I have heard, from somewhere, a strange saying: "Fine words butter no parsnips." First of all, I have no idea from which origin it springs (it is much easier to spot the nautical-reference sayings such as 'cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey') and secondly I have never used it because I don't know what it means to butter parsnips. It must be my working class upbringing: as a kid we never had parsnips, either buttered or unbuttered.
The clue to the use of this saying though is in the the first two words. Indeed, the first two fine words.
We may not know buttered parsnips but we do know fine words. We know them aplenty, because we have whole tranches of people who use fine words. They are taught, as much as anyone is taught anything these fine days, to come up with a memorable 'sound bite' or resonant phrase that will catch people's attention. I admit this is a tough job: in these fine days people's attention wanders all too easily. Bravely though, people try.
These memorable sayings that pithily capture what the nation is feeling (or more to the point, ought to be feeling) are wrapped in longer, stirring and approved speeches. better still there are some glowing words and phrases around those great little aphorisms. take some our present leaders. They read these stirring words from teleprompters and deliver them so well you love the speaker even more than what they are saying.
On this matter, I do recall an episode in the West Wing, that wet-fest of liberal thinking politics and moralising government, where a member of the 'opposition' (not the enemy as president Jed Bartlett once admonished his otherwise brilliant staff) was seen in a brief news clip agreeing that while the 'president' had indeed made a fine speech that was all he did. This carping Republican's screen time was over as soon as he said those words, but we the audience knew in our heart of hearts that was what the sainted Jed did so well. The man gave not just wonderful speeches, not just great speeches but truly uplifting speeches that inspired society to change.
Now I am not stupid most of the time and I do know this was television, and like a lot of US television you had to concertina greatness into 44 minutes running time. We tended therefore to only get bits of his great speeches, but as model for our up and coming politicians it was enough. Forget that it was fantasy TV, the future leaders and we the ones to be led could all use good speechwriters like, er Aaron Sorkin to tell the truths that would gently rock society to a better world.
The odd thing by the way was that the West Wing didn't need long speeches to inspire its workers to correct the world. The talented cast of this show was deeply into promoting a government where everyone in it was so good they knew from a casual comment what they must do to make the world better. Essentially, someone said there was a problem and the team was told to fix it, so they all -- with one mind set so finely tuned they knew what everyone else in the White House was thinking -- beetled off to sort whatever problem it was that week.
In the meantime, in the real world, the speechmakers began to churn out memorable stuff for their puppy dog bosses. And if it wasn't memorable, there would lots of other things in the speech in the hope that maybe something else was memorable. MacMillan's 'Wind of Change' and Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speeches might not have earned the plaudits quite like Churchill's 'Fight them on the beaches' speech did but they were closer to greatness than Clinton's 'I did not have sex with that woman' or Cameron's puzzling 'Big society' outpouring.
It is sobering that some people are remembered for what they didn't say more than what they did say, and a lot of people are remembered for not saying much at all. But it doesn't stop our leaders trying to come up with the defining, life-enhancing, world-changing fine words that will inspire us to... um... To....Oh I know, vote for them next time round if not quite butter any parsnips.
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