The Great Spin Machine

By Michael Kinsley

You wouldn't have thought it possible early this year that spin could play an even larger role in American life than it already did. Straight-talking politicians (John McCain) were all the rage, and trendoids assured us that in the larger culture as well, sincerity was in while irony was out. But 2000 turned out to be a milestone year for the Great American Spin Machine. It was no surprise that spin was more copious than ever during the election campaign; it is more copious than ever in every election campaign. What made 2000 a special year for spin was the postelection recount crisis.

Spin is sometimes dismissed as a simple euphemism for lying. But it's actually something more insidious: indifference to the truth. Spinning means describing a reality that suits your purposes. Whether it resembles the reality we all share is an issue that doesn't even arise.

A small example of the distinction between spinning and lying occurred when Dick Cheney had his latest heart attack. George W. Bush told reporters, "Secretary Cheney is healthy. He did not have a heart attack." That would have been a lie if Bush had known otherwise. But his campaign aides said he hadn't been told, which is easy to believe. So it wasn't a lie. It was just spin. Journalists would have leaped on evidence that Bush knew about Cheney's heart attack, but they didn't care that he spoke without knowing anything one way or another. They hate the liar but love the spin.

The belief that politicians are liars is so widely cherished that it is almost part of America's civic religion, along with that stuff about being created equal. But outright whoppers by politicians are fairly rare. Not every year produces a classic like President Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." The lie most discussed in 2000 was Al Gore's alleged claim that he invented the Internet, which is an exaggeration of what he really said and is hardly a central issue anyway.

Americans are right to feel that our political culture is infused with dishonesty. We are obsessed with fibbing about facts because this is less elusive than the real problem, which is intellectual dishonesty. This means saying things you don't really believe. It means starting with the conclusion you wish to reach and coming up with an argument. It means being untroubled by inconsistency between what you said yesterday and what you say tomorrow, or between standards you apply to your side or the other guy's. It means, in short, spin.

The Florida recount was five weeks of spin overload. The sheer volume of the stuff (in the sense of both quantity and noise level) was impressive enough. Consider as well how effortlessly the spin machine handled all the hairpin turns. Every amazing development and reversal in the drama was converted within minutes into two or three talking points for each side to repeat without mercy.

The issues involved in the recount made it a laboratory experiment in spin. Most had enormous partisan consequences but no ideological component. When Republicans and Democrats disagree along party lines about, say, a tax cut, it's at least theoretically possible that everyone involved is expressing carefully considered and sincerely held views. When they become excited about the dangers or benefits of affirmative action, it's not out of the question that their displays of emotion are sincere. But until Nov. 7, there was no obvious liberal or conservative view about manual recounts or absentee-ballot applications. A chad was not a subject to invoke the passions.

So when a vigorous argument about dimples breaks down precisely along party lines, that is a coincidence that requires explanation. The most obvious explanation is that everybody's view on dimples depend on their view about the logically unrelated subject of who should be President. If fate had put Gore and Bush in the other's place on election night, the drama of the next five weeks would have had everybody playing the opposite role. Katherine Harris would have been flexibility personified. Laurence Tribe and David Boies would have been eloquent sticklers for the precise rule of law. Do you doubt it?

Lawyers are, in a way, the fathers of spin. They call it "vigorous representation of my client." The central distinction of spin--between knowingly lying and ignorantly or disingenuously misleading--is a positive ethical obligation of the legal profession. Lawyers are forbidden to do the former and required to do the latter as best they can. This includes what's known as "arguing in the alternative"--the practice, infuriating to lay people, of saying, "My client never stole the money, Your Honor, and anyway, he gave it all to charity."

Lawyers are free, of course, to take any side of a given case and are not restricted in what they say on behalf of today's client by what they may have said on behalf of yesterday's. In recent years, these necessary lawyerly hypocrisies have leached out of the courtroom as lawyers have taken on broader roles and big legal cases have become multifront battlefields. The most important battlefield is often the courthouse steps.

Journalists--truth seekers and cynics that we are--have no tolerance for spin. Right? Well, not exactly. The truth is that journalism has bought into the spin culture. Getting spun is flattering, like being seduced, or like being admitted to the club. And if politicians didn't spin, reporters and pundits would have nothing to interpret and act knowing about.

Every presidential election year, thousands of journalists fly to strange cities to sit in the overflow room and watch on TV the presidential debates they could be watching on TV at home. They do it mainly in order to be in another large room after the debate, where spinners for the candidates recite lines written before the debate about how their clients won the debate. The ritual is so well known and so completely accepted that CNN recently started a nightly program called The Spin Room. Twenty-first century pols and pundits don't mind appearing on a show based on the official premise that whatever they say will be calculated and insincere.

The year 2000 was also a good one for spin in the private sector, where it goes by the name of marketing. For intellectual-integrity buffs, marketing has an advantage over political spin: you can often design the product around the sales message. In other words, reality can come to you. You don't face the Hobson's choice of either following reality wherever it leads (which can put you off-message) or plunging into disingenuousness. But in the age of spin, who is dainty enough to care about the connection between an advertisement and the product it is intended to promote?

Have you seen the ubiquitous TV commercial for the hotel chain where, the ad suggests, every employee is prepared to give a guest detailed strategic advice and encouragement for a forthcoming business meeting? Unlike a more traditional advertising claim--that, say, an angel flies out of a can of cleanser to banish grime with her magic wand--this hotel's claim is not inherently or obviously metaphorical. Yet it's clearly not true--a point that probably didn't even occur to the producers of the ad or 99% of its viewers. The deception is not on purpose; few are deceived. But the process of producing a spin for this hotel chain apparently did not include reality as even a minor consideration.

2000 began with all those Super Bowl dotcom commercials aimed at brand awareness, where you did in fact become aware of the brand. You just had no idea what the brand did. ("ProtoLink: the Enterprise Solution for Internet Strategy. Because the future is where decisions will be made.") And throughout the year there were more and more of those ads for prescription drugs that didn't supply the smallest clue to what disease the miracle drug was supposed to cure. ("Sue, have you tried Protozip? It sure worked for me!" "No, Donna, I haven't, but I'm going to call my doctor today and ask for Protozip." Announcer: "Protozip should not be used by pregnant women or anyone who wears button-down collars. Bankers with a net worth of more than $5 million should consult a doctor before using.")

These ads are naked spin. They don't distort reality; they simply dispense with it. That's why 2000 was the year of spin. It couldn't go further in 2001. Could it?

Michael Kinsley is editor of Slate.com