This explains a lot:
There’s a funny thing about [Scott Walker]: The governor has a curious verbal tic—well known among some Walker watchers but largely ignored by everyone else—where, well, he says yes to everything.
Ask him a question at a press conference or in a gaggle, and he’ll bob his head up and down while saying something like “Yeah” or “Yeah, absolutely.” He says that the way other people might say “Um,” or “Listen,” or “Hmm.” It’s a filler word.
But here’s the thing: Not everyone knows that.
I had sort of picked up on it. Which is to say there were two back-to-back cases where everyone looked at what he said and drew a completely different conclusion than I did. The first instance was the Birthright Citizenship question, where the “Yeah” was followed by what looked to me like an evasion of the question and a desire to speak in generalities rather than answer the question asked. But everyone reported it as “Scott Walker wants to repeal the 14th Amendment.” And I couldn’t say otherwise[1], because as much as a lot of people want to pretend otherwise a desire to repeal birthright citizenship is, by any reading of popular opinion, a political mainstream opinion. It’s one I disagree with and more than that it’s a position that would make me less likely to vote for a person who supports it, but it wouldn’t have surprised me that it was Walker’s position. He later said it wasn’t.
But however non-surprising I might have found that position to be, the notion that Walker would even rhetorically support a Canadian Wall was not credible to me and a quick reading of what was said demonstrated it as much. Really, Walker’s argument didn’t even make sense on his critics’ own terms. He hates Mexicans so much he wants to build a wall to keep out Canadians? That’s a weird pander. If he had stuck by it, I would have guessed it would have had more to do with not wanting to seem racist by shrugging and saying “Sure, let’s keep out white people, too, because border and I’m not racist.” But he didn’t stick by the comment and it once again seemed to me there was some midwestern agreeableness going on along with saying “Yeah” at the top. From the Daily Beast article:
“[P]art of this may be due to Walker’s unfortunate verbal tic where he answers questions with what appears to be an affirmative before giving his intended answer,” Sykes wrote on Right Wisconsin. “If a reporter approached him at the Paducah County Fair and asked Walker if he supported a federal plan to beat baby whales to death with the bodies of baby whales, Walker might reply, ‘Yeah…. But what we should focus on is returning power to the states and the …’”
Sykes should know. He’s one of the single most powerful conservative voices in the Badger State, and estimates he’s interviewed Walker hundreds of times since his early days in the State Assembly.
“We joke about it all the time,” he told The Daily Beast. “It’s almost like a parlor game: What did you get him to say yes to, initially? Anything!”
And perhaps this is why I ended up coming a bit to Walker’s defense. It wasn’t because I liked the candidate. If I an open to his getting the nomination it’s basically by figuring he will lose and it would be better for the party for him to lose than Jeb to lose. Honestly, Michael Drew’s comments about Walker being out of his depth in the national stage have rung true and I find myself not having a whole lot of reason to think about him, much less fear him. But I actually find myself coming to his defense because… well, I have a similar verbal tic.
I, too, say “Yeah” or “Yes” or even “sure” before saying what I intend to say which can completely contradict what I just said “Yeah” to. It’s less a verbal stall – though it may be that a little – and more an acknowledgement of polite “I gotcha.” I have actually been known to say “Yeah, no I don’t agree with that at all.” Some people want to build a wall to block off Canadians? “Yeah, [let me tell you what I think about that].” Now, in my case, I might say something to the effect of “Yeah, I understand that some people are really considered about border security to the north, but while I don’t even believe a wall blocking off Mexico is an especially good idea I believe it’s a really bad one to try to block off Canada.”
That’s not what Walker did, of course. Walker avoided answering the question, which added undue importance to the verbal tic. Of course, Walker is a politician and he has to be careful in what he says and so it’s understandable that he would fall into a trap I’d be at least modestly more likely to clear. But… he’s a politician, and this is definitely exposing a weakness of his. Journalists may be aching to get him to agree to just about anything to get a good story (rather than accurately assess his views), but at some point Walker himself needs to account for that. He’s not. And while I think he’s getting too much criticism for holding views that it seems apparent he doesn’t affirmatively hold, that itself should give any waffling Republican primary voter pause. Because it’s not going to magically go away if he secures the nomination.
[1] Except to say that “Terminating birthright citizenship” is not the same thing as “Repealing the 14th Amendment.” That this was the accepted framing is, like the notion that ending birthright citizenship is an outrageous position, an indication of a disconnect between popular opinion and people with a license to actually be heard.
{Feature Image adapted from this photo by WisPolitics.com}
Yeah, Walker comes off times like a babblng 16 year old who doesn’t know the answer to a question. I’ve seen a couple clips of him looking just like the worst public speaker ever. And other times he just really avoids answering questions directly. But he really hates unions, but does he ever hate them. As you say if this his habit and he knows it yet keep getting wapped for it then it’s his fault.
General: President Walker, should we launch this strike?
Walker: Yeah….blah blah
strikes launches
Walker: wait i didn’t tell you to do that.Report
Any general who would launch and attack where President Walker says “Yeah, military readiness in important” would be at fault in that scenario…Report
Yeah way to defend President Walker…..geeeeeeezzzReport
Unless the general was Soviet, in which you could blame translation difficulties.
[Referencing Reagan’s famous gaffe where he said (in a sound test) that they were launching nuclear weapons — while a soviet spy was in the room. There was some alarm in the Kremlin from this incident.]Report
That is such a Midwest thing.
Of course, it also reminds me of Bill Lumbergh, and that alone would turn me off of him.Report
Yeah, I also thought of Lumberg. If Walker could just go ahead and stop that, that would be great.Report
I live in the midwest, and I’ve never noticed this tic.
I do agree that NY or Boston would eat a politician alive who dared to have this tic. Midwest Nice, anyone?Report
Pittsburg is Midwest if you squint real hard and tilt your head kinda funny.Report
It’s west of the Appalachians.
It’s pop, not soda.
The pancakes are as flat as crepes.
It’s Midwest, and Pittsburgh is spelled with an “h”… the other one is in California (and apparently every other state, practically)Report
I remember reading an article about the evolution of starting sentences with, “Yeah, no…” It claims that “Yeah” didn’t always mean “Yes” or something.Report
Interestingly, “yeah” has meant yes since before “yes” was a word in English. What’s more, it’s meant yes since before there was any sort of English. It may even be where “yes” comes from:
http://blog.oup.com/2014/12/etymology-affirmations-yes-yea-yeah-yep-aye/Report
I’m not going to read that, so that I can continue to believe that “yes” is just a misspelling of “yeahs.”Report
“Yeah” certainly has far more possible inflections and implications than the more clipped, definitive “yes” does. An emphatic “Yeah!” means enthusiastic assent. “Yeah”, drawn out, may either mean assent; reluctant assent with some insouciance or sass thrown back; or even an implied questioning of a request or question’s embedded assumptions, as a sarcastic prelude to answering “no” (“Yeah….that’s just not going to happen.”)
There are sorrowful “yeah”‘s, sympathetic “yeah”‘s. You could write a whole book on the varied uses of “yeah” in rock songs. It’s apparently also a good word to use in meetings (perhaps due to the flexible word’s inherent ambiguity, it fosters the impression of consensus? If so, one can see why a politician would want to use it a lot.)
But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. – Matthew 5:37, KJVReport
True story: Paul McCartney’s father asked him why they couldn’t use more correct English and sing “she loves you, yes, yes, yes, yes”.Report
Gramatically-correct “Won’t Get Fooled Again” would be a very different song.
Also, I read this a while back and it stuck with me (it would, since Richard Butler is one of my favorite rock singers), and it mentions that Beatles song too:
Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a link to one of my favorite Clean tracks, which seems determined to maximize, if not satirize, the ultimate trio of sometimes-ambiguous affirmations in rock and life: “O.K.”, “Alright”, and “Oh yeah”.
https://youtu.be/24Ub4vMCtJIReport
I was a Flower of the mountain yeah when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yeah and how he kissed me under the Moorish Wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yeah and then he asked me would I yeah to say yeah my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yeah and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yeah and his heart was going like mad and yeah I said yeah I will Yeah.Report
Nicely done Jaybird. (Man, even with the substitutions that passage sends the tinglies right thru me.)Report
I get it, but you need to have, “Yeah, no” (like in your headline here) in your repertoire if this is your thing. (Even if you’re from the Midwest.) Like, for the times they’re asking on camera if building a wall on the U.S.-Canada border seems like a good idea. You’ve got to be able to get that “No” out there promptly after your throat-clearing Yeah.
Added bonus: you sound a bit more with-it verbally, as “Yeah, no” is a relatively recent innovation in slightly condescending political snark (is that redundant?).Report
Well the way he phoned it in at the debate suggests that it doesn’t matter and he’ll just be a Badger state problem instead of a national one.Report
I don’t lament the result but he kinda got hosed. He got two questions all night long and was forced to interrupt to speak any more.Report
So was everyone; that was the format. Granted he didn’t get a lot of questions but why should he get more? His polling is rock bottom and he’s boring. He needed to be shaking things up and throwing elbows because his campaign is on the verge of collapsing.
Now if he, Kasich* and Rubio go down and fizzle out I’m going to be an awfully happy camper as they were the candidates I am most uneasy about for the general.
*Though, it bears noting, Kasich actually appears to be an actual human being and a sensible right wing politician instead of an empty vessel made to channel the will of the right wing elite or the seething right wing masses.Report
Walker actually got hosed more than anyone else. The least speaking to me, and he only got what he did because he inserted himself.
It was a bad format all around, but Walker took the brunt of it.Report
I would probably be more indignant if I wasn’t so pleased on a partisan level to see him fizzling. If Rubio had crashed and burned too I’d probably have ended up wearing a lampshade on my head at the end of the debate.Report
These formats seem to suit Rubio, and Fiorina. Trump took his lumps, but he likes to wallow it in anyway. The format doesn’t do Carson and favors and Bush is always underwhelming at them. (when Bush does show passion, he usually creates a soundbite that can be used to mock him, i.e. ‘George kept us safe’ – though the mockery is almost always from the left)Report
Rubio seemed to hold his own though he didn’t break out. That’s better than Bush did. I agree the format definitely lent itself to Fiorina and Trump.Report
North, just this morning I felt, on a deep and mysterious level, as if transmitted via a supernatural political Power beyond knowing or description, that Rubio is not only not dead in the water, but that we’re gonna see a real Surge in his support. And soon. He’ll become a real Playa.
And then the trance-mission ended.Report
That makes me quite unhappy Stillwater. I would very much not like to see Rubio get the nomination. He’s as mendacious as the rest of them but has a lot of marketable surface attributes and some good ability to obfuscate his flaws.Report
Also, using Phil Collins’ earworm “Sussudio” as his campaign theme was a stroke of marketing genius.Report
Report
Garrison Keillor had a sketch about two Minnesotans arguing, where each one always began with “Yeah, but…”. If they’d been having a formal debate, it would have consisted entirely of yeahbuttal.Report
Booo! Minus five points to Gryffindor!Report
Minnesota’s portrayal in Grey’s Anatomy made me more open to living there.Report
As long as you don’t mind moderately cold winters* Minnesota is -the- place to live.
*YMMV I hailed from Nova Scotia so for me the winters in MN were a step up.Report
And if you do mind ’em, come to Pittsburgh…Report