Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Our campaigns need poetry, figuratively and literally

Mario Cuomo

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo was right when he said people campaign in poetry but govern in prose.

Diana Walker/Getty Images

Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework," has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.

April is a good month to be thinking about poetry because it is National Poetry Month in the United States.

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo famously said, "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose." This brilliant formulation may be how things should be. It may be how things used to be.


Today, campaigns are soaked in lies and negativity. They reflect poverty, not poetry. No one governs in prose either. Governance is a wild mixture of Hollywood, policy arguments, battle, horse trading and charisma. Cuomo was getting at the point that in campaigns the candidate must inspire voters with a vision that awakens them the way David Hume in the 18th century awakened Immanuel Kant from, as he said, his dogmatic slumbers. Hume motivated Kant to see that although all knowledge of the world does indeed begin with sensation, our minds impose a conceptual structure on every sensation we experience.

Campaigns today are more inclined to convince you that the candidate's opponent is dangerous to democracy or to grab you by the throat (or some other bodily parts) and pit you against the candidate's opponent by using a major wedge issue as if it were an ax. Candidates do tell you things they intend to do, some of which they may be able to do. But most of their promises rely on support from Congress, if they are running for president, or the rest of Congress and the president if they are running for the House or the Senate. You would think everyone was running for king based on how many times they say what "I will do" when they get into office.

There is no quick fix to the pathetic nature or our campaigns, especially the truck loads of money that are needed to run them, or the dysfunctional nature of our system of governance in Washington, D.C. Yet we might start by taking a page from Cuomo's book and creating a tone in our electoral politics that reminds us of poetry.

Now, poets of course differ — there are the classical poets like Pope and the romantic poets like Wordsworth, metaphysical poets with creative conceits like John Donne, pure masters of the ear like Alfred Lord Tennyson. The world's greatest dramatist, William Shakespeare, was also a master of the sonnet. Then there’s 20th century towering poets like T. S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats, fierce social and political poets like Langston Hughes and Adrienne Rich, poets of depression like Sylvia Plath, lone beautiful voices like Emily Dickinson, and straightforward, graceful poets like Robert Frost. And these are just the English-speaking poets.

But whether they are complex or graceful, racy, musical, rhymers or poets of free verse or blank verse, they are not offensive, though they may be jarring to the ear. And they are always illuminating. Yes, campaigns would be better if they were more illuminating and less intrusive, destructive and offensive. Candidates should also actually recite some poetry. I did — when I started my campaign in what became a high-profile Democratic primary in Maryland that my friend Jamie Raskin ultimately won.

Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy was a poet, and he was joined by the poet Robert Lowell on the campaign trail in his race for president. McCarthy, who was against the Vietnam war, was eloquent and unlike Lyndon Johnson in almost every way. Some memorable lines:

My finance director convinced me that reciting a poem at each fundraiser, where my aim was to change the tone of politics step by step, would kill my campaign. So I caved and put the poetry aside.

One part of the strategy for changing our campaigns is thus to revisit Cuomo's dictum for how campaigns should be — they should be poetry in their tone and even include a bit of poetry. Changing our system of governance is a much more complicated and massive enterprise. But if we can change the tone of our campaigns by making them more poetic, then this will help change the tone and the substance of our system of governance.

Read More

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

The B-2 "Spirit" Stealth Bomber flys over the 136th Rose Parade Presented By Honda on Jan. 1, 2025, in Pasadena, California. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are
a close up of a typewriter with the word conspiracy on it

Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case. Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. Still, to a more dangerous reality: the conspiracies taking hold and being amplified by political ideologues are increasingly correlated with violence against particular groups. Fortunately, promising new research points to actions we can take to reduce conspiratorial thinking in communities across the US.

Some journalists claim that this is “a golden age of conspiracy theories,” and the public agrees. As of 2022, 59% of Americans think that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than 25 years ago, and 73% of Americans think conspiracy theories are “out of control.” Most blame this perceived increase on the role of social media and the internet.

Keep ReadingShow less
Illness, Presidents, and Confidantes

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at the Economic Club of Washington, DC September 19, 2024 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Win McNamee

Illness, Presidents, and Confidantes

Ever since the reality of President Biden’s mental and physical decline has been made public, ink is being spent, bemoaning that the nation was at risk because the President was not fit to make crucial decisions twenty-four hours a day.

Isn’t it foolish that, in a constitutional republic with clear separation and interdependence of powers, we should rely on one human being to make a decision at three in the morning that could have grievous consequences for the whole nation and the world? Are we under the illusion that we must and can elect an all-wise, always-on, energizer-bunny, superhero?

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump

Trump's reliance on inflammatory, and often dehumanizing, language is not an unfortunate quirk—it’s a deliberate tactic.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

From ‘Obliteration’ to ‘Enemies Within’: Trump’s Language Echoes Authoritarianism

When President Trump declared that the U.S. strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, it wasn’t just a policy claim—it was an exercise in narrative control. Predictably, his assertion was met with both support and skepticism. Yet more than a comment on military efficacy, the statement falls into a broader pattern that underscores how Trump uses language not just to communicate but to dominate.

Alongside top officials like CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump claimed the strikes set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back by years. However, conflicting intelligence assessments tell a more nuanced story. A leaked Defense Intelligence Agency report concluded that while infrastructure was damaged and entrances sealed, core components such as centrifuges remained largely intact. Iran had already relocated much of its enriched uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency echoed that damage was reparable.

Keep ReadingShow less