Balance fuels energy rhetoric

As the 2012 Missouri Gubernatorial race enters the final stretch, we decided to take a look at Governor Jay Nixon’s attempt to “balance” the environment and the economy to create energy policy.

Wordle of September 2010 article

This September 2010 article reveals several dog whistles, or hints to an intended and specific community, which show that Nixon doesn’t intend to sacrifice business interests for the sake of the environment.

Nixon doesn't explicitly say this. In fact, the article calls Nixon’s energy plan “sparse on specific policy proposals.” Nevertheless, Nixon makes his intentions clear to journalists and his audience.

He does this by choosing a venue that allows him to control the message and by targeting a receptive audience. Nixon spoke about energy policy energy executives and people the article identifies as “industrial consumers.”

Nixon crafted his message to this small target audience, and the setting at Washington University allows him more control over the conversation than a more public discourse, such as a press conference or town hall, would allow.

If Nixon were speaking to a crowd of business and environmental lobbyists, he would have to appeal to both, but instead he uses a narrowly selected audience, so he can use loaded language.

For example, Nixon assures the audience about his willingness to work with corporations by saying,

“It's critical to Missouri's energy future that academia, industry and government maintain a strong, working partnership that is focused on innovation."

            It appeals to the community he is talking to, and uses subtle language like “maintain a strong, working partnership” which reminds industrial consumers that he is already working with them and he will continue the partnership.

This implies their arrangement is mutually beneficial, and it leaves room for mutual benefit through unspecified “innovation.”

Nixon frames the competition between the environment and the economy as two categories with an easily defined middle ground where he will search for a way to “balances competing interests.”

In reality, low energy costs and avoiding environmentally irresponsible policies are mutually exclusive.

As of 2010, coal was responsible for 83 percent of Missouri’s electricity, and part of the reason Missouri enjoyed the seventh-lowest power costs in the nation, according to the article.

The article demonstrates that the members of his audience, including Karen Harbert, president of the Institute for 21^st Century Energy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2010, understand his rhetorical cues and mimic’s Nixon’s loaded language of rhetorical “balance.”

“For Missouri the question is going to be balance" rooted in the resource base here, "which is coal, natural gas and a little bit of nuclear," she said”

Even the opening line of the article picks up the rhetoric of balance which Nixon and Harbert used.

“Gov. Jay Nixon emphasized the need to balance economic and environmental interests on Friday, as he laid out a plan for the state's energy future.”

The reporter, the audience and Nixon understood the underlying message, but is it fair for journalist to spread that rhetoric? Let us know what you think!