This article is an online-only supplement to the Prospect's recent profile of the Rev. Al Sharpton. You can read the profile here.
Sharpton, the latest entrant in the Democratic presidential field, generates press by generating controversy. Whatever you may think of the man himself, one thing is clear: He will talk circles around the rest of the Democratic candidates. What follows is a list of the rhetorical strategies Sharpton has used in the past -- and will undoubtedly use against his fellow Democrats in the months to come.
I. The Inversion of Experience:
Turning someone else's achievements into a negative while making your own failures into a positive -- now that's a virtuoso political move. Sharpton is a master of it, and if he can score bonus points by adding race to the mix, he'll do that, too. "Other people don't get the same questions that I do," Sharpton writes in Al on America, his second book. "No one asks, how can the Democratic Senator from North Carolina run for president? He didn't even finish his first term in Congress. Why does he think he can win? Because white males have no ceiling on their ambition in this country. No one ever questions their aspirations."
Now, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and President George W. Bush might be surprised to hear that no one ever questions their aspirations. After all, the first thing the Republican National Committee did after Edwards recently declared his candidacy was release a statement asserting, "EDWARDS IS UNACCOMPLISHED AND 'NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME.'" Readers also may recall Democratic criticism of Gov. Bush (R-Texas) as inexperienced and unqualified during the 2000 presidential campaign (and this about a man who, for all his faults, had twice been elected governor of a populous state).
But not to fear: Sharpton can transform Edwards' electoral accomplishment -- winning a Senate seat in conservative North Carolina and serving two years in Congress -- into a disqualifying lack of experience. At the same time, he can also claim that his own inability to win voters' hearts and minds -- failing to win even a nomination any of the three times he's run for office -- makes him uniquely qualified as a man-of-the-people candidate. "I'm qualified, probably more qualified than any other person who is expected to be on the Democratic ticket for 2004, because I actually have a following and I speak for the people," Sharpton said on Jan. 3.
Sharpton is using the same tack against former Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.). "There's probably more people in Harlem than in the state of Vermont put together," Sharpton told me in late December, comparing Dean's accomplishments as governor with his own work in New York City's Harlem. But Sharpton is not the elected official representing the people of Harlem; Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) is.
II. The Appeal to Authenticity:
Memoir has been the most popular narrative form of recent years and Sharpton, a self-professed student of former President Ronald Reagan's leadership strategies, loves a good anecdote. Again and again he falls back on the authority of direct experience. And he doesn't just borrow from his own private life, either. Instead, he seeks out hot button issues and makes sure he gets an on-the-ground view. "I have been to the Middle East," Sharpton writes. "I have seen with my own eyes what is going on there. I have met with common folk and national leaders. President George W. Bush has never been to the Middle East." When Sharpton went to Cuba, he treated his own observations on human-rights abuses as important evidence. "I personally saw none," he wrote in his book.
III. The Subject Change:
It's a classic debater's strategy that Sharpton has mastered like few others. "There are those who have called me an anti-Semite," he writes in Al on America. But rather than going on to address the charge, he deflects it outward: "No, real anti-Semitism was on display between the President Richard M. Nixon and the Rev. Billy Graham . . . Until America deals with this, I don't want to hear any more about black leaders being anti-Semitic."
Asked by Tim Russert on Meet the Press if the current Sharpton campaign had raised money before filing papers with the Federal Election Commission -- a page soliciting donations on the Sharpton Explore 2004 Web site suggested it had -- Sharpton turned the question around. "We are not in fundraising mode as of yet," he said. "To be preoccupied with money rather than message is wrong." Sharpton took the question of whether or not he could follow basic campaign laws and turned it into a statement about the high-minded pursuit of principle that other candidates had abandoned in order to grub for money. A shrewd move.
IV. The Elaborate Excuse:
This can, by turns, be Sharpton's most disturbing and most unintentionally hilarious rhetorical gambit. Often it involves redescribing one of his many controversy-generating actions as the simple result of a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-style naïveté. For example, what began as a sympathetic post-September 11 trip to Israel to meet victims of terrorism turned into controversy after Sharpton shook hands with Yasir Arafat and was photographed walking arm-in-arm with the Palestinian leader. As Sharpton described it: "As I was leaving Arafat's compound, the press was still hovering. Arafat walked me out. He trembles a little because he has Parkinson's, so he walked holding my arm for balance."
V. The Appeal to History:
Sharpton, a college dropout and voracious reader, has an autodidact's sense of history. As such, he often laces his speeches with references to the 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing, A. Philip Randolph, sit-ins, arrests and slavery. The more emotionally fraught the historical moment, the better it is as resonant metaphoric language through which to describe the present. Mexican immigrants are only allowed into America "as long as they agree to be slaves or the closest thing to a slave that you can be," he writes. In December, he told the members of his civil rights organization, the National Action Network, that the Democrats see black voters as "political property" and little more than "chattel."
VI. The Sexual Metaphor:
This is a subset of the appeal to history, frequently laden with allusions to the abuse of female slaves. "The Democratic Party acts like we are their mistress that they have to hide, like we're some political scarlet whore rather than their respected partner," Sharpton writes. "Either we're going to have a healthy marriage or we're getting a divorce and marrying someone who will respect us. We will no longer allow ourselves to be screwed by the Democrats."
VII. If All Else Fails, Call in the Lawyers:
When HBO aired footage last summer of a young Sharpton nodding along in apparent agreement with an undercover FBI operative proposing a massive cocaine deal, Sharpton threatened a $1 billion lawsuit against the cable network, alleging defamation. More recently, he's had his lawyer publicly demand an apology from Shannon Reeves, the Republican head of the Oakland, Ca., branch of the NAACP, after The Washington Times reported that Sharpton had reneged on a speaking engagement to the civil rights organization in order to take a more lucrative gig elsewhere. Sharpton denies the charges.
Garance Franke-Ruta is an associate editor at the Prospect.
