Pete Buttigieg's Focus: Storytelling First. Policy Details Later [View all]

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Pete Buttigieg’s Focus: Storytelling First. Policy Details Later.

By Alexander Burns at the New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-2020-writing-message.html

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A Times review of Mr. Buttigieg’s writings, starting in college, found that rhetorical task to be a consistent preoccupation. As a student, Mr. Buttigieg, now 37 and the mayor of South Bend, Ind., habitually discussed Democrats’ challenges in terms of language and argument, rather than policy or ideology. Mr. Buttigieg urged liberals in his student columns to speak in terms of “effective political values,” and he recalled corresponding in college with the University of California, Berkeley, linguist George Lakoff, who in 2004 published a best seller about political communication.

In an interview, Mr. Buttigieg said his college writings were no longer fresh in his mind. But then, as now, he acknowledged, he was focused on the interaction of “narrative and politics,” and how parties connect with people beyond policy decrees.

“The story that we tell, not just about government but about ourselves, and the story we tell people about themselves and how they fit in, really grounds our politics,” Mr. Buttigieg said.

Mr. Buttigieg said in the interview that Democrats in 2004 faced a “crisis of authenticity,” with too many “pretending to be more hawkish than their consciences were.”



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