MONDAY

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Excerpt from Words That Work
• Dr. Luntz's blog on The Huffington Post
• Dr. Luntz' bio

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Dr. Frank Luntz is a respected political pollster and communications consultant who founded the Luntz Research Company back in 1992. Since then, he has consulted for numerous Fortune 500 firms, and is a frequent TV commentator for “NBC News,” among others. His new book is called “Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear.” And I actually like this book, I like it a lot. Frank Luntz, nice to have you here.

Dr. Frank Luntz: It’s a pleasure, thanks.

Tavis: Good to see you. “Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear.” What’s the trick?

Luntz: The trick is to imagine what your audience wants to get out of it, and then put yourself into their shoes. I always hear these stories, try to imagine your audience in their underwear when you're speaking to them, it makes you feel comfortable? Baloney. You wanna imagine what’s going on in their heads. What they expect, what they want.

When they walk out of there, what’s the message you wanna get into their minds? And that’s why I wrote the book. It was to basically say to CEOs, to senators, to even people like yourself, there is a way to communicate more effectively using the right words, the right visuals, the right tone, even the hand gestures.

Bill Clinton’s always like this. His thumb is always up. Not the fist, but he’s got the thumb? It’s a more positive presentation. When I hold my hands like this, wider, I'm inviting the audience to come in. If I'm doing this, I'm basically pushing them away.

Tavis: How do you know what words are right on any given occasion?

Luntz: It’s all based on research. I've now done polling and focus groups in 46 different states. I was on the road 281 days last year, I did 270,000 miles. I'm actually qualified to land planes in about five different cities, (laugh) based on how much flying that I've done. And it’s listening. And what we will do is we will test different phrases.

I’ll throw out one that’s very controversial. Death tax. I found that if you call something an estate tax, about half of Americans wanna get rid of it. If you call that tax an inheritance tax, you can raise it up to 55 or 60 percent that wanna get rid of it. Call it the death tax, 70 percent want to eliminate it. It’s the same tax, but what you call it determines how people react through it.

And so through polling and focus groups and instant response (unintelligible) sessions, where they use meters to react on a second-by-second basis, it’s all based on how the public responds. You and I have a certain lexicon, doesn’t matter, my lexicon is the American people’s lexicon.

Tavis: The Republicans. Let’s talk politics for a second. The Republicans historically, not of late, of course, but historically, certainly in my lifetime, your lifetime, they’ve been better at this word game than Democrats have been. Gingrich was really good at it.

Luntz: He was really good at it. The problem with Newt Gingrich is that too often, he got too angry. And nobody wants to get yelled at. Republicans were effective in the 1990s and early in this decade not just because they had good language, but because they're able to communicate policies and principles that the American people supported.

And the Democrats in response were always angry. They would yell, and even their tonation was very loud. In 2005, 2006, it’s switched. And the Republicans didn’t seem to represent anything. I asked people, I’ll ask you. What did the Republican party stand for in 2006? I can't get an answer from Republican candidates. And if you don't know where you stand and you don't have a message that the public is hearing, then you're not communicating well.

Tavis: Okay, so if you were asking me that question legitimately or rhetorically, my answer would be they stood for freedom and Democracy around the world. It’s up to us to make sure that the terrorists don't win. That’s what their party stood for.

Luntz: Congratulations on being a Republican. That’s better than any of the Republicans I heard. (Laugh) Man, if you wanna come over, I’ll give you $10 right now if you'll sign up. Republicans weren’t communicating anything in 2006, and everyone out there knows it. I'm not saying anything that people haven’t heard. Look, there is more that unites us than divides us.

You and I could go through a list of issues, and while we may disagree on the solutions, we are going to agree on the problems. And in some ways, how to tackle them. The question is, which politicians are those using words that work, using communication that says, let’s not blame. Let’s solve.

Tavis: Let me throw a few words at you that fascinate me, and then I wanna talk about some individuals, and how they use this language. In no particular order, troop surge. How is that, we’re hearing that word – oh, okay, I must have hit a nerve (laugh).

Luntz: No, it was…

Tavis: You fell out of your chair, almost.

Luntz: Troop surge. When you hear the word surge, the next word you think of is escalation, and that leads you to Vietnam. If it’s just about troop numbers, I say this to the Bush administration people. If it’s just about troop numbers, you lose. Because in the end, we don't wanna put more people in harms’ way. If it were about a reassessment and realignment, a reassessment that acknowledges what has gone wrong, learns from what has gone wrong, so you could do it right in the future, and a realignment not just of troops but also of resources, then it becomes a holistic approach, a strategic approach, to the war.

Rather than just how many numbers of American men and women do you have over there? They made a big mistake using that word, and they're paying a price for it.

Tavis: How do you make Welfare sell? How do you sell that word Welfare?

Luntz: Great question. You can’t sell Welfare, but you can sell assistance to the poor. By two to one, the American people think we spend too much money on Welfare. By six to one, they think we too little money on assistance to the poor. What the hell is Welfare. By six to one, they think we too little money on assistance to the poor.

What the hell is Welfare? (Laugh) But the task here is not to demonize Welfare, which is what Republicans did until 1994. It’s to talk about the value of a job. The work ethic. The importance of families, of intact families. When Republicans change from beating up on Welfare queens and attacking how much money was spent on Welfare, and shifted it to a positive approach about how to get people off Welfare, back into work, back into respecting their spouses, and taking care of their childhood responsibilities, it changed all of society.

The number one success, according to the American people, of the GOP for 12 years was Welfare reform. And you know what, they need to do the same thing on immigration, as well. Stop sounding so angry about illegal immigration, and start talking about people in humanistic terms.

Tavis: I've never liked the phrase, although I get why people use it, I've never liked the phrase working poor, 'cause I think if you work, you ought not to be poor. The wages you make for working ought to be something you can live on. Consequently, I've never liked the phrase minimum wage. I prefer living wage. But that’s what I like. It’s been hard to sell, as I see it, living wage.

Luntz: It’s interesting that – and this is something I'm also critical about the – here I am, with – and I acknowledge that I come from the Republican side. And there are plenty of people, a lot more people in the media, that come from the Democratic side and will never admit it. At least you know what my own personal biases are, although hopefully that doesn’t come out in my research.

There's a problem when you raise your own pay as a member of Congress to 150 or $160,000 and you don't vote for an increase in the minimum wage for people who are earning six or $7.00 an hour.

Tavis: For 10 years, no less.

Luntz: And there are arguments, there are very good economic arguments, and I'm a language guy, I'm not an academic. So I'm not gonna engage you in the debate over the minimum wage. But I do know that the American people don't accept how people, how CEOs can make the money they can make at the same time that they're laying off workers, not treating their customers as pleasantly as they should be, and not even responding to shareholders.

At the same time, they're making 20 or 30 or $50 million dollars, and people – and Wal-Mart’s the best example of this – people aren’t making more than a few dollars above minimum wage, and they can’t get healthcare benefits, they get no job security, and they don't even know which hours they're gonna work. Wal-Mart is an example of where corporate America’s gone too far.

We need freedom, we need the free market system, which, by the way, communicates better than Capitalism. Capitalism says there are winners and losers. The free market system says that everyone at least has an opportunity to succeed. But Wal-Mart is an example of Capitalism. And to help their customers, they’ve hurt their employees. And I don't think that’s right.

Tavis: Wal-Mart, my full disclosure, is a sponsor of this program. No, no, no…

Luntz: Now you tell me.

Tavis: No, no, no, (laugh) you…

Luntz: You guys can’t see this, but there are guns that are coming out…

Tavis: No, no, no, no, no.

Luntz: …from the crew people over here.

Tavis: You gotta always stand on your truth, and speak truth to power. That’s not what this program’s all about. I only raise that because – not defending Wal-Mart, because I know what they would say. I've heard it and read it, you know as well as I do. What Wal-Mart would say is that, “We are giving people an opportunity to work. When we come into these depressed communities, there are no jobs. We help to give people an opportunity to,” you know the spiel.

Luntz: And more power to you for doing it. That’s a great thing that they do. I believe that Wal-Mart gives people the chance to buy goods and services that they need at affordable prices. But they have such a high profit, surely they could afford healthcare for their workers.

Tavis: We’ll move off the Wal-Mart thing. Let’s go from Wal-Mart to…

Luntz: I just caused you an awful lot of trouble, didn’t I?

Tavis: No, not at all. No problem at all. You think that’s the first time I've heard a criticism of Wal-Mart (laugh)? That’s not the first time.

Luntz: No, but you did unbutton your jacket. And as someone who’s…

Tavis: No, my jacket was already unbuttoned.

Luntz: As an observer, when you start to shift in your chair, you know that you’ve done – when you said to me, "surge," you saw me go off my chair. When I said, "Wal-Mart," I could see your eyes going (laugh), "Oh my God, why did I have him on the show?"

Tavis: Not at all, not at all. I was surging by moving in my seat 'cause I'm anxious to get to, before these two minutes run out, these names I wanna throw at you. George Bush. Apparently, he and Rove had it right for a long time. What went wrong? Was it just the language, or was it public policy?

Luntz: The American people changed. And you have to stay up with them. The addendum in “Words That Work” talks about the failures of 2005, 2006 very specifically. And what happened was, this administration’s language that it was using so effectively after 9/11 did not work in 2006. the same words that you used five years ago should not be the same language you're using today, because we’re a different country.

Tavis: Okay, but you mentioned Bill Clinton and that thumb. Bill’s irrelevant nowadays. Well, not really, never will be. But Hillary is trying to make herself relevant. What’s the skinny on her language issues?

Luntz: That she is, the conversation. Why is she not having a conversation with “The New York Times?” Why does she not engage in more Q&A with reporters, with interviewers, with audiences? The word conversation is very powerful, just as she went on the listening tour back in 2000. But she needs to be more interactive. She’s got the right language, but it doesn’t embrace enough. It’s not from the heart.

Tavis: What about this Joe Biden meltdown the other day?

Luntz: You gotta tell me. Were you offended by what he – you know his civil rights record?

Tavis: I know his record; I know Joe Biden; I know what Joe Biden was trying to say. But I think that there are rules, to your point, for how to get your message across. It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. In this case, these people, African Americans, when you call them articulate, they don't hear what you thought you were saying. Like it or loathe it, they didn’t hear what you thought you were saying. So you should learn how to talk to Black people.

Luntz: I don't want him to be kicked out of the race because of it.

Tavis: I don't either. I like Joe Biden.

Luntz: He’s one of the smartest candidates there is.

Tavis: Absolutely, I like him.

Luntz: What does he need right now? He needs to issue a plan. He needs to change the topic. And the way that he does it is have a very specific plan on Iraq that is a counterbalance to the Bush administration.

Tavis: Barack Obama.

Luntz: Best communicator out there, because he doesn’t sound like a politician. Because he doesn’t sound like he hires people like me. He’s the only one who doesn’t have to read this book. He talks in stories. He talks about hope and opportunity. It’ll be interesting to me to see how he does in the African American community, because he’s kicking butts in the liberal White community.

Tavis: He’s trailing Hillary two to one inside of Black America.

Luntz: Yes, he is, and that support is not just about her, it’s also about Bill Clinton.

Tavis: Right quick, gotta get some Republicans in. Giuliani.

Luntz: Rudy Giuliani, it’s about results and success. All you have to do with him is forget 9/11, that’s obvious. Forty-Second Street, Times Square, this is a guy who took a city that was on its knees and brought it back to its feet. You can now take your kids there. You can hang out on Times Square at 11:00 PM on a Friday night and not be afraid. New York’s a different place. Imagine if you could do that for New York, what he could do for America?

Tavis: The new book by Dr. Frank Luntz is “Words That Work.” He’s right about this subtitle. “It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear.” Frank Luntz, as always, nice to have you here.

Luntz: Thank you.

Tavis: Good to see you.