So That’s What It Means
We heard the phrase “brinksmanship” used a fair amount the last few days, in connection with the government shutdown issue. File this under the category of “we think we know what it means, but we’d better check”.
First of all, you can say either “brinkmanship” or “brinksmanship”…apparently both are correct. That was news to me.
By the way, in true circular fashion, a “brinkman” is someone who…wait for it…is skilled in or practices brinkmanship.
Webster’s defines it as “the art or practice of pushing a dangerous situation or confrontation to the limit of safety, especially to force a desired outcome.” The Cambridge Dictionary refines that specifically to politics: “the activity, especially in politics, or trying to get what you want by saying that if you do not get it, you will do something dangerous.”
One source says the word was probably coined by Adlai Stevenson in his criticism of the philosophy of “going to the brink” during an interview with U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles during the Eisenhower Administration—note Stevenson lost the presidential election to Ike in both 1952 and 1956. The topic at the time was the military and arms escalation between the U.S. and what was then the Soviet Union. Dulles, in an article in Life magazine, said, “The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art.”
I suppose in one respect it fits, but how helpful is it to start hurling such terms around, especially with another deadline looming in a month and a half? There is the barest of GOP majority in the House, while in the Senate, Democrats have two fewer seats than Republicans and only can claim a majority if all three independents side with them.
So with those tenuous margins…should anyone really be tossing out three-syllable words?
Then again, far easier to name call and demonize the other side than to actually put forth a constructive resolution. Welcome to our dysfunctional politics of today.
