The retort that Frum was unsuccessfully trying to make is that demagoguery, which is what Rush Limbaugh, Levin, and their ilk regularly engage in, is a sorry substitute for leadership. And, while that may very well be true, wonkery is an even more sorry substitute for leadership. The people don’t want nuance, substance, or even good ideas. They want something they can easily understand in sound-byte form, something that resonates with their simple, innate notions of justice, something they can repeat around the water cooler and feel good about. That’s something that writerly, intellectual types all too frequently miss. And, I hasten to add, it’s exactly what Barack Obama has been able to provide for the Democrats. ~Damir Marusic

I think Damir gets things precisely wrong here. How many times since Obama’s address to Congress have you seen a progressive expressing his satisfaction that the President was speaking to his audience as adults, speaking in full, complex sentences and not insulting their intelligence? I submit that this is not just the conceit of writerly, intellectual progressives, but also reflects something real in Obama’s oratory and hits upon something important about what the public wants from politicians. Obama’s speeches since August have been notable for how forgettable they have been, but this has not been to his disadvantage. It is difficult to think of a line from his convention speech, his Inaugural or the address to Congress that anyone would repeat at a water cooler the following day, but all three of these were reasonably substantive speeches as these things go and all three were fairly well-received. Style, presentation and image may be what matter most for most voters, but incorporating substantive policy in speeches is part of the presentation and improves a politician’s public image, if only because media reports provide favorable coverage (or do not deride the effort as ridiculous) to speakers who put on a display of a certain sort of calm and seriousness.

Most of the voting public may not be deeply engaged in issues qua issues and are not interested very much in the details, but that just confirms that style, presentation and image matter that much more, which makes the demagoguery of radio hosts that much more of a liability for a party and movement deep in the doldrums. Pure wonkery won’t get you very far, but effective orators who can lace their speeches with meaningful references to policy matters outclass their competition. Talented politicians who can combine the two, as Clinton did and Obama does, are formidable opponents, and to compete with them you need something better than a demagogue.

Almost as if he wanted to test the proposition, Jindal gave a response speech that was more or less universally regarded as terrible not simply in its delivery but also in its repetition of boilerplate and its use of more memorable but effectively meaningless phrases (“the American people can do anything!”). Naturally, radio demagogues liked what they heard, because it was the sort of speech they would have given. I would add that the McCain/Palin campaign strategy was an enormous bet that “the people don’t want nuance, substance, or even good ideas,” and they did their best to eliminate all of these things from their campaign. They lost that bet.

Wonks and pundits cannot fill the leadership vacuum that the demagogues are effectively occupying, but demagoguery isn’t going to be able to do anything except rally the rank and file. There is a place for this sort of rallying, and it is unrealistic to expect entertainment created for mass consumption is ever going to provide the sort of complex and qualified arguments that will satisfy wonks, but it cannot become the main form of conservative argument. For one thing, so much of it is not argument, but instead is frequently a series of assertions that make sense only to those who are already in agreement.

Indeed, it is because electoral politics turns not primarily on policy substance, but instead has so much to do with identity and the kind of people with whom voters want to identify that appearances and image matter so much. The argument being made by certain wonks and pundits that the demagogues’ newfound preeminence is bad for the GOP and conservatism is on the whole quite valid. That does not mean that the wonks and pundits can fill the gap, but that they are right that it is crucial–if one wants to build a serious opposition to this administration–that the demagogues not be permitted to take up a central, starring role.