A Tale of Two Heckles: Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Jabs Kevin McCarthy - And Resets the National Debate

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The other day, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, gave a floor speech of more than eight hours. His goal was to delay the vote on the Democrats’ Build Back Better bill. The bill eventually passed. McCarthy’s speech was, by all accounts, terrible. The event’s highlight, however, came from two heckles by Democratic firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. One of her heckles was excellent, while the other was a mess. A good heckle makes people think. Let’s look at what happened.

The First Heckle

Ocasio-Cortez’ first heckle was short, pithy, and exactly on point. It was a masterful display of how heckling can reset public issue discussion.

Here’s the context. During his seemingly endless speech, McCarthy complained that the Democratic agenda was too big. Alluding to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, McCarthy said this:

“Just a few weeks ago, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger said, ‘Nobody elected Joe Biden to be FDR.’”

From the audience, Ocasio-Cortez shouted,

“I did!”

Someone else, presumably another Democratic member of Congress, then shouted, “Me, too!”

Why was “I did!” a good heckle? First, it was short. Two words. Long heckles just irritate people. Second, she interrupted the speaker for only a brief moment. McCarthy needed a few seconds to regather his thoughts, but continued his speech. Since he had nothing to say, he didn’t comment about the heckle.

Furthermore, Ocasio-Cortez’ heckle changed the agenda. With two simple words, she encouraged us to think big. The United States of America is, after all, the country that sent astronauts to the moon and built an interstate highway system. The United States was the Arsenal of Democracy during World War II. The United States dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Nevertheless, today’s conservatives don’t seem to think that the United States can afford to do anything. Let the roads crumble and the bridges fall down? Cut school funding? Let people die without medical care? No problem!

The heckle worked because Ocasio-Cortez reset the debate. FDR became president at the height of a massive economic depression that originated under the leadership of his conservative Republican predecessor. His New Deal brought us Social Security and rural electrification, while helping the nation recover from the Great Depression.

Yet, McCarthy made it clear that he did not want another FDR. FDR thought big, and McCarthy literally boasted about thinking small. Thus, he invited Ocasio-Cortez’ heckle. Speaking for many Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez’ two-word heckle expressed her view that an ambitious, positive program was just what the nation needed.


The Second Heckle(s)

Ocasio-Cortez then retired to the luxurious congressional cloakroom, where she live-streamed a sarcastic running commentary about McCarthy’s speech. She remarked that he had “one of the lowest vocabularies ever.” She said that, even if McCarthy wanted to be evil, he shouldn’t also be stupid. Maybe, she said, he should instead be an “evil genius.” She called him an “imbecile.” And so forth.

Now, first of all, such rude language would not be allowed during floor debate. She got away with it because she was streaming from a remote place, while watching McCarthy speak on a TV monitor. Her sarcastic comments probably appealed to her liberal congressional district. I can’t say that she was wrong about McCarthy. Nevertheless, the crudity of her live-streamed heckles contrasted with her short, pithy shout about Biden and FDR.

Indeed, although Ocasio-Cortez is Past Master of Social Media, her live-streamed observations detracted from the main point. That’s because her instant heckle – “I did!” – made her point perfectly. She didn’t need to say anything else. Task complete! Furthermore, “I did!” focused national attention on the real issue, which was the Democrats’ ambitious social and industrial program. To the extent that people dwelled on her live-streamed insults, they could be distracted from thinking about the issue. For McCarthy’s poor speaking skills were not the national issue. The issue was FDR and Biden – the New Deal and the Build Back Better legislation that is now going to the Senate. 

Sometimes, short is better.


What about Heckling?

Let’s review about good heckling:

1. A good heckle is short and pithy. (Witty is also good.)

2. A good heckle is tasteful.

3. A good heckle does not disrupt the proceedings.

4. Most important, a good heckle makes people think.

When Ocasio-Cortez shouted, “I did,” she got people thinking. That was good. In contrast, when she complained about McCarthy’s lack of English language skills, she may have had a point, but that point was neither pithy nor tasteful. It didn’t make anyone think. It was just a random insult.

It is interesting, though, that we can now heckle a speech in real time over the Internet. I don’t think that’s entirely fair, since the speaker can’t respond in real time, but it is a noteworthy technological development.

Conclusion

When Ocasio-Cortez said, “I did!” she reset the day’s agenda. In two words, she reminded Congress and the public that it’s okay to think big.

“Here, here!” for good heckling. But “shame, shame” for tasteless or pointless heckling.
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Earlier Posts about heckling:

The Lost Art of Heckling

Hear! Hear! Three Cheers for (Tasteful and Witty) Heckling

"OK, Boomer:" Chlöe Swarbrick Teaches Us How to Put a Heckler Down Flat

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P.S.  Whenever I write about heckling, I think about my University of Illinois professor Kurt Ritter, who excelled at the art. 

Image: US House of Representatives

The Build Back Better Agenda: Will Democrats Use the Bully Pulpit? Or Not? William McKinley Shows the Way

Joe Biden

A CBS/YouGov opinion poll released yesterday (October 10, 2021) revealed that the majority of Americans have no idea, or only a vague idea, of what the Democratic Party’s Build Back Better legislative bill even contains. At this point, the bill’s passage is in doubt. If it does pass, it will probably be much-reduced.

No surprise there! Why should the public know anything about the bill? Who is telling them? Pretty much no one. If the Democrats want this legislation to pass, they need to sell it.

We’re hearing all kinds of stuff in the press, and from Democratic speakers, arguing about how big the bill should be. Should it be $3.5 trillion? Or some smaller amount? Should it be paid for by taxing the rich?

Get a clue! Voters care about none of that. They want to know what the bill is doing. They want to know what it might do for them. And, in fact, all of the bill’s provisions – and I mean all of them – are polling very well. The public likes the idea of shoring up Medicare, expanding broadband access in rural areas, improving dental and vision care, and upgrading the nation’s rotting, crumbling roads and highways. Polls show that voters even support the climate provisions. Who would have guessed?

But there is a big disconnect. The public isn’t going to support the legislation unless they realize that it contains bunches of things that they like.

Much is made of the reluctance of senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. They both come from relatively conservative states. The fact remains that their states would benefit tremendously from this legislation. So why are they stalling? Have they been bribed by big business? Are they playing both sides? Who knows? Who cares? Forget about all of that. Members of Congress are simple, uncomplicated creatures who do whatever it takes to get reelected. Convince the voters of Arizona and West Virginia that they want the Build Back Better agenda, and Sinema and Manchin will magically agree and vote accordingly. Bingo.

There is precedent for this. We know how presidents can sell an unpopular agenda. More than a century ago, when President William McKinley wanted an uncooperative Senate to ratify the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish-American War and annexed the Philippine Islands, he did what any smart modern president would do. He went on speaking tours.

William McKinley

These were not just any speaking tours. Among other parts of the country, McKinley traveled by train to the South, where opposition to his policies was strongest, where he gave speech after speech. He traveled in the company of the ever-popular Confederate General Joseph Wheeler, who had rejoined the United States Army and was the hero of the Spanish-American War. Wheeler was a Democrat, while McKinley was a Republican, and they had fought on opposite sides of the Civil War. McKinley’s speeches were vague, carefully constructed to offend as few people as possible. He praised the South. He promised to care for the graves of Confederate soldiers. He talked about trade and prosperity. He exalted the “protecting folds” of the American flag, which would spread out to give prosperity and justice to the Filipino people. He praised soldiers and sailors of the South and North alike for the quick, popular victory over Spain. In other words, he went directly to his opponents’ territory and reached out concerning issues they cared about.

And, guess what? It worked. The Senate ratified the treaty by the required two-thirds vote. The United States quickly annexed the Philippine Islands. Now, unfortunately, the annexation didn’t go quite as well as McKinley had expected. Filipinos immediately launched a bitter war of independence in an effort to drive the Americans out of their country. The fact remains that McKinley had a policy, the policy was not attractive, and yet he convinced the public to support it. Once the public was on his side, the senators meekly dropped into place.

Biden Speaking about Build Back Better

Let us come back to 2021. If Democrats want to sell their agenda, they need to reach out. They need to reach out much more aggressively than they have so far. President Joe Biden has given some speeches about the proposal. Those speeches were fine. He has not, however, given enough speeches. He needs to tell people about his agenda every day. He needs to reach out to different audiences – every day. Leading Democrats need to do more than to offer a few mumbled comments on the Sunday morning TV shows. They need to hold town halls, one after the other, and explain the benefits that their agenda will bring to people. Instead of sniping at one another on Twitter, they need to use their social media to tell people what the bill contains and how it will help them.
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More Information: Biden and the Bully Pulpit: Biden’s Infrastructure Speech
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And that is not enough. The Democrats need to go on Fox News. Democrats today act as if Fox News is poison. Why? The Fox News audience is exactly the people they need to reach. They need to get on talk radio. If they want to talk about the United States as one unified country, they need to reach out to people who disagree with them. Remember, McKinley was a decorated combat veteran of the Civil War. (Or, as Southerners of the time sometimes said, the War of Northern Aggression.) He didn’t expect to get a lot of support from the South. He did not even expect them to like him. He did know, however, that he needed to reach out to the South to moderate their opposition to his proposals, to show that he cared about them, and to solicit unity. He spoke to a friendly audience at a southern African-American University. He spoke to the Georgia legislature. Making a appearance on Fox News can’t be as hard as what McKinley did.

Theodore Roosevelt called the presidency the “bully pulpit.” And he was right. Political scientist Jeffrey Tulis said that modern presidents routinely bypass Congress to sell their ideas directly to the public. That is what the Democrats need to do.

People often talk about how former President Donald Trump is always in the news. Pundits say that he sucks the oxygen right out of the room. They are right. Trump controls the agenda. He controls the agenda by holding rallies, making media appearances, and generally making a nuisance of himself. You might not like him, but you can’t ignore him. President Biden is getting too easy to ignore. The Democrats are too easy to ignore. They need to climb on the bully pulpit and commandeer their share of the media’s oxygen. That does not mean that they need to say stupid things like what Trump says. It means that they need to tell people about their agenda – over, over, and over. They need to tell people why the agenda is needed and how it will work. That is why we have the bully pulpit. As I have said many times, the side that sets the agenda will win the debate.

Throughout his career, McKinley emphasized unity in the face of disorder and compassion in the face of strife. I don’t see any reason that it wouldn’t work today. The way to overcome polarization is with unity.

So, are the Democrats giving good speeches? Or bad speeches? That’s not the point. The point is that they are not giving enough speeches. They need to inform the public. They need to set the agenda.

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Further Reading: Rhetoric in William McKinley's 1898-1899 Speaking Tours

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Research Note: I wrote about McKinley’s speaking tours in a chapter that I wrote for Before the Rhetorical Presidency. Copies are available in most large libraries, and, of course, it is available for sale in major bookstores. I also wrote an unpublished paper about McKinley’s speaking techniques during his tour to sell the treaty; link above. Click on William D. Harpine’s Publications above to see more of my writing about McKinley’s speeches.

Interested readers might want to look at my book, From the Front Porch to the Front Page, about public speaking in the 1896 presidential campaign between McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. There are chapters about McKinley’s use of such themes as identification and unity. The book is now available in paperback, and, of course, many university libraries have it on their shelves. 

Mel Laracey’s excellent book, Presidents and the People: The Partisan Story of Going Public, includes an insightful discussion of McKinley and the rhetorical presidency.

P.S. If you want to bypass the politicians and read a summary of Build Back Better, here is a simple explanation. 

Image of Biden: White House photo. Image of McKinley: Library of Congress. Image of Biden's speech: White House YouTube channel.