NOBODY wants me to talk more about this, but I will anyway. As I said, there's a little controversy about the president using a descriptor for Republican political philosophy which some conservatives apparently regard as beyond the pale of civilised discourse. Liberals disagree, and the two sides don't seem to agree on what exactly the term denotes, so the argument is likely to go back and forth interminably. As several commenters noted, liberal use of the term causes conservatives to go ballistic. Not to get caught up in "fake symmetry", but this dynamic pretty well mirrors the one that takes place on the opposite side of the coin over whether it's fair to describe the president using a different term for a certain left-wing political philosophy. The terms are "social Darwinism" and "socialism", and in both cases people who use them to describe the other side's philosophy find them neither inaccurate or offensive, while those to whom the terms are being applied go through the roof.

The question arises, then: to what extent is use of these kinds of political labels a deliberate effort to take advantage of this dynamic? Words are vague and slippery things, perhaps none more so than words that denote political philosophies. They're never simply on or off; like a good clutch pedal, they leave the user with plenty of in-between space. One way to use this in-between space is the "dog-whistle" technique, the art of using language that signifies little to one's opponents and reluctant allies, while signaling to the base that you are one of them. George Bush was described, by Amy Sullivan and others, as using religious language in this way, referring to "wonder-working power" when talking about social policy; the idea was that secular liberals and moderates would take no notice, while evangelical Christians would fill in the rest of the hymn, "...in the blood of the Lamb."

The use of the word "socialist" to describe Barack Obama seems to work the opposite way; it's the converse of a dog whistle. For movement conservatives, calling the belief that the government should ensure that everyone has health insurance "socialist" seems to be fairly non-controversial. For liberals, who have defined themselves since the 1930s precisely as the non-socialist left and have spent the past three decades being pulled steadily rightwards, the term is a snowball in the face. They can't help but start an argument. And conservatives seem to respond in a bit of the same way to the term "social Darwinism".

How does this end up affecting voters' perceptions? To stick with the dog analogy, I think it works a bit like the old Far Side "What we say to dogs/What they hear" cartoon. (Which Gary Larson apparently doesn't want anyone to see on the internet.)

What liberals say: Barack Obama is not a socialist! Socialism is government control over the entire economy, not bailouts of private banks and industries that leave them private, like Obama's (which Bush started anyway)! Obamacare isn't a government takeover of health-care, it's based entirely on private insurers! That's less socialist than Medicare!



What voters hear: Obama... socialist.... socialism... bail-outs... Obama... Obamacare... government takeover... socialist.

What conservatives say: Mitt Romney is not a social Darwinist! He's a middle-of-the-road Wall Street executive! Just because his business success has made him rich doesn't mean he doesn't care about poor people! Social Darwinists believe poor people are inherently inferior to rich people; Romney doesn't believe that, he thinks deregulation and tax cuts will empower the poor to better themselves! Recognising that we need to cut Medicare spending growth doesn't make you a social Darwinist, Romney's just recognising budgetary reality!



What voters hear: Romney...social Darwinist...Wall Street...rich...social Darwinist...poor people are inferior...cut Medicare...Romney.

I would imagine that political speech is often designed to produce these kinds of reactions, and that (to stick with the dog analogy!) when we find ourselves slobbering over the latest insult from our opponents, there's often a consultant in a lab coat somewhere recording the volume of our saliva to calculate what type of bell-ringing might produce more of it next time.