That passive voice phrase makes a comeback

November 14, 2005

After all the times that infamous passive voice phrase has been used, you’d think Republicans would avoid it. Alas, it lives on.

Former President Ronald Reagan, on the Iran-Contra scandal, in 1986:

“Mistakes were made.”

George W. Bush, on the Abu Ghraib scandal, in 2004:

” It’s also important for the people of Iraq to know that in a democracy, everything is not perfect, that mistakes are made.”

Sen. Rick Santorum, on the war in Iraq, four days ago:

“Certainly, mistakes were made,” Santorum said.

The problem with the phrase isn’t just the passivity or the historical repetition; it’s the underlying motivation that makes the passive voice necessary in the first place.

It active voice, the phrase needs a proper noun. Someone made a mistake, Reagan, Bush, and Santorum suggest, but they won’t say who. They’re willing to acknowledge that a mistake occurred, but they’ll go no farther.

The phenomenon seems to fit nicely into the way in which modern Republicans use language. Active voice assigns responsibility; passive voice admits errors without assigning blame. It’s an accountability-free admission, which is just the way too many Republicans like it.

In fact, it’s worth remembering that it was George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language” who explained that “the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active” by those who hope to obscure the truth.

A half-century later, it’s still true.

“the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active” by those who hope to obscure the truth.

It’s unclear whether Orwell was being self-deprecating here, or whether the passive voice is so insidious that he is using it without realizing it.

  • I think passive voice gets a bum rap sometimes– sometimes you have up-front reasons to emphasize the object and de-emphasize the subject. Orwell’s quote, for instance.

    Hiding the perpetrator using passive voice is but one arrow in the Republican quiver of obfuscation– remember “There are no war plans on my desk”? No, Mr. President, you set them in the seat of your chair before going on camera, didn’t you?

  • Orwell certainly knew what he was doing. One of the main points of Politics and the English Language is that the political undermining of clear writing and speech affects everyone, including Orwell. He illustrates the point with a number of moments where his prose includes the very mistake it criticizes, sometimes obviously and sometimes subtly. Many other writers have addressed this topic since Orwell, but none, as far as I know, as remotely approached the wit and irony of his piece. Among writers before Orwell, I nominate Byron as the best analyst of political rhetoric in this vein.

  • Don’t forget Clinton used “mistakes were made” after the Chinese embassy in Belgrade “was blown up.”

    Of course, that wasn’t a mistake though. They were hiding parts from the stealth bomber that had been shot down a few days earlier.

  • OK, I now understand the difference between active and passive voice:

    Passive: No weapons of mass destruction were found.

    Active: General Marks team of investigators found weapons of mass destruction components – including yellow cake – in Iraq.(http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/13/sun.05.html).

    >MARKS: Is we did not find anything that was weaponized. What we found >was precursors. We found storage sites, we found laboratories. We found >chemical sites. We went to the Tuatha (ph) yellowcake facility. We found >yellowcake.

    >The issue was there was a lot of intelligence that was available a priori >our going to war that needed to be updated and what happened was we >created an infrastructure to go after these sites, and as we rolled upon >them …

    >LIN (CNN): Right.

    >MARKS: We secured them and we began our exploitation.

    >LIN: OK. So you have the ingredients. Do you have the recipe? Because >if he – you also were part of the interrogation of his 55 – Saddam >Hussein’s top 55 men, the so called deck of cards was the nickname the >Bush administration came up.

    >What did they tell you, because it sounds like, from what they told you, >that he had the material and that he had potentially the capability then to >produce weapons of mass destruction. It might just take some time but >he had the stuff.

    >MARKS: Absolutely and that was confirmed through our physical >exploitation of a number of these sites and as we started to roll up the top >55, certainly not all of them, but as we started to roll them up and began >interrogations, pieces of the puzzle started to come together and what we >saw was the mechanism in place for a weapons of mass destruction >capability that Iraq had that was resident.

    BTW – the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was not targeted for hiding aircraft parts – the Chinese were targeted because they were delinquent in campaign contributions to camrade Clinton.

    Regards,
    RTW.

    A 20 year old man who isn’t a liberal has no heart – but by age 40, if he isn’t conservative, he has no brain – author unknown, erroneously attributed to Sir Winston Churchill.

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