Rapist is still out their raping somebody elses serving his time. These are fantastic stories about the broken system. I would love to write all of them. I cant do that obviously. So yeah. Answer your question i would love to be able to write another nonfiction. Im not sure i will. It would take too much time away from the novels novels the kids books the other books that i enjoy writing. As always we appreciate you stopping by. My pleasure. Good seeing you again question are watching book Tv Television for serious readers. You can watch any program you see here online at 13. Org. Book tv attends book festivals. Coming up next from the 2015 gaithersburg book festival in maryland david mark and Chuck Mccutcheon talk about their book. Dot brussels walk backs, and washington handshakes. Good morning and welcome to the gaithersburg book festival. I am a gaithersburg resident and a volunteer on the book festival committee. Gaithersburg is a vibrant, diverse city that celebrates and supports the arts and humanities. We are pleased to bring you this fabulous event thanks to the generous support our sponsors. As you see them throughout the course of the day please visit and say thank you for sponsoring this festival. For the consideration of everyone here probably silence all the vices. Also, in order to keep this event free we need your feedback. There are surveys that are available here and that the information book about the festival, and online at our website. Thoughts are important, so please take a couple minutes to fill one out and submitted to the festival committee. Mr. Mccutchen and mr. Mark will be signing books immediately after this presentation. Copies of their book are also available at the parks and prose to cover the politics and prose tenth at the festival here. A quick word about buying books, even though this is a free event and we want to keep it that way it does help the book festival if you buy a book year. The more books we sell for our events the more publishers will want to send their authors to speak with us. Purchasing books are partner, partner, politics and prose benefits the local economy, supports jobs and supports the book festival. If you enjoy the program and are in a position to do so please purchase a book. Mr. Mccutchen has covered washington since 1995 coauthor of the 2012 and 2014 editions of editions of National Journals almanac of american politics and was coeditor of Congressional Quarterlys politics in america 2010. Mr. Mark is a former Senior Editor at politico and political journalist the author of going dirty, the art of negative campaigning. They have written a very interesting book that because the political jargon we hear every day. And at the at the same time he helps our understanding of politics. In addition to enjoying the book the website is great and includes a jargon of the week quote. Quote. Last week it was the meaning its a long way from temporary. Please welcome chuck and davis. Clicks thank you. Clicks thanks everybody, for showing up and allowing us to be be the opening act here at the kickoff event of the book festival. It is our privilege and pleasure to be able to appear here and speak to such a wonderful crowd about what is becoming, becoming what is always an interesting topic but particularly now as the president ial primaries start to ramp up and we head into debate season and there is increasing coverage of the candidates and political language is something that i think has been an interest of both of us with our backgrounds as political journalists. Chuck and i met years ago has colleagues of the old Congressional Quarterly staking out members of congress and always, trying to always, trying to reconstruct what was going on in closeddoor meetings. At least i noticed repeatedly that elected officials of both parties would often give very similar answers, cliches, you might say where it really was in jargon no matter what the subject. It could be about Healthcare Telecom policy Healthcare Telecom policy you name it and they would come out of a meeting or you catch them off the floor of the house of representatives, and they would give these kind of canned, cliched answers. And i always and i always found this interesting because many of these individuals often came from rather successful careers professionally before they got elected to congress. They might have been successful trial attorneys, wealthy Business Executives on doctors, military officers and you just know when they were dealing with clients or business contacts, suppliers, etc. , they did not speak in this coded way. That is how i got interested in trying to decipher what these elected officials were actually saying. Just want to run through a couple of highlights and then pass it over to my colleague. Only the first one to my colleague. I walked back is something we are familiar with when you hear an elected official Say Something that they were not supposed to say out loud but really meant. Committing candor. Exactly. Senate democratic leader harry reid is a master at this. He has almost built a career saying things out loud that than his staff has to walk back and say well, he didnt mean it. Often what they claim is he did not mean that if i did not mean to say that allowed which is different from saying he didnt actually mean it. Former governor jeb bush of florida likely 2016 republican president ial candidate has dealt with this issue himself just this last week where he said three or four iterations of whether he would have supported the invasion of iraq back in 2,003 that is then pres. Brother lead and he has had to kind of twist himself into contortions to explain whether he would have taken the same actions as brother finally saying, you know, i would not have led would not have borders of the invasion. That is a great example of a want back. A washington handshake is something that many of us are also probably quite familiar with. It is shorthand for the kind of insincerity that we often encounter in politics. Technically it is when you are shaking someones hand and they are looking over the shoulder to see if there was someone more important in the room that can help by your career. Couple of other highlights from the book that we often heard over the years and are probably familiar if you have ever watched congress on television or just seeing the evening news. You hear a member of congress prefer to critical my good friend. Often that is somebody across the aisle and is really shorthand for i cant i cant stand this person that you cant say that an congressional parlance. I would i would note how that compares to parliamentary tactics and other countries and in other democracies where they are not afraid to go directly at the opponent and really throw out some rather unkind monikers and names. I think that is actually in some sense is a reflection of the sort of civility and genteel list of our political system compared to other places. Another when you hear often from elected officials is we need to have a conversation about fill in the blank subject matter. This is something the pres. Obama likes to use when he is confronted with a question that he doesnt really want to tackle. Came up a couple years ago when Edward Snowden had leaked nasa documents, fled the country for president obama was asked repeatedly about privacy concerns commend the president said something to the effect of what we need to have a conversation about that. Or when the states of colorado and washington voted to legalize marijuana and he was asked to the federal government legalize marijuana. Are you going are you going to crack down on the states for violating federal law. The pres. Said we need to have a conversation about that which basically means getting off my plate. It means i dont really want to talk about this. Last thing on earth i want to be discussing. As i mentioned, jeb bush has had to confront some of these issues political language issues last couple weeks. Hillary clinton to the degree that she has answered any immediate questions has also had to deal with it. Just a couple of come to mind in the last few weeks, when Hillary Clinton made her announcement, put out her announcement video that she was going to seek the democratic president ial nomination which was about a surprising as the sun rising in the morning but we were still parsing her language. She referred to everyday americans, which is sort of a a take on, a cousin of my derivation of Common People ordinary americans something that elected officials, particularly at the federal level like to come up with an say, the American People and sometimes you dont want to call them average ordinary americans. Now the terminology is everyday americans. Right. Its a work of art. As the justices alluded to you dont want to sound condescending, but there are only so many ways to get this across. One other that came up just recently its not something that Hillary Clinton actually said, but it was something of the commentator said about her when she went to nevada and said basically we should allow for legalization of undocumented immigrants, should immigrants, should allow them to stay in the country. Some path to citizenship which was actually getting to the left of the stanza president obama many media commentators suggested that she was quoting two setting a trap for republican rivals. This is one that have been out in the movies and was just interesting to see how it has taken on a life of its own. I think it is entirely accurate but one phrase gets out there and it often gets repeated many times over. With that i will turn it over to my colleague clicks thanks. Getting back to the origins. For origins. For me this book started with the word, disingenuous. As a word you hear constantly in politics. You dont. Much of everyday life. And life. And it dawned on me that it is code for liar. And not and not just a liar but kind of a clueless come out of touch for brainless liar. And so Pay Attention and you will hear disingenuous. It is not really considered good form to directly call someone a liar. So disingenuous is so disingenuous is kind of a nice, polite way. But getting back to the title of a book which has become a pretty common parlance, basically term for codewords. During his administration george w. Bush would use the phrase wonderworking power in speeches and it was a line from an old gospel hymn it was seen as a dog whistle that was intended to appeal to christian conservatives would recognize that terminology in language. You are hearing some talk now about fairness and redistribution which i think some people on the conservative side would consider that a dog whistle for socialism. So we just thought it would be interesting to kind of catalog these words and phrases. Some phrases. Some of my other favorite ones that were not covered by this is one that you perpetually hear from people in government when they are about to be fired or a resigning from a job and dont want to give the real reason why. I want to spend more time with my family. I mean, its this perennial excuse. People know it holds no meaning whatsoever. As we quote someone in the book who studies work and family life, it does not ring true because it is a powerful people and presumably should be in a position to spend more time with the family. And a kind of undermines this whole idea that you cant have work and family life as well. A couple of other expressions that youll be hearing more of your already starting to hit him on the campaign trail hillary used as an jeb bush used a form of it. We want to have conversations with citizens. We dont want to just unilaterally say we are running for president because we know best. No we want to appear to get the informed consent to people. We want to ask him about about it. Hence, we want to have conversations with citizens. Another new one just came up which were seeing a lot of in that we just wrote about for Christian Science monitor, weekly column since this is a book festival is pretty appropriate. It is from the Childrens Book alexander and the horrible, terrible no good very bad day. This has now become horrible, terrible no good very bad has become the as to political pundit cliche for something that has just become absolutely awful. He used it for jeb bush for his recent explanations on iraq. They used it to apply to obama. He used it for nancy pelosi after the democratic wipeout in the 2014 midterm election, and i think it is just one of those political punditry that love to drop popculture. They also they also like to render very swift and sweeping definitive judgments. Using this phrase enables them to do both of that. Again, the. Of our book is not we dont have a political agenda but thought it would be interesting since both parties use these kinds of words and expressions and phrases and in the media as i indicated, just as guilty of it is the politicians themselves. We thought it would be interesting to collect a lot of these and to continue to collect a lot of these and try to give some insight explanation to what they really mean. Its interesting, each prominent elected leader the kind of have their own verbal tics and habits. It has it has been interesting. I mentioned the democratic leader who is retiring next year after being in the for a dozen years or so much of the time as majority leader command is rhetorical style is rather blunt. Critics would say that he is disingenuous by going on the senate floor. Maybe thats the signal. Suggesting that the then republican president ial nominee had not paid income taxes and ten years without any supporting evidence. President george w. Bush was called a liar. Supreme Court JusticeClarence Thomas a loser. Some variation not very complementary terms are as political opponents. The Incoming Senate democratic leader has somewhat of a different style. He really has to issue our backs. A lot more careful with his words or at least with sen. Reid maybe he doesnt deliberately and doesnt really here. Schumer style is more to issue a sweeping indictment of the Republican Opposition more sorrow than anger type town. I wish we could work across the aisle with a republican friends but they are being reasonable. We we are devoted to the middle class whereas our republican colleagues once only help out the rich, that kind of thing. It is interesting, a little more savvy about the language. Another schumer is ms. Out of the mainstream you know theres a mainstream and that only the democrats are stirring and to the swimming in it. Any republican who deviates from that mainstream is therefore not worthy of consideration. Thats clicks thats right. We would love to hear some of your questions thoughts on political language anything that might have come up to you mightve seen over the last several years clicks as i said, we collect fees on an ongoing basis. If you go to our website and we have cards out of the front table sure website. Dog whistle book. Com. We welcome suggestions solicitations for any political expression. Set your teeth on edge. As edge. As i said, we have a weekly column for the Christian Science monitor and like to use contributions from the public and those as well. I think there is a microphone coming around. Up here. Am curious what happens when you have a male candidate. The mine feels mine feels that they can get into. Clicks really attractive. Thats right. This is not surprisingly it really is a political minefield for a lot of candidates. An otherwise progressive liberal democratic senator tom harkin of iowa who is just retired got into some trouble last fall just before the campaign. The republican nominee was a state senator who objectively speaking you might say he was rather attractive. Sen. Harkin basically said in a speech a speech to supporters that was not supposed to be public basically all she has going for her is a pretty face. I dont want to misquote too far, but that was the gist of it. He got quite a lot of pushback for this. His own favorite candidate, own favorite candidate, democratic congressman ended up losing that senate race. And i doubt that comment was does positive but sen. Harkin had to walk that back, and it was somewhat surprising coming from him because he is otherwise known as a champion of womens issues issues prochoice on abortion, sponsor the Lilly Ledbetter fair pay act but it shows how anyone can get into trouble and it is interesting to see the dynamic has more women thankfully get into the political process. It is really notable to watch when you have two female candidates going up against each other which has actually happened on an increasing basis. One thing to note about that, that, so far smaller republican president ial candidates have had to be really careful how they have criticized Hillary Clinton however the eventual nominee is going to have to walk that minefield. Minefield. The one republican candidate who has been rather forceful and forthright in her criticism of Hillary Clinton is the one republican female in the race for Carly FiorinoCarly Fiorino, the former hewlettpackard executive who has not been shy about going directly after Hillary Clinton. Take another question. Quakes hi. Can you talk about how people learn about this way of talking and whether newly elected officials are less deceptive in terms of the way that they communicate . There is kind of a Group Mentality i have found. People just automatically automatically, when you start throwing around congress in capitol hill and the White House Press room, they just are speaking this way and assume that you will to. We say in the introduction of the book and i think it takes about a year to really learn fluently or maybe not so fully the language. And that is kind of why we wanted to write a book to be a guidebook to cutting through this kind of language. Hopefully it avoids that mentality questions you intend your book to be a manual . How not to speak. How to avoid the trap. Well, what to to listen for if you are in washington politics. On tv. Lobbying members of congress. If its a tow