Every now and then you're reading something, and you really wonder what the guy who wrote it was thinking. To wit, Josh Marshall recently wrote:
Kerry needs a catch phrase or catch question about the Iraq war, one that provides offense against President Bush's oft-stated, extremely lame, but also somewhat effective line that the world is safer with Saddam Hussein out of power.
In political rhetoric, coherence and clarity almost always trumps substance.
(I would like to leave the political angle of what Marshall was saying out of account, and just look at the point he was trying to make in his last sentence. Therefore please do not try to find a political point in this post; I just found this sentence interesting and want to talk about it, not prove or disprove anything else that Marshall said or may have meant.)
This falls, I think, into the category of statements where the most natural reaction is, "Um, yeah." followed, perhaps, by "there is a reason for that, you know."
It's not so much odd that Marshall is saying it — since it's correct — it's odd that he's saying it as if it's unfortunate. Given the construction he's using (which is a fairly standard method of implicit comparison in English), we can flesh out what he said (adding some punctuation to indicate semantic grouping) to be, more fully:
In political rhetoric, coherence and clarity with or without substance almost always trumps incoherent and confusing substance.
(There are other things implied by it which are true but uninteresting.)
I would hope it's obvious why this is the case: incoherence cannot seem substantial. Suppose the following statement is true: "Dog cat heart the on on on dog. Wag. Plantation. Narwhal fog pug cough all none not a bleat boot bam ram rom rum Lola rum."
Now suppose that the following statement is false: "Saving money makes you happier in the long run than spending it on things that you don't need. Therefore we should impose a 500% Luxury tax on all sales of fine art."
(I know that the second hypothetical is stretch, but work with me...)
Now suppose that there are two men, the first saying the first statement, and the second saying the second statement. Suppose that one of them must be chosen to implement what he's saying.
QED
Click to change the ending from a serious one to a (not very funny) anti-kerry joke