Bush and the Buzz

I find President Bush's speeches hilarious. This article in Newsweek is fantastic, recounting President Bush's new buzz word "Caliphate" which he used 4 times in a recent speech. It reminds me of the all too funny Inaguration Speech by Bush when he used the words "Freedom" over 30 times and "Liberty" 20 times. (and if you watch the Daily Show, you saw the funniest skit on television when they did a recut of the president's speech with just the words Freedom and Liberty and did a count off). So Bush has found a new word to add to his 3 buzz word vocabulary of Freedom, Liberty, and Terror...."Caliphate".

From the article...."A caliphate, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, is the “office or dominion of a caliph”; a caliph is “a successor of Muhammad ... [the] spiritual head of Islam.” Simply put, the caliph is Islam’s deputy to the world. After the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 A.D., his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, became the first caliph. (At the heart of the schism between Sunni and Shia Muslims, even today, is the question of succession: who has the right to become Islam’s caliph?) From the time of the Prophet’s death until the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, caliphs ruled over Muslims and presided over the Muslim expansion throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe. These were the caliphates; some beneficent, some warmongering, in concept not unlike any other empire or dynasty."

Bush's use of the word (an excerpt from the article)...."The enemy, he said—by which he clearly meant the Islamic terrorist enemy—wants to “extend the caliphate,” “establish a caliphate,” and “spread their caliphate.”

I don't think Bush is even using the word correctly, but to his credit this is a quote from a Democratic speech writer--“Bush has been successful in defining terms in his own way,” said Steve Ebbins, a former Democratic speechwriter. “[The Bush administration] has captured the language. If you control the language, you control the message and are able to sway people’s attitude toward your policy. It’s a policy-endorsing mechanism.”

One of the most interesting comments about Bush and his communication strategy, I heard when I was at a small group breakfast with Dick Gephardt. He said that despite the flaws that the American people can see in Bush, what they can't see past is his focus on Terror. He went on to say that when you look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Safety is Number 2 after hunger. So by focusing everyone on safety, every other issue is less relevant.