Top Highlights

• The answer is simple: Although my political clients may come from one side of the aisle, what I do is fundamentally nonpartisan. The ideas and principles about effective language I was to share with them in Brentwood that afternoon apply equally to Democrats and Republicans. And, frankly, I wanted to see the inside of Arianna’s house.
• What I presented to that glitterati crowd—and what I proffer to my political and corporate clients every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year (literally)—are the precise tools and insights of political and commercial wordsmithing.
• It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.
• To the average reader, this may appear to be a difference without a distinction. For Powell, the distinction still matters—a lot. To him, decisive meant “precise, clean, and surgical,” whereas overwhelming implies “excessive and numerical.”2 The former is smart and sophisticated. The latter: heavy-handed and brutish.
• Ultimately, it is the professional—the journalists, historians, and academics who translate words into stories—who hold the key to language dissemination. They have to grab people’s attention, and “overwhelming force” just sounds more captivating than “decisive force.” It creates an image in the mind that goes far beyond the dull, policy-based deci...