5. MUSKIE Today
transcript
Jesse: The Muskie Rule says that crying on the campaign trail is political suicide. But in recent years, there have been some pretty big boys who’ve cried. Barack Obama cried about gun violence.
Obama: Every time I think about those kids it makes me mad.
Jesse: Mitt Romney teared up about the Mormon Church ending its ban on African American priests.
Romney: I pulled over and literally wept. Even to this day, it’s emotional.
Jesse: Joe Biden about his son.
Biden: To have a child you’re not sure is going to make it.
Jesse: Mitch McConnell about a colleague who was retiring.
McConnell: When Jud walks out of this room- When he walks out of this room for the last time...
Jesse: George H.W. Bush about his son.
Bush: ...and hon- hon- hon- [applause]
Jesse: John Boehner about children.
Boehner: To have a shot at the American Dream, like I did.
Jesse: And Newt Gingrich, who tears up-
Gingrich: every time we sing christmas carols.
Jesse: It makes you wonder, is the Muskie Rule, that there’s no crying in politics, finally dead? In today’s show, we’re going to find out how much things have actually changed. If Muskie got into a time machine, traveled to present day, what would happen?
You’re listening to Mannish, this is Jesse Rhodes.
Jesse: Muskie today. To find out how Muskie would fare in today’s world, I turned to someone who not only has studied the Muskie moment, but has closely monitored the tears of contemporary politicians.
Ryan: My name is Ryan Neville-Shepard. I am an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Arkansas. I specialize in political rhetoric.
Jesse: Ryan graduated from Bates college, who’s most famous graduate is Ed Muskie.
Ryan: So in the four years of being there, as a politics fan, you always wonder what could have been.
Jesse: Fast forward to 2008 and Ryan is in grad school. The 2008 primaries are in full swing and he’s noticing something. There are all these incidents of crying.
Ryan: Mitt Romney cries twice. Barack Obama cries when his grandmother dies…
Jesse: And what Ryan notices is this: out of all the campaign tears falling, people are only really talking about one.
Ryan: And so there are these nine other incidents or eight other incidents involving guys, and the media only really wants to talk about one, that’s barely any type of display of any type of emotion, Hillary Clinton and this New Hampshire coffee shop.
Jesse: Okay, I know we just came through an intense election that is still on a lot of our minds. And maybe the last thing you want to hear is more Trump, or in in this case, Clinton. But for just for a moment, take yourself back to January 7th, 2008. Because this becomes a key moment in political tears.
Newscaster: Several new polls show Barack Obama far in the lead and on the republican side, John McCain. First, though, a rare show of emotion on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton that happened earlier today. The democrat became a little bit choked up during a round-table discussion that she held with undecided voters.
Ryan: What ends up happening a couple of days before the New Hampshire primary is there’s a debate at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. And Clinton gets a... question, “What do you say to people…” And so she sort of jokes and says:
Hillary Clinton: I don’t think I’m that bad.
Ryan: And Barack Obama interrupts her briefly and he goes:
Obama: You’re likable enough.
Ryan: And then there’s this tag-teaming at the debate where John Edwards goes up against her as well.
Edwards: And I just want to say, you look great. [laughter]
Ryan: And so things are not going her way. And so I think it’s right after that that she’s in a coffee shop and:
Hillary Clinton: It’s not easy. It’s not easy…
Ryan: And she pauses for a moment, she clearly chokes up for a second. And she just says:
Hillary Clinton: Some people think elections are a game. They think it’s who’s up or who’s down. It’s about our country. It’s about our kids’ future. It’s about all of us.
Ryan: The narrative takes off. The narrative takes off as this being sort of Hillary’s crying moment. Her Muskie moment.
Pundit: The most famous example of somebody crying on the campaign trail was Muskie… I believe there could well come a time when there is a such a serious threat to the United States that she breaks down.
Jesse: Similarly, John Edwards said, “presidential campaigns are tough, but being President of the United States is also very tough business.” So the criticism was mounting. Was Hillary Clinton not tough enough to be president?
Ryan: So you have a lot of guys ganging up on her for a moment of, I think a lot of people indicated it as a moment of honesty, emotional honesty, but it definitely got crafted as a moment of weakness.
Jesse: Of course, this is nothing if not sexist. The handful of male candidates who cried get a sprinkling of bad press. Hillary Clinton cries, and the scrutiny is palpable. But then something happens that catches Ryan’s attention: Clinton wins the New Hampshire primary. And Ryan starts to wonder: what’s going on. How did Muskie’s tears hurt and Clinton’s tears help.
Ryan: So what I tried to do was analyze a lot of the literature that we have in psychology, and sociology, and political science, anywhere where people were talking about crying, to understand how perceptions of crying get formed.
Jesse: Ryan comes across all these factors that affect our perceptions of crying:
Ryan: Whether or not you normally cry, sexuality, one's outsider status, race, whether or not they display a type of authenticity, class, the frequency, age, gender, but it's especially bad for women, the degree of one's tears.
Jesse: All of which, in the political world, can lead to bad press. But of course, Muskie and Clinton both received bad press after their incidents. So, Ryan thought, there must be something else. And in looking back at the footage of Hillary Clinton, Ryan discovered what that something was.
Ryan: And so on January 6th after her crying incident, she goes on CNN's John Roberts and basically said, "You know, I have emotions. I'm human being. People doubt that. But it's true. I'm a human." She went on Access Hollywood and started working as many talk shows as she possibly could, and she said blatantly that there was a double standard for women crying in office. She said, quote, “You get too emotional that undercuts you. A man can cry, but a woman, it's a different dynamic.”
Jesse: This, Ryan says, has a name. And it’s called reframing.
Ryan: Politicians are really good at repairing their images after scandal, identifying what could be a weakness and then trying to reframe it for the media. So, it's reframing. And that's the power of recapturing a media narrative.
Jesse: And this is really important, because emotions lend themselves to ambiguity. A lot of us leave it up to other people to figure out our tears.
Ryan: So, Aristotle called this the enthymeme. When I'm getting angry, I don't say, “I'm getting angry because.” If I'm crying, I don't look at somebody and say, “I am crying because.” And so it's really up to the audience to determine what the context is, what the intentions might be.
Jesse: But with reframing, you don’t do this. You tell them what your tears mean.
Ryan: I am crying because.
Jesse: Basically tell a story. Not just any story, but one that explains your behavior and raises doubts about your political opponents
Ryan: And so I think her response was trying to unite a lot of the people who already supported her, sort of weaken the response of people who didn’t like her.
Jesse: And as Ryan said, Clinton did interviews explaining the incident. She alluded to the double standard and placed her tears in the context of this struggle.
Hillary Clinton: Sometimes I’m angry, sometimes I’m outraged, sometimes I’m frustrated, sometimes I’m determined more to do what I need to do, but every time it’s a rush of emotion, and yet, I’m well aware of the fact that I’m held to a different standard, as most women still are.
Jesse: And the way Clinton responds fits Ryan’s model. She raised doubts about her opponents, who were applying a double standard, and she explained her reaction as being about all women, not just her. In fact, after speaking with Ryan, I went back to the original coffee shop tape, and I noticed something. That reframing begins much sooner than follow up interviews. It begins almost immediately after the tears.
Hillary Clinton: It’s not easy. It’s not easy.
Jesse: She breaks down in responding to a personal question. She tears up and her voice shakes as she talks about how difficult it's been for her. And then, without skipping a beat, almost as an afterthought, she pivots:
Hillary: It’s about our country, it’s about our kids’ future, and it’s really about all of us.
Ryan: She made her moment a political moment. I am upset because I'm upset for America. I'm not upset for myself. I'm not wallowing in self pity. And so she succeeded in part because she was masterful in recrafting the narrative. And anybody who saw the debate that preceded her tears could easily identify with her.
Jesse: So to recap, you have two big takeaways from this incident: the triggers and the reframe. Politicians like Hillary Clinton really step into dangerous territory by shedding tears. But they pivot almost immediately, and manage to use the incident to their advantage.
Jesse: This brings us to the question of the day: what would happen to Ed Muskie today?
Jesse: If Muskie got in a time machine and travelled to present day, what would happen? Would the same factors be ticked off?
Ryan: Well i think for Muskie, he makes it personal... Sort of like this masculine show of, we're parked here and I dare him to show his face. And so everything that he's indicating is that somebody can bait him by being insulting, and then he has a breakdown.
Jesse: But it’s not all over. Remember, that breakdown can still be reframed. And the sooner he acts, the better chance he has of reframing his tears. And this is where a real difference emerges between Muskie and Clinton. Unlike Clinton, who pivots with to a reframe, Muskie comes to a clumsy standstill. Again, if we go back to the tape, we hear Muskie choke up.
Muskie: A good woman.
Jesse: Silence. Applause. And then, mid sentence, instead of reframing, he changes topics, as if nothing ever happened.
Muskie: I’d like to introduce you to…
Jesse: And just for comparison, here’s Clinton immediately after her tears.
Hillary Clinton: It’s about our country. It’s about our kids’ future. It’s about all of us.
Jesse: The difference is striking. Clinton explains her tears, Muskie changes the subject.
Ryan: He doesn't really try to address the tears or try to redefine them in a way that he says, "what I'm upset about is that this campaign is getting nasty and we have a number of editors, especially the Manchester Union Leader, is hijacking political conversation by publishing these really negative stories that have no substance to them, and I think this is worse for voters because voters get mislead in this negative environment." Had he done that, I think it would have been a very different outcome.
Jesse: And if he came back and did it again?
Ryan: I think if that candidate can't come back from that attack, can't fire back, can't justify their manly tears, I think it's easy to be defined how Muskie was defined before.
Jesse: So, the Muskies of today are probably destined for ridicule. Tolerance for tears hasn’t expanded so far that people would react differently to the Manchester incident. But the good news is that the Muskie Rule, that there’s no crying in politics, isn’t true. Probably never was. If there’s a lesson to be learned from Ed Muskie, it’s not what we thought. It actually is okay for men to cry. It can even be an opportunity. But, tears never explain themselves. They don’t tell us what your thoughts are. For that, you need words. And so, in politics as well as in life, it’s not tears that are truly dangerous. It’s silence. That’s what does you in.
Obama: Every time I think about those kids it makes me mad.
Jesse: Mitt Romney teared up about the Mormon Church ending its ban on African American priests.
Romney: I pulled over and literally wept. Even to this day, it’s emotional.
Jesse: Joe Biden about his son.
Biden: To have a child you’re not sure is going to make it.
Jesse: Mitch McConnell about a colleague who was retiring.
McConnell: When Jud walks out of this room- When he walks out of this room for the last time...
Jesse: George H.W. Bush about his son.
Bush: ...and hon- hon- hon- [applause]
Jesse: John Boehner about children.
Boehner: To have a shot at the American Dream, like I did.
Jesse: And Newt Gingrich, who tears up-
Gingrich: every time we sing christmas carols.
Jesse: It makes you wonder, is the Muskie Rule, that there’s no crying in politics, finally dead? In today’s show, we’re going to find out how much things have actually changed. If Muskie got into a time machine, traveled to present day, what would happen?
You’re listening to Mannish, this is Jesse Rhodes.
Jesse: Muskie today. To find out how Muskie would fare in today’s world, I turned to someone who not only has studied the Muskie moment, but has closely monitored the tears of contemporary politicians.
Ryan: My name is Ryan Neville-Shepard. I am an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Arkansas. I specialize in political rhetoric.
Jesse: Ryan graduated from Bates college, who’s most famous graduate is Ed Muskie.
Ryan: So in the four years of being there, as a politics fan, you always wonder what could have been.
Jesse: Fast forward to 2008 and Ryan is in grad school. The 2008 primaries are in full swing and he’s noticing something. There are all these incidents of crying.
Ryan: Mitt Romney cries twice. Barack Obama cries when his grandmother dies…
Jesse: And what Ryan notices is this: out of all the campaign tears falling, people are only really talking about one.
Ryan: And so there are these nine other incidents or eight other incidents involving guys, and the media only really wants to talk about one, that’s barely any type of display of any type of emotion, Hillary Clinton and this New Hampshire coffee shop.
Jesse: Okay, I know we just came through an intense election that is still on a lot of our minds. And maybe the last thing you want to hear is more Trump, or in in this case, Clinton. But for just for a moment, take yourself back to January 7th, 2008. Because this becomes a key moment in political tears.
Newscaster: Several new polls show Barack Obama far in the lead and on the republican side, John McCain. First, though, a rare show of emotion on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton that happened earlier today. The democrat became a little bit choked up during a round-table discussion that she held with undecided voters.
Ryan: What ends up happening a couple of days before the New Hampshire primary is there’s a debate at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. And Clinton gets a... question, “What do you say to people…” And so she sort of jokes and says:
Hillary Clinton: I don’t think I’m that bad.
Ryan: And Barack Obama interrupts her briefly and he goes:
Obama: You’re likable enough.
Ryan: And then there’s this tag-teaming at the debate where John Edwards goes up against her as well.
Edwards: And I just want to say, you look great. [laughter]
Ryan: And so things are not going her way. And so I think it’s right after that that she’s in a coffee shop and:
Hillary Clinton: It’s not easy. It’s not easy…
Ryan: And she pauses for a moment, she clearly chokes up for a second. And she just says:
Hillary Clinton: Some people think elections are a game. They think it’s who’s up or who’s down. It’s about our country. It’s about our kids’ future. It’s about all of us.
Ryan: The narrative takes off. The narrative takes off as this being sort of Hillary’s crying moment. Her Muskie moment.
Pundit: The most famous example of somebody crying on the campaign trail was Muskie… I believe there could well come a time when there is a such a serious threat to the United States that she breaks down.
Jesse: Similarly, John Edwards said, “presidential campaigns are tough, but being President of the United States is also very tough business.” So the criticism was mounting. Was Hillary Clinton not tough enough to be president?
Ryan: So you have a lot of guys ganging up on her for a moment of, I think a lot of people indicated it as a moment of honesty, emotional honesty, but it definitely got crafted as a moment of weakness.
Jesse: Of course, this is nothing if not sexist. The handful of male candidates who cried get a sprinkling of bad press. Hillary Clinton cries, and the scrutiny is palpable. But then something happens that catches Ryan’s attention: Clinton wins the New Hampshire primary. And Ryan starts to wonder: what’s going on. How did Muskie’s tears hurt and Clinton’s tears help.
Ryan: So what I tried to do was analyze a lot of the literature that we have in psychology, and sociology, and political science, anywhere where people were talking about crying, to understand how perceptions of crying get formed.
Jesse: Ryan comes across all these factors that affect our perceptions of crying:
Ryan: Whether or not you normally cry, sexuality, one's outsider status, race, whether or not they display a type of authenticity, class, the frequency, age, gender, but it's especially bad for women, the degree of one's tears.
Jesse: All of which, in the political world, can lead to bad press. But of course, Muskie and Clinton both received bad press after their incidents. So, Ryan thought, there must be something else. And in looking back at the footage of Hillary Clinton, Ryan discovered what that something was.
Ryan: And so on January 6th after her crying incident, she goes on CNN's John Roberts and basically said, "You know, I have emotions. I'm human being. People doubt that. But it's true. I'm a human." She went on Access Hollywood and started working as many talk shows as she possibly could, and she said blatantly that there was a double standard for women crying in office. She said, quote, “You get too emotional that undercuts you. A man can cry, but a woman, it's a different dynamic.”
Jesse: This, Ryan says, has a name. And it’s called reframing.
Ryan: Politicians are really good at repairing their images after scandal, identifying what could be a weakness and then trying to reframe it for the media. So, it's reframing. And that's the power of recapturing a media narrative.
Jesse: And this is really important, because emotions lend themselves to ambiguity. A lot of us leave it up to other people to figure out our tears.
Ryan: So, Aristotle called this the enthymeme. When I'm getting angry, I don't say, “I'm getting angry because.” If I'm crying, I don't look at somebody and say, “I am crying because.” And so it's really up to the audience to determine what the context is, what the intentions might be.
Jesse: But with reframing, you don’t do this. You tell them what your tears mean.
Ryan: I am crying because.
Jesse: Basically tell a story. Not just any story, but one that explains your behavior and raises doubts about your political opponents
Ryan: And so I think her response was trying to unite a lot of the people who already supported her, sort of weaken the response of people who didn’t like her.
Jesse: And as Ryan said, Clinton did interviews explaining the incident. She alluded to the double standard and placed her tears in the context of this struggle.
Hillary Clinton: Sometimes I’m angry, sometimes I’m outraged, sometimes I’m frustrated, sometimes I’m determined more to do what I need to do, but every time it’s a rush of emotion, and yet, I’m well aware of the fact that I’m held to a different standard, as most women still are.
Jesse: And the way Clinton responds fits Ryan’s model. She raised doubts about her opponents, who were applying a double standard, and she explained her reaction as being about all women, not just her. In fact, after speaking with Ryan, I went back to the original coffee shop tape, and I noticed something. That reframing begins much sooner than follow up interviews. It begins almost immediately after the tears.
Hillary Clinton: It’s not easy. It’s not easy.
Jesse: She breaks down in responding to a personal question. She tears up and her voice shakes as she talks about how difficult it's been for her. And then, without skipping a beat, almost as an afterthought, she pivots:
Hillary: It’s about our country, it’s about our kids’ future, and it’s really about all of us.
Ryan: She made her moment a political moment. I am upset because I'm upset for America. I'm not upset for myself. I'm not wallowing in self pity. And so she succeeded in part because she was masterful in recrafting the narrative. And anybody who saw the debate that preceded her tears could easily identify with her.
Jesse: So to recap, you have two big takeaways from this incident: the triggers and the reframe. Politicians like Hillary Clinton really step into dangerous territory by shedding tears. But they pivot almost immediately, and manage to use the incident to their advantage.
Jesse: This brings us to the question of the day: what would happen to Ed Muskie today?
Jesse: If Muskie got in a time machine and travelled to present day, what would happen? Would the same factors be ticked off?
Ryan: Well i think for Muskie, he makes it personal... Sort of like this masculine show of, we're parked here and I dare him to show his face. And so everything that he's indicating is that somebody can bait him by being insulting, and then he has a breakdown.
Jesse: But it’s not all over. Remember, that breakdown can still be reframed. And the sooner he acts, the better chance he has of reframing his tears. And this is where a real difference emerges between Muskie and Clinton. Unlike Clinton, who pivots with to a reframe, Muskie comes to a clumsy standstill. Again, if we go back to the tape, we hear Muskie choke up.
Muskie: A good woman.
Jesse: Silence. Applause. And then, mid sentence, instead of reframing, he changes topics, as if nothing ever happened.
Muskie: I’d like to introduce you to…
Jesse: And just for comparison, here’s Clinton immediately after her tears.
Hillary Clinton: It’s about our country. It’s about our kids’ future. It’s about all of us.
Jesse: The difference is striking. Clinton explains her tears, Muskie changes the subject.
Ryan: He doesn't really try to address the tears or try to redefine them in a way that he says, "what I'm upset about is that this campaign is getting nasty and we have a number of editors, especially the Manchester Union Leader, is hijacking political conversation by publishing these really negative stories that have no substance to them, and I think this is worse for voters because voters get mislead in this negative environment." Had he done that, I think it would have been a very different outcome.
Jesse: And if he came back and did it again?
Ryan: I think if that candidate can't come back from that attack, can't fire back, can't justify their manly tears, I think it's easy to be defined how Muskie was defined before.
Jesse: So, the Muskies of today are probably destined for ridicule. Tolerance for tears hasn’t expanded so far that people would react differently to the Manchester incident. But the good news is that the Muskie Rule, that there’s no crying in politics, isn’t true. Probably never was. If there’s a lesson to be learned from Ed Muskie, it’s not what we thought. It actually is okay for men to cry. It can even be an opportunity. But, tears never explain themselves. They don’t tell us what your thoughts are. For that, you need words. And so, in politics as well as in life, it’s not tears that are truly dangerous. It’s silence. That’s what does you in.
credits
Special thanks to Ryan Neville-Shepard and The Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. At the bottom of this page are links to Ryan’s study and music you heard on this episode. By the way, you may have noticed that Man-ish got a hyphen, as in “man hyphen ish.” I decided it better captures what the show is about (the social construction of masculinity). Let me know what you think.
Ryan Neville-Shepard: When Water Works: A Case Study of Campaign Tears and the 2008 Presidential Election
and Confronting gender bias, finding a voice: Hillary Clinton and the New Hampshire crying incident
Stephanie Shields
The Perception of Crying in Women and Men: Angry Tears, Sad Tears, and the" Right Way" to Cry
Jim Witherell
Ed Muskie: Made in Maine
Bates College
Muskie, J.G. (May 3, 2002 ). Interview by D. Nicoll. Tape Recording. The Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. Lewiston, Maine.
Music
Opa Cupa (Balkan Gypsy) by Rozsa has become... Madárka
Shakey Vibes by Krytosss
Jazz Drum Beat by Jimrsbjorklund
Forgotten Land by Doxent Zsigmond
Love Me Too by Josh Spacek
Ryan Neville-Shepard: When Water Works: A Case Study of Campaign Tears and the 2008 Presidential Election
and Confronting gender bias, finding a voice: Hillary Clinton and the New Hampshire crying incident
Stephanie Shields
The Perception of Crying in Women and Men: Angry Tears, Sad Tears, and the" Right Way" to Cry
Jim Witherell
Ed Muskie: Made in Maine
Bates College
Muskie, J.G. (May 3, 2002 ). Interview by D. Nicoll. Tape Recording. The Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. Lewiston, Maine.
Music
Opa Cupa (Balkan Gypsy) by Rozsa has become... Madárka
Shakey Vibes by Krytosss
Jazz Drum Beat by Jimrsbjorklund
Forgotten Land by Doxent Zsigmond
Love Me Too by Josh Spacek