Trump uses ‘common sense’ to make a political point: NPR

The notion of “common sense” has been at the heart of American politics since the founding of the United States. Politicians still use this phrase all the time – and perhaps none more so than President Trump.

This month, at a Cabinet meeting, he used the phrase when he again recommended that pregnant women not take Tylenol.

“There’s something going on and we need to do something about it. And so, I’m dealing with it as best I can as a non-doctor, but I’m a man of common sense,” he said.

He also used the term when questioning CNBC’s monthly jobs report in August: “It’s totally rigged. Smart people know that. Sensible people know that.”

The White House has also used it to explain the current government shutdown.

“Not enough Democrats voted for this clear, common-sense resolution to keep the government open,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt recently told NPR. Morning edition.

This isn’t really new. “Common sense” is such a widely used political phrase that Sophia Rosenfeld, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote an entire book about it. And yet, she says, Trump’s use of it is unique.

“He uses it more than almost anyone else in American politics,” she said. “Although, of course, its origin is very ancient.”

It dates back to Thomas Paine, in his 1776 pamphlet “Common Sense,” who argued to early Americans that British rule over the colonies was wrong. And in this, she said, Paine had found the populist appeal of the phrase.

“It evokes a kind of primordial fundamental feeling of ordinary people, a kind of lived experience that should transcend the official or elitist position on something and that should in particular transcend book learning and school learning,” she said.

And Trump often invokes this dichotomy between common sense and academic intelligence.

Speaking to military leaders in Quantico, Virginia, last month, Trump differentiated his administration from Joe Biden’s, saying Biden was surrounded by “radical left lunatics who are brilliant people but stupid as hell when it comes to policy and common sense.”

The phrase appeals more to several demographics that strongly align with Trump, says Frank Luntz, a longtime Republican strategist.

“Common sense is a higher priority for those living in rural communities than for those in urban areas. Common sense is more effective among older voters than among younger voters,” he said. “And I think the reason is that it reminds people of a simpler past.”

And that naturally appeals to those who want to make America great again.

But Democrats also use this expression. President Barack Obama tried to pass what he called “common-sense gun reform.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., used it this year during her Fighting Oligarchy tour with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

“I believe that in the richest country in the history of the world, if a person gets sick, they shouldn’t go bankrupt. That’s common sense,” she told a crowd at Arizona State University in March.

One way to think about “common sense” is to try to signal that a policy is not extreme and might have broad appeal.

But as Luntz points out, it can also be a stick, especially in Trump’s hands.

“For him, common sense has an even broader meaning,” he said. “It’s not just that you’re right for the right reasons. It’s also that the other side has to be wrong because they’re ideological, political or outside the mainstream.”

Rosenfeld has a similar view.

“It’s also potentially quite demagogic,” she says of the expression. “Nor does common sense suggest that there is another side. The other side of a common sense debate is nonsense.”

And in this and other senses, common sense can be considered one of the most powerful rhetorical elements the MAGA movement has found.

For Rosenfeld, Trump particularly uses the phrase to try to excuse norm-breaking behavior — such as in a September social media post that Chicago was “about to find out why they call it the War Department.”

Here’s how Trump explained it to a reporter: “We’re going to clean up our cities. We’re going to clean them up so they don’t kill five people every weekend. It’s not a war, it’s common sense.”

“Common sense” makes policy ideas seem outdated, even if the policy – ​​mass deployment of the National Guard in American cities – was previously unthinkable.