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.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

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

U.S. President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on April 23, 2025 in Washington, DC.

U.S. President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on April 23, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Chip Somodevilla

Trump 2.0’s Alleged Trifecta Crisis

On July 25, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a radio address to 125 million Americans in which he coined the term “first 100 days.” Today, the 100th day of a presidency is considered a benchmark to measure the early success or failure of a president.

Mr. Trump’s 100th day of office lands on April 30, when the world has witnessed his 137 executive orders, 39 proclamations, 36 memoranda, a few Cabinet meetings, and numerous press briefings. In summary, Trump’s cabinet appointments and seemingly arbitrary, capricious, ad hoc, and erratic actions have created turmoil in the stock market, utter confusion among our international trade partners, and confounded unrest with consumers, workers, small business owners, and corporate CEOs.

Keep ReadingShow less
America’s Liz Truss Problem

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Liz Truss speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on February 20, 2025 in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

Getty Images, Andrew Harnik

America’s Liz Truss Problem

America is having a Liz Truss moment. The problem is that America doesn’t have a Liz Truss solution.

Let me take you back to the fall of 2022 when the United Kingdom experienced its own version of political whiplash. In the span of seven weeks, no less than three Prime Ministers (and two monarchs, incidentally) tried to steer the British governmental ship. On September 6, Boris Johnson was forced to resign over a seemingly endless series of scandals. Enter Liz Truss. She lasted forty-nine days, until October 25, when she too was pushed out the black door of 10 Downing Street. Her blunder? Incompetence. Rishi Sunak, the Conservative Party’s third choice, then measured the drapes.

What most people remember of the Truss premiership is the Daily Star wager that a head of lettuce would last longer than Truss. The lettuce won. But Truss’ stint as Prime Minister—the shortest ever, I should note—holds some lessons for America today.

Keep ReadingShow less
Employees being let go, laid off, fired.
Getty Images, mathisworks

Part One, The Impact of Trump’s Executive Actions: The Federal Workforce

Project Overview

This essay is part of a series by Lawyers Defending American Democracy, explaining in practical terms what the administration’s executive orders and other executive actions mean for all of us. Each of these actions springs from the pages of Project 2025, the administration's 900-page playbook that serves as the foundation for these measures. The Project 2025 agenda should concern all of us, as it tracks strategies adopted by countries such as Hungary, which have eroded democratic norms and have adopted authoritarian approaches to governing.

Keep ReadingShow less
Dictionary definition of tariff
Would replacing the income tax with higher tariffs help ‘struggling Americans’?
Devonyu/Getty Images

Trump's Tariff Chaos: Strategy or Stumble?

Few would argue with the claim that President Trump’s tariff policy is chaotic.

In early April 2025, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on all U.S. trading partners, including a 10% blanket tariff and higher rates for specific countries like China (145%) and Canada (25%). Just a few days later, however, he rolled back many of these tariffs, citing the need for "flexibility".

Keep ReadingShow less