This is how you do it right. (White House photo by Pete Souza)
The first rule an aspiring writer learns in any fiction workshop is, "Don't tell me, show me." You can't create compelling characters just by saying, "Bob was mean" or "Alice was generous." You have to show it, through the the things those characters do and say. And the same goes for candidates trying to craft an appealing persona. Ted Cruz does not seem to understand this, which is why we're probably going to see more stuff like this from him:
In an interview Tuesday on "CBS This Morning," the Texas senator told his TV hosts that he "grew up listening to classic rock" but that that soon changed.
"My music taste changed on 9/11," Cruz said.
"I actually intellectually find this very curious, but on 9/11, I didn't like how rock music responded," he said. "And country music, collectively, the way they responded, it resonated with me."
Cruz's comments came during a lightning round of interviews the morning after he announced his candidacy for president in 2016 in a John Lennon-inspired, "Imagine"-themed speech.
Cruz did not mention any specific country music that resonated with him or which rock artists did not respond well to the terror attacks.
"I had an emotional reaction that said, 'These are my people,'" Cruz said. "So ever since 2001, I listen to country music.
Oh, Ted. That's not how you do it. This telling-not-showing is a lot like the time in 1992 when George H.W. Bush read his thematic notes as though they were the text of a speech and said to a group of New Hampshire voters, "Message: I care." You're not supposed to just come out and say, "My choice of music is an expression of cultural identity that expresses a bond of affinity between myself and certain kinds of Americans." That's supposed to be implied. If you say it explicitly, it sounds incredibly phony.
The "What music do you listen to?" question is always a dangerous one. Not only do politicians tend to be extremely uncool people, but there's no consumer choice we make that is more identity-defining than our music. Every musical artist in the world carries with them a strictly defined set of associations: these are the kind of people who listen to this band, and this is what it says about you if you listen to them. Every teenager knows how critical it is to have a nuanced grasp of how those associations shift, so you can stay abreast and adjust your choices accordingly. For instance, in eighth grade I was totally into Rush, which was reasonably cool because few people in George Washington Junior High listened to Rush; then for some reason in ninth grade everybody was listening to Rush, which meant that they were on the express train out of Coolville, so I stopped listening to them.
Obviously, the fact that we even ask politicians what music they like is kind of ridiculous, since they aren't in fact running for ninth grade class president. But Democrats haven't exactly been deft with the question either. For a long time, when they got asked what was on their iPods (this was back when people had iPods), they would invariably answer "Bruce Springsteen." Springsteen is the perfect choice for a Democrat: working-class cred, all-American, and sufficiently uptempo to say, "I'm not a total square." But after every Democrat says that, it begins to sound phony too, and they don't know where to go beyond that (although President Obama is smart enough to stick with the classics).
Ted Cruz should learn from this that what you're supposed to do isn't to explain the political context behind your alleged love of country music; just say you like country, then drop a couple of artist's names. Then Republican primary voters will say, "Ted Cruz likes Toby Keith? Hey, I like Toby Keith, too! He sounds like a heckuva guy, that Ted Cruz." Bond: forged.