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Rhetoric is interesting; tell people the same thing for enough years and they’ll believe it’s true no matter the facts. This is especially true when it comes to political rhetoric.

For instance, everybody knows that Democrats are “tax and spend liberals,” whereas Republicans are “fiscal conservatives.” Right?

Oops, the numbers don’t seem to back that up.

First the deficit…

• George W. Bush – $482 billion
• Bill Clinton – $200+ billion
• George Bush – $300 billion
• Ronald Reagan – $200 billion

The other thing that everybody knows is that the economy does better under a Republican Administration than a Democratic one. Right?

Oops, the numbers don’t to back that up, either.

In his new book Unequal Democracy, Princeton political science professor Larry M. Bartels analyzes the post-World War II era economy.

It will probably come as a surprise to many that “the United States economy has grown faster, on average, under Democratic presidents than under Republicans.”

Here are some pertinent snippets.

• Data for the whole period from 1948 to 2007, during which Republicans occupied the White House for 34 years and Democrats for 26, show average annual growth of real gross national product of

• “Over the entire 60-year period, income inequality trended substantially upward under Republican presidents but slightly downward under Democrats, thus accounting for the widening income gaps over all.

• …families at the 95th percentile fared almost as well under Republican presidents as under Democrats (1.90 percent growth per year, versus 2.12 percent), giving them little stake, economically, in election outcomes. But the stakes were enormous for the less well-to-do. Families at the 20th percentile fared much worse under Republicans than under Democrats (0.43 percent versus 2.64 percent). Eight years of growth at an annual rate of 0.43 percent increases a family’s income by just 3.5 percent, while eight years of growth at 2.64 percent raises it by 23.2 percent.”

Although rhetoric and spin often fly in the face of facts they still take on a life of their own.

The lesson to be learned from all this, and the reason I brought it to your attention, is that you shouldn’t believe what ‘everybody’ knows, AKA, popular wisdom—not in politics, not in your company, not in advertising or anywhere else.

In the wake of current economic problems, if you do only one thing differently in the future than in the past, I hope that you’ll question rhetoric, check the facts and think for yourself.

In other words, if it walks like a goose and honks like a goose, it probably is a goose—even if “everybody” says it’s a duck.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 20th, 2008 at 4:30 am and is filed under Communication, Leadership, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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