Deem And Pass Messaging Fail

So I'm having a conversation on twitter yesterday with a journalist who used the word "controversial" in a tweet describing the Democrats mulling a decision to use "deem and pass" to avoid a vote on the Senate bill in and of itself and instead opting to deem that bill passed and then vote to pass the side car reconciliation fixes and it dawned on me. The Democrats once again failed to see the inevitable attacks when with a little preparation they could have actually preemptively come out strong for "deem and pass" and looked good doing it.

Picture this. Before anybody mentions "deem and pass" on the record Speaker Pelosi addresses the media. Her messaging on the issue is simple, this is all about transparency. Yes she could hold two separate votes on the Senate bill and then the side car fixes but that would potentially allow members of the House to vote two separate ways in an attempt to hide their own intent. We all know as this point that the Senate bill plus the side car fixes is what the final reform product will look like, but in the Senate bill itself there are several problematic issues. One of the main problems with the Senate bill is all of the state specific special deals included in it like the Cornhusker Kickback. Holding two votes gives members the chance to vote for those provisions in the Senate bill then turn around and vote against the reconciliation fixes to take them out.

Democrats could have gone on the offensive and said they did not want to allow anyone to be able to go home to their district and say they voted for health care reform when in fact they voted for the Senate bill but voted against the fixes to make it better and take the special deals out. Using deem and pass ensures that every member of the House votes on the final product and they have to say yea or nay whether they support some of those problems in the Senate bill. That way the American people can have a better, truer way of judging their Representative's vote on the issue.

Instead Democrats came with a message of cowardice saying using "deem and pass" allowed some members avoid making a hard vote for a Senate bill that they didn't support. You can't win a messaging war, especially one on such a contentious issue, coming from a position of weakness like that. When you make it seem like you are using "deem and pass" in order to avoid confrontation then what you are doing is creating the impression that you are doing something sneaky and underhanded. When you assert that you are using "deem and pass" in the name of transparency then you come off looking like the good guy.

Imagine if President Obama had said in that bullshit interview with Bret Baier that he supported the use of "deem and pass" because it reflected what the final health care reform would look like and he was vehemently against those special deals. He would have come off a helluva lot better than he did in struggling to try to stay neutral on the subject and not having a good comeback when Baier asked him if using "deem and pass" was the show of courage that the President himself had called for just a few days earlier.

I honestly don't know who has been coordinating the messaging around this health care reform push but whomever it is should resign in shame. Truly.

"Things We All Agree On"

I know a lot of progressive bloggers focus the majority of their posts on good policy and I think that is a good thing. I however tend to focus on good messaging. The reason being that in this day and age where most politicians are more concerned with being reelected than what is good for the country, the best messaging usually wins. By wins I mean it shifts public opinion and therefore it can shift votes on any piece of legislation.

The biggest problem in my estimation that the Obama administration has had since inauguration day is terrible messaging. As the Democratic President presiding over a Democratic Congress with big majorities, the messaging needs to roll down hill. President Obama should be leading the charge and what he says should filter down to leadership in Congress and from them to the rank and file so they all speak for the most part with one voice. And that voice has to be strong and forceful and not just defensive but also offensive in many situations. But since last year the Democratic messaging, particularly health care reform, has been terrible.

It was amazing to me that Frank Luntz could release to the public a blueprint of how Republicans would frame the debate as a "government takeover" of health care and still the Democrats couldn't muster up a suitable pushback on that talking point. To be honest its the reason in my opinion that the Obama administration was so reluctant to back a public option as the public option was the one provision that Republicans tied most closely to their "government takeover" rhetoric.

Now the reason for this post is simple. Tomorrow President Obama will hold his televised bipartisan health care summit to try to drag the health care reform bill across the finish line. The stakes are going to be tremendously high and how the public perceives the summit will likely shift votes in Congress. For that reason Democratic messaging HAS to be almost perfect tomorrow. If they rely on winning on policy the truth is they will lose. Many average Americans don't have the attention span to really follow the policy, but a good talking point will resonate.

I personally have my own ideas about how the Republicans will try to attack the bill and keep pushing to "reset" everything and start from scratch but I'm not into giving them any help. However I think Democrats would be wise to be ready for talking points on abortion, taxes, backroom deals, and cost of the bill.

One new talking point just cropped up though and I felt like it was a harbinger of things to come. Eric Cantor was on MSNBC just a little while ago and while he isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer on policy, he is pretty good with talking points when there is no one there to debate him. And he gave a talking point that I consider to be damn near genius and I bet you donuts to a dollar you will hear the issue framed this way by Republicans tomorrow.

So what exactly did he say.

Well you remember how President Obama and Senate Leadership (read Harry Reid) decided to include Republican ideas into the health care reform bill in an effort to peel of some Republican votes (which ultimately failed miserably)? Well NOW instead of allowing those provisions to be framed as concessions or compromises meant to appease Republicans, Cantor framed them as "the things we all agree on".

Now if you are a progressive and you have been following this debate for any length of time I'm sure your face is scrunched up right now like "WTF?!"

But if you are average joe citizen who hasn't been following that closely, this slight of hand could be VERY persuasive.

Think about it. Out of all of the stuff in the health care bill, only the Republican compromise parts could be sold as something both sides remotely agree on. So if Republicans say "hey lets start over and make those provisions the core of the bill" well the Americans who haven't been paying attention but for some reason are still pining for "bipartisanship" that would make a lot of sense.

Doesn't matter to them that those provisions generally are the worst provisions in the bill. Doesn't matter to them that those provisions generally won't help the deficit at all. Doesn't Nope, those provisions, without any context, really do seem like the areas where both sides can agree. And unless Democrats are prepared for pushback against that talking point, I can see Republicans successfully selling that steaming pile to the American people.

Like I said, its genius when you think about it. Make the minor compromises in the bill THE bill and then all of a sudden you have the American people calling for a Republican health care reform bill that doesn't do much to help them.

Obviously I can think of ways to push back on that talking point but I am not exactly getting paid for this. All I'm saying is that folks need to be prepared and go on the offensive instead of playing defense tomorrow. Before Eric Cantor or John Boehner can get to that talking point perhaps a Democrat can ask THEM what they object to about specific provisions of the bill. And when they can't come up with a good reason check that off as a provision that stays. That would be my general approach anyway.

Play offense, not defense. That's my best advice.

If not you are going to see even more skittish Democrats running for the hills by the end of the summit.

Dem Media Strategy On The Stimulus

In my last post I took journalists to task for allowing Republicans to use a new talking point about the stimulus, that people don't THINK it worked, without pushing back on it and making sure their audience understood that a big reason for that is because Republicans have yelled from the mountain tops for months that it didn't work. But now after hearing about Jake Tapper carrying water for the GOP and bringing the same talking point to the White House press briefing I think its time for a coordinated strategy by Democrats to push back on a talking point we are sure to hear for the next few weeks, even in the face of all actual evidence to the contrary.

The key question is who is bringing up the talking point. It could be a friendly journalist teeing up a GOP talking point specifically for a Democrat to swat it away. It could be a journalist like Tapper trying to put a Democrat on the spot. Or it could be a Republican on one of the cable shows pitted opposite a Democrat which seems to be all the rage these days.

Now obviously the first category with the friendly journalist should be the easiest, but these days you never know. So my advice would be to start off with this strategy and then if the "friendly" journo turns out to be not so friendly, just transition to the category I strategy.

Category I

With a friendly journalist its usually best to make light of the situation before getting serious. I would advise coming up with several different examples of something that was once thought of as a consensus fact only to later be thoroughly debunked. In the earlier post I used the example of how everyone used to think the earth was flat. Others off the top of my head would be, the moon was made out of cheese, that the Sun orbited the Earth, and if you want to get a little snarky you can even point out that a majority once thought that Saddam had WMD.

After the witty comment quickly pivot into the meat of the issues. Quote several independent sources like the CBO on how many jobs were created with the stimulus bill. Then acknowledge that more has to be done and that the unemployment numbers are indeed a factor in the negative perception of the stimulus. Then, however, forcefully transition into a denunciation of the Congressional Republicans. Point out that they have said for months and months that the stimulus bill failed without every being challenged to quote a credible economist or study that backs up that claim. Challenge the friendly to ask them where they got their information that the stimulus failed the next time they speak to a Republican. Then tie it to Republican obstructionism in the Senate. Point out that while everyone else is focusing on getting the country back on track, Congressional Republicans are focusing on winning back Congress no matter what the price.

Make sure to differentiate with the term Congressional Republicans so as to not offend rank and file Republicans any more than they are already.

Category II

When you have an adversarial member of the media speaking to a Democrat one on one, whether it be at the press briefing with Gibbs, or just a rank and file Congressional Democrat or just a Dem strategist, the key is to turn it back on to the mainstream media. Yes this will make for a contentious exchange but it will be worth it. The one thing Republicans and their right wing base has become especially adept at is pushing the media to the right by claiming over and over and over again a mythical liberal bias. Now is as good a time as any to change that.

You will want to ask a question along the lines of what is the ratio of independent economists their news organization has asked about the stimulus versus how many politicians they have asked. How many quotes from the CBO director about the stimulus have appeared in their publication or on their news station versus how many statements from politicians have been used. The clear implication you want to try to make is that its the media, not the Democrats, who have failed to inform the American people. And that because our media almost exclusively covers politics the same as policy like a horse race, they are no longer serving their readers and viewers. If its a member of a right wing media outfit like FoxNews or the Washington Times you can even go as far as to ask them why their own employees have joined the Republicans in calling the stimulus a failure without ever having to back up that assertation with information from an impartial expert on economics.

Right at the end of your response make sure to note that while politics usually does have spin from both sides, policy usually has a right and a wrong. There are ways to measure whether the stimulus worked or not and if the majority of Americans don't believe it worked, but the overwhelming majority of credible, independent economists say it did then obviously our media is not doing their job well.

For sure this could provoke backlash at a later date, but I personally think it would be worth it.

Category III

I think pushing back on Republicans when Democrats are on one of those shows where supposedly both sides are represented should be the easiest job of all. Two words should sum up this strategy, interrupt and attack. Every time a Republican brings up public opinion on the stimulus interrupt them and ask them how many times they personally had said it was a failure. They probably won't respond but keep pressing the question until its obvious they do not want to answer. If they make the mistake of actually repeating the canard that it really didn't work or "it didn't create one job" then interrupt and ask them to give the viewers the source they are using for that assertion. Again, don't expect them to answer directly but keep asking the question until its obvious they won't answer it.

When its your turn to talk whether it be first or second have a list ready of economists and independent entities like the CBO which have said the stimulus bill created a million jobs or more. Read off the list and then ask the GOP adversary if they are going on record to say all of those people and organizations are lying. Further ask them, not the host but the GOP adversary, what their background is in economics. Do they have a nobel prize? Have they ever worked for the CBO? Ask them what standing they have to call the stimulus bill a failure other than their status as a politician.

At some point the host will probably regain order and you can tout all of the positive things about the stimulus. But before the segment is over make sure to address the GOP adversary directly again and ask them a question of this nature "Isn't it true that you and members of your party on the Hill believe that it is advantageous for your election prospects if the American people believe the stimulus bill failed even if it isn't true?" Of course they won't answer and the host may try to step in but keep demanding that they answer the question. Keep it up the pressure and keep them on the defensive instead of the other way around.

Now to be sure at some point the Republicans will come up with a new talking point to harp on and at that point the strategy to push back on them will have to change. But I am willing to bet that for the next few weeks we will hear this "the American people don't believe it worked" talking point over and over. Hopefully for once Democrats will be well prepared to not only shoot them down, but also make them run for cover.

Stimulus Success

Imagine if, one year ago, Congress had passed a stimulus bill that really worked.

Let’s say this bill had started spending money within a matter of weeks and had rapidly helped the economy. Let’s also imagine it was large enough to have had a huge impact on jobs — employing something like two million people who would otherwise be unemployed right now.

If that had happened, what would the economy look like today?

Well, it would look almost exactly as it does now. Because those nice descriptions of the stimulus that I just gave aren’t hypothetical. They are descriptions of the actual bill.

Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.

New York Times

Very nice article in the NYT today about the success of the stimulus bill which also points out what worked best (aid to states, unemployment, food stamps) and what was less stimulative (TAX CUTS!) Everybody concerned with keeping a Democratic majority in Congress this year should be posting this story on their facebook, tweeting it on twitter, and if they have a blog, linking too it. We have to cut through the bullshit and spread the word around that the stimulus made a huge difference in the economy last year and that those who opposed it (republicans) were foolish.

Just my opinion.

Almost

White House Communications director Dan Pfiefer makes a key concession about the EPIC FAIL that has been the messaging coming out of his shop for most of last year. Please allow me an edit though.

"It was clear that too often we didn't have the ballS -- Congress had the ball in terms of driving the message," communications director Dan Pfeiffer said. "In 2010, the president will constantly be doing high-profile things to be the person driving the narrative."

Now that more clearly reflects the reality of the situation.

"Freedom" Isn't Free

I have been pushing the issue most of the summer that Democrats and the left should adopt some of the right's vocabulary tricks to help sell health care reform. In particular in selling the public option I felt like the best way to sell it would be to tell the American people that creating a public option gives them the "freedom" to choose between private insurance or public sector insurance. Its a small thing honestly but effective messaging is often about little things. And the word freedom just resonates with most of America. Alas no one on the left really altered their messaging to incorporate more words like "freedom" which the right wingers have been using for years to push their agenda.

Well evidently I am not the only one frustrated by this lack of aggressiveness and foresight by the Democrats. In today's Wall Street Journal, Thomas Frank calls Democrats and the left out for ceding the word "freedom" to the right wingers in the first place.

There are few things in politics more annoying than the right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word "freedom" that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed, that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty, the noblest cause of them all.

Equally annoying is the silence of Democratic Party leaders on the subject. They spend their careers hearing this fatuous argument from the other side, but challenging conservatism's claim to freedom seems to be beyond their powers. Or beneath their dignity. Or something.

Today they're paying for that high-mindedness. While Democrats fussed with the details of health-care reforms, conservatives spent months telling the nation that the real issue is freedom, that what's on the line is American liberty itself.

Any increase in the size or duties of government, the right tells us, necessarily subtracts from our freedom. Government is, by its very nature, a destroyer of liberties; the Obama administration, specifically, is promising to interfere with the economy and the health-care system so profoundly that Washington will soon have us all in chains.

"What we're going to end up with is higher taxes, bigger government and less freedom for the American people," House Republican Leader John Boehner said on Fox News in July. "We're going to have a real fight for how much freedom we're going to have left in America."

People working the freedom vein were numerous at the large protest that took place in Washington on Saturday. Sponsors included the Institute for Liberty, Let Freedom Ring, Young Americans for Liberty, the Campaign for Liberty, the Center for Individual Freedom, and BureauCrash a.k.a. "the Freedom Activist Network." FreedomWorks, the grass-roots pressure group, prepared a video for the occasion which encouraged people to believe that the administration's many policy "czars" revealed its kinship to the Russian autocracy of old.

That our ancestors could ever have understood freedom as something greater than the absence of the state would probably strike protesters as inconceivable. But they did. You can see it in that famous Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting from 1943: "Freedom from Want," an illustration of one of Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms." Strange though it might sound, this is a form of freedom that pretty much requires government to get involved in the economy in order to "secure to every nation," as Roosevelt put it, "a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants." The idea is still enshrined today in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I know we are late in the game here but there still is plenty of time for the left to make some slight adjustment on messaging for health care. I can promise you that if we keep associating the public option over and over with the "freedom to choose" people will start to see it in a different light. Its just a matter of actually going out and doing it, now who is coming with me?

77% Support "Choice" Of A Public Option

New polling data shows once again if you ask the polling question properly, they overwhelming majority of Americans support a public option in health care reform.

A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.

But the numbers tell another story, as well.

Earlier in the week, after pollsters for NBC dropped the word "choice" from their question on a public option, they found that only 43 percent of the public were in favor of "creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies."

Opponents of the president's agenda jumped on the findings as evidence that backing for the public option was dropping. Proponents responded by arguing that NBC's tinkering with the language of the question (which it had also done in its July survey) had contributed to the drop in favorability for a public plan.

SurveyUSA's poll, which was commissioned by the progressive group MoveOn.org, a proponent of the public plan, gives credence to those critiques. While arguments about what type of language best describe the public option persist --"choice" is considered a trigger word that everyone naturally supports -- it seems clear that the framing of the provision goes a long way toward determining its popularity.

In asking its question SurveyUSA used the same exact words that NBC/Wall Street Journal had used when conducting its June 2009 survey. That one that found 76 percent approval for the public option: "In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance--extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?"

Now think about something for a moment. If the wording of a question when polling the popularity of a public option can make a major difference then it stands to reason that the wording from people advocating for a public option will also make a huge difference on how it will be received. That is why for months now I have been saying that President Obama and other prominenet Democrats in Congress should be using the word "freedom" in association with the public option. I have no doubt in my mind that if our Democratic leaders started saying that providing a public option gives people

"the freedom to choose"

what kind of insurance they want that they would see a major bump in their approval ratings. While it is on some levels cynical to rely heavily on messaging tricks, the truth is it actually does work. The word "freedom" appeals to most Americans on a visceral level and just makes them more open to which ever proposal is offering them more of it.

Its still not too late to start injecting this into the messaging during the fight for health care reform I just don't know if they will ever do it. For the life Of me I can't understand why nobody on our side has seen this before. Everything Republicans talk about damn near begins and ends with the word freedom. This is an easy but effective way to turn that right back on them. At the very lease somebody could do it as a trial balloon to see the results. If anybody knows somebody that knows somebody that works for somebody, please pass this along.

Nothing But A Southern Party Party Party

There is another nugget in the Research 2000 polling on health care. In response to the question:

Which of the following do you consider to be the most accurate reflection of the health care reform plan being considered by President Obama and Congress? (ROTATED): A government take over the entire health care system OR The government will provide a non-profit health insurance option to compete with private firms.

Because the whole "government takeover" is a GOP argument you would expect for self identified Republicans to agree with that framing of the issue. Interestingly enough Republicans were the only demographic in the whole poll where the people choosing "government takeover" outnumbered those choosing "competition".....save one.

In the South 45% of respondents accepted the "government takeover" framing of health care reform versus 28% who accepted the "competition" framing. That has to be disconcerting to the GOP because the truth is, if this polling is correct, they have once again been preaching to the choir. It doesn't really help them at all to have the only people to agree with them on the "government takeover" messaging be the people who are already faithful Republican voters.

Oh and one more thing, considering how miserably this messaging has failed, I think GOP leaders might want to ask Frank Luntz for a refund.

Changing The Conversation

I personally am not sure what to make of President Obama and the rest of the administration's messaging on the public option recently. I realize that many people on the left think its a signal that he is willing to drop a public option to get a health care reform bill passed, but I am not sold on that notion. First of all liberals and progressives are always going to be skeptical in a situation like this one, and with good reason. We have been sold out so many times in the past by the Democrats we helped to get elected that we would be fools to take politicians at their word.

But second of all I just really have a hard time believing that he would, as Rachel Maddow pointed out, spend this amount of political capital advocating for and defending the notion of a public option just to drop it. The majority of the fearmongering that goes on from the right is about a "government takeover" of health care. If President Obama dropped his support for a public option or only gave it lukewarm support, he would take at least one line of attack from his critics (though I am sure they would find others). But the fact is even yesterday when he made the statement

" that the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform."

during his townhall in Colorado, for at least 15 minutes before that statement he had gone to great lengths to explain and defend what a public option would look like.

Now don't get me wrong, we set ourselves up for dissappointment when we hold politicians up as if they could never lie or do any wrong. And it is entirely plausible that President Obama will sell us out on the public option just so he can claim "victory" by getting some kind of bill through before the year is out. But I just don't see the advantage of it at all for him. Politically it would be disasterous because the wingnuts will still be pissed off and the liberals and progressives would feel so betrayed that he might just ruin his own prospects f reelection by totally alienating his base.

Not only that but on the policy side of it he will have actually passed a big ass bill that doesn't do much to fix the problems. That might be the most compelling reason why I don't think he will drop the public option. Because if he does then 4 years from now both sides of the political spectrum will be pointing out that health care costs are still rising and millions of people will still be uninsured because poor people still won't be able to afford it. And if this bill adds to the deficit, which it more than likely will without a public option to keep the private insurerers in check, you can cancel Christmas for him being a two term President.

So what is it all about then?

Well this is just my educated guess but I think that President Obama sees the health care reform fight as having hit a messaging wall. At this point there are people on the left and on the right who have focused almost solely on the public option. The problem with that is it obscures the other benefits of the bill. And in doing so, by focusing on a public option which will for the most part only affect the 48 million citizens that are uninsured in this country, we really aren't making the case strongly for people who already have insurance and are happy for the most part of how health care reform will help them.

A lot of people in the midle who are not politics junkies are hearing the debate and probably have not a clue that they too will be helped by health care reform. You hardly ever hear in the cable chatter the caveats about eliminating insurance companies' ability to reject people for preexistinig conditions. You rarely hear about the fact that the health care reform bills will take away life time caps. You almost never hear about how setting up a health care exchange will give people greater choice and also help to bring down their premiums. And you would be hard pressed to hear how the bill will close the so called "donut hole" for senior citizens in the prescription drug plan, a problem that is a lot bigger than most people realize.

When we get people to realize how much is in the bill that will affect them positively then its highly likely that the public option will be palatable to them even if normally they aren't a fan of "big government". So in a roundabout sort of way it may be that getting a public option passed may be better served by not talking up a public option so much and instead reframing the conversation to include ALL of the benefits of the health care reform bill.

Now I might be a sucker here, I will definitely cop to that, but I still believe strongly that we will have a public option in the ultimate bill that gets signed into law. From where I am sitting this appears to be a change in messaging not meant to signal a willingness from the Obama administraton to drop the public option, but an eagerness to try to get public opinion polling back on his side. They have to get a bill out of the Senate Finance Committee then start reconciling all the bills and here is my prediction. I will bet that as soon as the Senate Finance committee votes a bill out of committee, President Obama will come out and say exactly what he wants in the final bill. At that point the horses will be out of the barn and the only thing left will be final votes in the House and in the Senate. So the imperative right now is on getting that bill out.

For now I will choose to keep my powder dry and let the process play itself out. Here is the deal, if we are going to get sold out on this then it has already pretty much been done. For that reason it makes no sense to blow a gasket right now. It will make not a whit of difference in the end anyway and any measure of retribution we might want to seek will take time anyway.. However we have good reason to take a wait and see approach here. For one if we start dumping on the administration in advance of a final bill then we hurt our own cause by driving public opinion down even further. That could lead to some of our more Republican leaning Congressman to hide behind that polling in an effort to vote against that bill. Not only that we end up creating a situation where we caricature ourselves. We end up allowing President Obama to frame us as the "far left" if we refuse to focus on the other aspects of the bill and instead continue to draw a line in the sand about the public option and the public option only.

In conclusion, here is the actual clip of Secretary Sebelius discussing the public option with John King. I really don't think it comes across the way that CNN reported it. But then again it's John King, what do you expect?

Does The Word "Waterboarding" Give The Impression Its "Fun"

I doubt it. However that was a point that Erich "Mancow" Muller seemed to be making last night on "Countdown With Keith Olbermann". Its of course telling that every single layman who has been waterboarded confirms that its torture. Watching them get waterboarded seems to confirm to any reasonable person that its torture. But maybe there is some perception out there that "sprinkling water" on someone is not a big deal. I don't know but I do know that its been labled torture for centuries and we have prosecuted and put to death soldiers from other countries who did it to our people. Maybe it IS just a matter of messaging but I don't think it can reasonably be argued by anyone anymore that waterboarding isn't torture.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Notice that according to Mancow Sean Hannity called him and reiterated his belief that waterboarding isn't torture. Funny if he is that confident that it isn't why won't he allow himself to be waterboarded?

Rhetorical question of course.