WASHINGTON — In the debate over his top environmental goals, President Obama is backing away from "cap and trade."
Not the policy. It's the phrase itself, deemed confusing by Democratic pollsters, that has all but disappeared from the president's vocabulary of late.
Now when Obama talks about forcing companies to bid at auction for the right to emit greenhouse gases, he is more apt to mention "market-based" proposals and "clean energy jobs," hinting at a rich new employment source.
Control the language, politicians know, and you stand a better chance of controlling the debate. So the Obama administration, in its push to enact sweeping energy and healthcare policies, has begun refining the phrases it uses in an effort to shape public opinion.
Words that have been vetted in focus groups and polls are seeping into the White House lexicon, while others considered too scary or confounding are falling away.
Today, aides in Obama's Council on Environmental Quality will meet with a research and marketing group that is promoting an alternative to the phrase "global warming," which some pollsters say fails to capture the idea of greenhouse gases threatening the environment.
"There is value in trying to get the messaging right," said a senior White House environmental aide, who was not authorized to speak on the record. "Because at the end of the day this is tricky policy. . . . We want to make sure we're talking in a way that people understand."
Republicans too are rethinking the words they use. The GOP's response to Obama's energy effort is "light-switch tax." Their message is that if Obama gets his way, Americans will be taxed every time they turn on a light.
As for Obama's healthcare overhaul, consultant Frank Luntz led a briefing for Republican aides on Capitol Hill last week to suggest phrases that might prove effective against it.
Luntz especially liked the term "rationing," with its connotation of long waits for medical tests and denial of care.
"The word 'rationing' does induce the negative response you want," Luntz's memo to GOP congressional staff said.
"As you can see," the memo continued, " 'rationing' tests very well against the other healthcare buzzwords that frighten Americans," such as "socialized medicine" and "Hillary-care" -- a reference to Hillary Rodham Clinton's failed effort to revamp healthcare when she was first lady in the 1990s.
