Framing the Cabinet Nominations
Creating a breakthrough story about public service and abuse of power.
Trump’s whack-a-doodle cabinet nominations are tempting bait, but if we focus on their personal qualities, we’ll look like we’re still in campaign mode - with similar results. Break-through news has an over-arching moral narrative kept alive by a steady stream of smaller stories. We need to seize this opportunity to tell the stories about what these government agencies mean to the American people and why Trump’s nominations are morally wrong as a whole.
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The Cabinet Nominations Debate
The public debate around Trump’s cabinet nominations has been focused on these people’s personal defects. It’s easy to take the bait, as their defects are both spectacular and newsworthy, but does that get us where we need to go?
What is our strategic mission in this debate?
When we say that “this person is not qualified” or “intends to destroy the department” or “stop it from doing its job,” we cannot assume people already know why that’s wrong. We have to spell it out. People have been exposed to decades of criticism of the federal government, decades of arguments that we would all be better off if these agencies or programs were smaller or did not exist.
People cannot judge Trump’s actions as wrong or judge the actions we would take as right, unless they have some kind of criteria to judge right and wrong. Republicans have provided their criteria: it’s about your taxpayer money, regulations stifling economic growth, government waste, encouraging dependency, and so on.
We need to provide our own moral criteria.
Our mission is to communicate why our federal government agencies matter and why the American people need qualified and honorable people at the helm.
But how do we get “the media” to listen? This is a spectacular and rare opportunity for us to create a huge story. The dumpster-fire nature of the picks draws media attention. It’s up to us to use that attention for our own purposes. We do that by building an over-arching narrative, a grand tale of right and wrong brimming with moral urgency. We provide many smaller stories, each one illustrating and reinforcing the point of the main story – BUT – not all at once. They must come out in a steady stream, optimally one per day, to give the story “legs,” so-to-speak.
Key Frames
Here are the two main ways we want to frame this debate:
Federal government agencies exist to serve the needs of the American people, including protecting us from harm. Putting people in charge of those agencies who would prevent those agencies from doing their jobs hurts the American people and weakens America.
The independent civil service was created to prevent corruption, conflict of interest and abuse of power. People who have expressed an intent to abuse the power of federal government agencies for personal or political gain should not be allowed to run those agencies.
Our Moral Narrative
The agencies of the federal government are staffed by public servants whose commitment is to the American people, not political leaders. Why? Because the government belongs to us. It is the tool we use to get things done. Only by joining together are “we, the people” big enough and strong enough to protect each other from concentrated corporate wealth, criminals, and foreign actors, people who wish us and our country harm.
Each agency or department was created and tasked with providing an important public service, which is why they have been supported and funded by both political parties over the years. Presidents are supposed to choose leaders who are highly qualified and committed to protecting and delivering these services to the American people.
President Trump has chosen people who actively oppose the work of the agencies they are being appointed to run. Why? The obscenely wealthy, global conglomerates, white collar criminals, and foreign agents want our government critically weakened, so that the American people can’t use it to stop those people from harming us.
By appointing people who are only loyal to him, including billionaires, corporate lobbyists, convicted criminals, TV personalities and people with suspicious ties to foreign countries, Donald Trump is telling the American people, “This government belongs to me and my friends, not to you.”
What Trump doesn’t seem to understand is that the authority of elected officials like him is granted to them by the people on the condition that it only be used for the public good. It is not to be used for personal gain, whether that is the scapegoating of vulnerable populations; the persecution of journalists, judges, or your political opposition; or the financial benefit of yourself or your friends.
Four years from now, Trump and his friends will be billions of dollars richer. They will bleed us dry and leave America weak and vulnerable to bad actors here and across the globe.
This is the moral narrative into which we need to feed a daily diet of specific examples, explaining what each department or agency does, why it matters, and how it hurts all of us to have it weakened. For this, we need the help of our allies in the policy and issue advocacy communities.
A note to our policy people:
I know you are often focused on what these agencies and programs are doing wrong, or should be doing that they are not now doing. Please think about what would happen if they were to stop functioning entirely, and help us all describe to the American people, not just what they stand to lose as individuals, but why this would be morally wrong.
Example: The Department of Health and Human Services
We have a Department of Health and Human Services because the American people decided that we should use our government to protect each other’s health and physical safety. That’s why we pool our resources to invest in things that we can’t do as individuals or that the private sector fails to do.
The Department of Health and Human Services includes the Food and Drug Administration, whose workers make sure that the food we eat is safe and that the drugs that we take actually work. It includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who track the spread of infectious diseases and do their best to protect us from outbreaks. It includes the National Institutes of Health, who conduct billions of dollars of medical research into diseases that effect millions of Americans, like cancer and Alzheimer’s, research that also drives innovation in our entire medical industry.
It may be true that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a total wing-nut, but what really matters here is not that he thinks he has a brain worm, but that he not only disregards the conclusions of the entire scientific community, he replaces their sound judgment with ideas of his own that are not based on evidence.
The ability of the Department of Health and Human Services to keep us safe from things like contaminated food or infectious diseases, depends on maintaining the highest possible standards for scientific testing and evidence.
If we want to make this into a real story, we should be doing the hard work of describing every way in which HHS makes us safe, and in every case, how that safety depends on scientific testing and evidence, and how having that Department run by someone who disregards testing and evidence puts us in danger in very specific ways.
We should jump on every news story in every one of these areas to tie it back to our bigger narrative, just as some people are now connecting the story of Bird Flu found in raw milk with Kennedy Jr.’s advocacy of raw milk. What’s important is that we don’t stop with making the connection and just assume that people will fill in the blanks. They won’t. We have to say “out loud” what the FDA does and how we would all be in danger if they were unable to do it. In this case, we should tell the story of why raw milk was banned and how the Bird Flu was identified, with all the human details.
Language Notes:
Say “nominations,” not “appointments.”
Say “government agencies,” “independent civil service,” and “public servants.”
Say “corruption,” “conflict of interest” and “abuse of power” for “personal gain.”
The term “science” alone doesn’t resonate with people. What we mean is a process of learning through repeated “testing” and coming to conclusions based on “evidence.”
Instead of “conspiracy theories,” say ideas that have “no evidence to support them” or that “tests have shown to be wrong.”
The terms “experts” and “expertise” and “education” have also become associated with elitism. On the other hand, everybody wants decisions made by people with the right “training” and “experience.”
Also, NEVER USE ACRONYMS unless it is absolutely unavoidable! Terms like “health,” “human services,” and “disease control” trigger existing concepts in people’s brains. Letters like H, S, C and D do not activate anything.
The Bottom Line
Trump’s nominees and their confirmation hearings are a tailor-made opportunity to create a sustained national story over the next several months.
We have to find and tell stories about specific examples, including how real people have been impacted and, in every case, bring it back to the over-arching themes of public service and keeping people safe versus corruption and abuse of power for political and financial gain. We have to do this over and over again, finding and telling stories for every division of every department, for every nominee.
Journalists don’t have time to do all of this work themselves. They’re not lazy. Profit motives and slashed budgets have made it impossible. There are many more of us, and some of us are even experts in these areas. If we want those stories out there, we have to hand it to journalists with 90% of the work already done and distribute it ourselves through all our own platforms and social media properties.
We can create a major story that lasts and has impact, but we have to do the work.
Thank you for reading and for everything that you do!
In solidarity, always,
Antonia
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Contact me at antonia@antoniascatton.com or (202) 922-6647
If you haven't read it yet, this amazing series in the Washington Post about the hidden heroes of the federal government is a great read!
https://ourpublicservice.org/blog/who-is-government-series-the-washington-post-event-recap/
I'm looking into this! I am not trained in journalism but I have a pretty strong suspicion that there are a bunch of people who are in our community. I'll be reaching out to see if I can get some people to do this!