In politics, if you’re not on message you’re losing. Let’s get to it.
Welcome to On Message, a weekly look at where the battle lines are drawn and who is winning the war of words.
This week… Clarity is King.
And clarity is in short order when it comes to when the measures in place to slow the spread of COVID-19 will end.
If you’re having trouble keeping things straight, who can blame you?
This past week alone, we heard from Dr. Facui himself, who managed to say we’re headed back to normal by fall AND that masks could still be required until next year.
Pretty easy to get your predictions right when they manage to cover every potential outcome.
Meanwhile, here in Utah, Governor Spencer Cox tweeted that he is “baffled by the pessimism” he’s hearing from the nation’s capital. The governor went on to say, “I truly believe that we will be celebrating maskless in large groups by the 4th (if not sooner).”
His comments come on the heels of daily reports of around 300 and 700 new cases – numbers that are refreshingly low – as well as news that there will be sufficient vaccines for 130 million Americans by the end of March.
So, why isn’t everyone “singing from the same hymnal” on this one?
Well, I can think of three possible reasons:
First, you have multiple messengers: Dr. Fauci, governors, doctors, drug makers, and, of course, people who are in no position to opine but opine anyway.
The second reason is closely related to that… it’s possible and even probable that no one really knows when things will be back to normal.
If you listen to Dr. Fauci closely, he hedges and says masks could be necessary next year. That’s not a real definitive statement. For that matter, neither is “heading back to normal.”
And that’s the third thing I’d list. We all have built-in biases that impact how we react to the message; to some extent we hear what we want to hear.
There are those who hear we “may need masks until 2022” and they are relived to see that we aren’t rushing back to normal. At the same time, there are others who hear the same words and immediately angry at the suggestion that it is even a possibility.
So, what’s the lesson?
When you have something important to communicate to a broad audience, you want to have a single messenger.
If that’s not possible, ideally you want everyone who is a messenger to share the same message.
This is why politicians use talking points. They refine the language and then give it to everyone so they benefit from repeating the message over and over – but they can keep the message clear.
It may seem canned, but it actually keeps the confusion to a minimum.
Clarity of message saves you confusion, saves you time and saves you money.
One final note… a few weeks ago I encouraged the Cox administration to push to get the vaccine numbers included in the daily headlines along with the number of new cases and deaths.
It hasn’t changed everywhere but you may have noticed ksl.com is now including the number of vaccinations given each day and it certainly changes what jumps out, especially as the number of cases drops to triple digits and the vaccination number increases to over 10,000.
That’s it for this week.
More On Message in the next issue of the Utah Political Underground. Don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to our new YouTube channel.
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