Word: metaphoric
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...David Stockman eat crow before the press last Thursday. Had Mr. Stockman talked less to the press earlier he would not be squirming now, but garrulity was not his blunder. Mr. Stockman's Administration-shaking mistake was not that he talked, but how he talked. He used a metaphor. Moreover, it was "a rotten, horrible, unfortunate metaphor," as he put it un-metaphorically in his news conference. Yet life would be no rosier for Mr. Stockman had his metaphor been lovely, wonderful and fortunate. For a politician there is no such thing as a fortunate metaphor...
...thing, metaphors create images, and in a line of work that survives by means of obfuscation, images are land mines. A politician who uses even a perfect metaphor (far from which was Mr. Stockman's) is asking for a good deal of trouble because, if his judgment is wrong, people will not forget his imagery, nor will they let him forget it. A politician who uses a metaphor ineptly is in worse trouble still, because he will be remembered for being both vivid and confused-a condition not unknown among his peers, but of no personal advantage. The only...
...question is: Would any metaphor have served Mr. Stockman's purpose? A stalking horse, perhaps-the animal that allowed a hunter to hide beneath its belly until he could get close to his quarry. But it would be more than Mr. Stockman intended to suggest that the tax bill was an accomplice to those seeking to devour the people. A snake in the grass, then? No, because a snake would be immediately recognizable as an enemy. Nor could the tax package be described as a fox in a henhouse, a dog in the manger, a bull in a china...
...reason that animal metaphors come to mind at all is that Mr. Stockman seemed to favor them in the Atlantic piece, along with agricultural imagery in general. (His name itself is an agricultural image.) At the news conference, he referred to having grown up on a farm, in order to introduce his metaphor of "a visit to the woodshed" that characterized his discussion with the President. That same farm upbringing may also explain why in the Atlantic interviews he remarked on "bullish forces," "pork barrels," "sacred cows," the closing of a program "cold turkey," the taking "something out of Boeing...
Some of these images are as memorable as Haigspeak. At one point Mr. Stockman mentions the greedy "hogs" who, at another point, were "strung out on a limb." The Trojan horse metaphor is itself a bit mixed...