volker and Sondland included me in certain conversations. Although this irregular channel was well-connected in Washington, it operated mostly outside of official State Department channels.

Thus, Taylor gave evidence of his expertise and good will. For the remainder of his opening statement, he reviewed events that certainly seem suspicious and legally dubious.

I have, so far, heard no leading Republican deny any of the facts that Taylor reviewed. Instead, their defense, so far (other than pulling childish publicity stunts), has been to deny that there was a quid pro quo, to claim that Taylor did not have first-hand knowledge of the events he was discussing, and otherwise to attack his character. But Taylor had already pre-empted these claims.

The argument about a quid pro quo has been much discussed in the conservative media, although campaign-finance law violations, bribery, and extortion – the crimes of which the Trump administration is suspected – do not require a quid pro quo. Taylor’s testimony seemed to demonstrate one anyway. In addition to denying a quid pro quo, Republican representative Mark Meadows said that news stories about Taylor’s statement were “laughably overblown and don’t tell the full story.” He continued that “Much of the statement and hearsay allegations didn’t hold up against any real scrutiny.” But, again, Taylor had cleverly pre-empted those criticisms in his statement’s introduction.

All things considered, however, Republican criticisms of Ambassador Taylor have been remarkably muted. He showed that he was credible, thus narrowing the Republican's options to defend the president’s actions. For example, the best that an article in the right-wing Breitbart.com could do was to pass on a claim that Taylor’s accusations were “destroyed” for unknown, unstated reasons. That sounds desperate.

So much of persuasion comes down to whether we believe the speaker. Taylor did a good job of explaining why we should believe him, and, in so doing, he made serious accusations with considerable authenticity.

For centuries, speech experts have debated whether credibility is a pre-existing circumstance or something that a speaker establishes during a speech. In Taylor’s case, it was both. Not only was he believable to start with, but, also, he gave specific evidence to establish his expertise and integrity.  

Image: U.S. Department of State