Akkam’s Razor

Slate:

[As] a crowd bludgeon in modern political speechmaking, “my friends” can be laid at the feet of one man: William Jennings Bryan. His famed 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic National Convention invoked the phrase a mind-crushing 10 times. Inveighing against “those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below,” Bryan declared, “My friends, the question we are to decide is: Upon which side will the Democratic party fight; upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital or upon the side of the struggling masses?” Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” is historically considered to be among the most viscerally powerful speeches ever made by an American politician, with one New York World journalist reporting the crowd’s reaction as “tumult—hills and valleys of shrieking men and women.” The temptation to bottle that kind of lightning again is alluring.

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McCain falls neatly into line: Roughly every generation since FDR, a candidate resurrects “my friends.” But while used in its first few decades by good or great orators, it’s notable that in the last half-century it’s been exclusively resorted to by the worst orators in our presidential races.

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Perhaps that’s why this Foghorn Leghorn-ish turn of phrase also finds popularity among conservative populists. Since its last major outing in 1989, the phrase’s most notable public users have been Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan, who deployed it six times in his 1992 RNC “culture war” speech. This was the hectoring strain of “my friendism” also favored by 1930s radio demagogue Father Charles Coughlin, and it’s in these less nuanced uses that the phrase’s dynamic becomes clearer: There’s an implicit aggression originating in the singular form of the phrase. Generally, when someone not personally known to you addresses you as “my friend,” the safe assumption to make is that he is not your friend. In the American vernacular, “my friend” precedes a punch in the face.

And from WaPo:

John McCain cupped a fist and began pumping it, up and down, along the side of his body. It was a gesture familiar to a participant in the closed-door meeting of the Senate committee who hoped that it merely signaled, as it sometimes had in the past, McCain’s mounting frustration with one of his colleagues.

But when McCain leaned toward Charles E. Grassley and slowly said, “My friend . . .” it seemed clear that ugliness was looming: While the plural “my friends” was usually a warm salutation from McCain, “my friend” was often a prelude to his most caustic attacks. Grassley, an Iowa Republican with a reputation as an unwavering legislator, calmly held his ground. McCain became angrier, his fist pumping even faster.

It was early 1992, and the occasion was an informal gathering of a select committee investigating lingering issues about Vietnam War prisoners and those missing in action, most notably whether any American servicemen were still being held by the Vietnamese. It is unclear precisely what issue set off McCain that day. But at some point, he mocked Grassley to his face and used a profanity to describe him.

Also from WaPo:

“It comes out from him in a way that — at least to me — comes across as sincere,” says John Geer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University, who suggests the phrase reinforces McCain’s accessibility. “You could see going up to shake his hand, maybe give him a brief hug.”

“It reads as an age marker, because I don’t think anybody under the age of 50 has ever used the term,” says Roderick Hart, the dean of the college of communication at the University of Texas at Austin.

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