The Grammar of Politics

The impeachment process could have used a little assistance from Schoolhouse Rock.

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What this moment calls for is a Schoolhouse Rock video that blends civics education, a la “I’m Just A Bill,” with “Conjunction Junction”-style grammar lessons. Why? Because deconstructing sentences and examining their elements is an excellent way to find clarity in a time of political uncertainty.

To wit: The moment the House impeachment charge came out (the more recent one, I mean), I had an uneasy feeling. The source of my discomfort was not constitutional or legal. It was grammatical. Take the following two sentences:

A.  Donald Trump incited a mob to storm the Capitol.

B.  A mob, incited by Donald Trump, stormed the Capitol. 

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  1. David S

    "He didn’t tell them to storm the Capitol! That point is hugely debatable, of course, but it left his defenders an opening"

    I'm sorry, but no. Flat out no. In an article about the importance of accuracy and grammar, you can't have a sentence like this. I read the speech from start to finish, and he did not tell his supporters to storm the Capitol. He said about 100 different morally abhorrent things, you shouldn't have to imply things he factually didn't say.

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    Antebellum Whig

    The purpose of the active voice here is not merely stylistic; it's to underscore that Trump was the morally responsible agent who caused the riot; he didn't merely make some statements which the mob got carried away with.

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    1. Midge

      Right, but enough people did see it (or did *want* to see it) as Trump merely making some statements the mob got carried away with, diminishing his culpability, but not necessarily by enough to avoid conviction on impeachment once you add in he did not do enough to stop the mob once he knew what it was doing.

      I don't know what Democrats were thinking, and if they were convinced the trial would end in acquittal already, then why not go for the pithy, morally clear statement? But if they *were* looking at possible conviction to give the country moral clarity, a statement Republicans might feel better agreeing to might have helped. So might have using a word like "inflamed" rather than "incited" since "incited" distractingly appears to drag legalese into the mix (it of course does not *have* to, but it predictably did).

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  3. V Addeman

    Sentence diagramming is a fading, if not yet wholely lost, art. I used to be good at it but even now that latent skill helps me make sense and nonsense of what I read and hear. It really is important where you place words. 'I only have five minutes to spare' is not the same as 'only I have five minutes to spare.'

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  4. Rational

    They might have tried something less offensive to good writing, and more consistent with the law. For instance: "The proximate cause of the storming of the Capitol was Donald Trump's speech at the Ellipse and other activities focused on delegitimizing the electoral process."

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    JCroz

    This is a fascinating (and slightly whimsical) perspective. Active/passive voice definitely shade meanings in subtle ways... In science and engineering, it’s used to exclude the experimenter from view, leaving a tacit impression that this highly idiosyncratic human being is a sort of bloodless operator. No facts are actually changed, but the mental picture of the experiment is different.
    The active-voice charge shows Trump, whip in hand, driving the mob to the Capitol.
    In passive voice, it’s more like Trump wound up a toy and then let it go to see what it would do.

    No facts are different, but the impression is very distinct...

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    Pat Riot

    People need to understand that an impeachment is a disciplinary action, not a criminal trial. It is akin to a company performing a trial in order to discipline its CEO.

    And as such, it is not a legal proceeding, but a political one. The Senators are only bound to their office--ultimately, the voters--in terms of their decision.

    43 Republican Senators sided with Donald Trump in the 1/6 attacks, and told the country that they would be more than happy for him to run for president again. That's all there is to this.

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    1. Rational

      Respectfully, that is not exactly right. The process is something of an amalgam of a legal proceeding and a political process. The Constitution talks about the Senate being the "jury," and says that the Senate can "convict" for "high crimes and misdemeanors." Exactly what that means is a little up for grabs, but there is no question that it has more attributes of a criminal trial than the daily activities of the Senate.More importantly, each Senator takes an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, which also means abiding by its limits. The issue of whether the Senate has the authority to ban a person from high office after he or she is out of the office is far from obvious. People of good faith have different interpretations. For my part, I agree with the interpretation that says barring someone from office is to support the removal power. In any case, there is a lot here that is as much about law as politics.

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        Pat Riot

        But it's a "jury", and not a jury. In other words, a "jury" that has no Constitutional or legal rules about how it is conceived and managed. The Senate has plenary power over how the trial is run: they could vote for secret ballots or that everybody wear cowboy hats. *That* is what the actual Constitution says, so every Senator is abiding by it's limits when they vote to arrange the trial the way they want.

        Every impeachment that occurred while the founding fathers were alive was of officials who were no longer in office. It's simply absurd that they didn't anticipate this situation because they themselves lived it.

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      2. Curtis Jensen

        I think there is confusion amongst the senators, and even more confusion amongst the public, about which flavor of due process the impeachment trial should resemble. Do the senators follow the federal rules of evidence and criminal procedure? Do they follow the looser standards of due process embodied in Administrative law? In the past week senators referred to English common law and the federal rules of civil procedure while arguing about whether it is constitutional to impeach a president who no longer holds office. In the end, they each chose the source of law that justified their vote.

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          Pat Riot

          The Constitution says they can do anything they want based on a majority vote. It's a political judgement, not a legal judgement.

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          1. Curtis Jensen

            It's a political judgment that has binding legal effect on a third party. It would be unnatural for them to disregard due process for an impeachment trial.

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  7. Daniel

    Disagree - the fault clearly belongs with Madison. Time to rip down some statutes.

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    1. Curtis Jensen

      Statutes or statues?

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    Jesse Blankenship

    Were I to speak incessantly for days I could not have devised a better point. I love this !!!!!!!

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    Jason Gibson

    I agree so much with this article. Another thing that is stunning to me is that everyone was shocked........shocked by the revelation of the mccarthy phone call. Yet that was talked about WEEKS ago!!!! Why were members of congress such slaves to news cycles and only felt the pressure of this fact once it was "leaked" by a member of congress?

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    JR

    Contrary to what Ms. Hume writes, sentence B is not in the passive voice. It is in the active voice: "A mob ... stormed the Capitol."

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      CP

      Yup. Nice catch. Passive would have been: "The Capitol was stormed by a mob, incited by Donald Trump." Still, the point of the article is well taken (by me).

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    2. Nicco

      I’m no grammar aficionado, but is there such thing as mixed voice? Sentence B could be split into 2 sentences:
      -A mob was incited by Donald Trump. (Passive)
      -A mob stormed the Capitol. (Active)
      Does merging these sentences, as Ms. Hume has done, render the passivity of the adjective clause moot?

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        JR

        There is such a thing as a middle voice, though I'd have to read this again to see how it might apply here:

        https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/middle-voice-sentences

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    3. Scroop Moth

      The President is the subject of impeachment, so he is necessarily the subject of the Article. The mob wasn’t impeached. When I get pulled over for speeding, the ticket doesn’t say, “A Toyota Camry, operated by Scroop Moth, drove 95mph in a 70mph zone.”

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        JR

        Subject of the article, yes, but not the subject of the sentence. And my point about the sentence is that it is in the active voice, not the passive, as stated in the article.

        Passive voice: A mob was incited by Donald Trump.
        Active voice: A mob, incited by Donald Trump, stormed the Capitol.

        "Incited by Donald Trump" does not make the sentence passive. It describes the mob.

        You could say "A mob, filled with people wearing MAGA hats, stormed the Capitol." That phrase, "filled with people wearing MAGA hats," uses a past tense verb ("filled"), but again, it describes the mob; it has no bearing on whether the voice of the sentence is active or passive.

        Sorry; I do a lot of editing, so misstatements such as the one in the article (about the voice of sentence B) jump out at me.

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        1. Scroop Moth

          You are correct. The article is wrong about both the grammar and the advantage of the passive “incited by”.

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    4. Joe1776

      Ok but it wasn't trump who is the active subject. I think that is the point.

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        JR

        I'm writing strictly about the sentence, not whether or not in the real world Trump was responsible. "Incited by Donald Trump" describes the mob, which is the actor / subject in Sentence B.

        I agree that one key part of Trump's defense is what he was not active — at least in the sense of not storming the Capitol himself.


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        1. Joe1776

          I meant in the grammatical sense as well. In Sentence A Trump is the active subject in sentence B he is not. Or at least I don't think he is.

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            JR

            You're correct. He's not the subject of the sentence; the mob is.

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