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An article in the "Outlook" section of The Washington Post for Sunday, 9/26, p. B5, reports on a study by a political scientist, Elvin T. Lim, at the University of Tulsa who has done a study of presidential rhetoric. He finds that "virtually every U.S. president since Washington has shown a greater tendency than his predecessors to oversimplify, engage in sloganeering, or otherwise trivialize the language and content of his speeches to the American people." Which is mildly interesting, and the full article can be found at washingtonpost.com, but that's not why I'm posting.

The reason for this post is to quote this run-on excerpt from his forthcoming book on the topic:
"The urge to dumb down has been a rare constant in the two hundred year history of the presidency, persisting in spite of the different personalities and ideologies of the 43 men who have held the office, the several institutional adaptations of the presidency in secular time and even the radically different tectonics of political time that different incumbents have confronted."
My question is: What the hell are "secular time" and "the tectonics of political time"?
One wonders if this guy really is an expert on the presidency, since he doesn't know that there have been only 42 men who have held the office, Cleveland being both number 22 and number 24.

John Varela
(Trade "OLD" lamps for "NEW" for email.)
I apologize for munging the address but the spam was too much.

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]An article in the "Outlook" section of The Washington Post for Sunday, 9/26, p. B5, reports on a study by ... that different incumbents have confronted." My question is: What the **** are "secular time" and "the tectonics of political time"?[/nq]
The author is positing the pair 'secular time' and 'political time', as two frameworks of change, both contrasted to the constancy of the dumbing-down.
'Tectonics of political time' would mean the lay of the political land at a particular time, using tectonic plates as metaphors for the main issues underlying that landscape.
I would take 'secular' to mean the infrequent, long-lasting adaptations of the office.
(cf AHD secular:

5. Occurring or observed once in an age or a century.
6. Lasting from century to century)

Also, there is the financial world's use of the pair 'cyclical' and 'secular' to contrast short term variation with long term change.

That's how I would interpret it, not that the writing seems very compelling.

john

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]An article in the "Outlook" section of The Washington Post for Sunday, 9/26, p. B5, reports on a study by ... that different incumbents have confronted." My question is: What the **** are "secular time" and "the tectonics of political time"?[/nq]
A bit of Googling finds that Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek came up with the idea of "secular time" vs. "political time".

http://mason.gmu.edu/~cshogan/lecture12.html
Skowronek offers two ways of thinking about presidential history and historical circumstance.
· Secular time: This is a chronological history from the nation's founding to the present. Secular time charts the development and evolution of the executive branch. For example, Jefferson and FDR were very different presidents because they were in office during very different time periods. The office had changed greatly in shape and scale, and presidents had different responsibilities in each time era.
· Political time: This is Skowronek's creation. Political Time sees authority structures as recurring throughout history. Regimes rise, reign, and then fall to be replaced by new ones. In this view, Jefferson and FDR were very similar because they both introduced new political regimes and replaced old, dying regimes.
Secular versus Political Time: Most presidential scholars analyze presidential leadership from the lens of secular time. We find temporal, chronological divisions to study the presidency: Patrician Era, Party Era, Progressive Era, Modern Era, Contemporary Era. This is the way we have looked at presidential leadership in this class thus far. But Skowronek believes that Political Time actually explains presidential leadership better than Secular Time. In short, Skowronek believes that American history is cyclical ? history repeats itself. We can see similar leadership situations across time. In this sense, Jefferson and FDR have more in common with each other than FDR and Dwight Eisenhower. Even though FDR and Eisenhower were presidents during the same era ("the modern
presidency") their leadership situations and challenges were actually quite dissimilar.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]An article in the "Outlook" section of The Washington Post for Sunday,9/26, p. B5, reports on a study by a ... time that different incumbentshave confronted." My question is: What the **** are "secular time" and "the tectonics of political time"?[/nq]
"Secular time" and "political time" are terms introduced in Stephen Skowronek's book The Politics Presidents Make (1993). Secular time corresponds to chronological history. Political time refers to the cyclical recurrence of similar themes throughout American history. If you're talking about The Federalist Era, The Progressive Era, etc., that's secular time. If you're talking about the tendency of strong presidents like Jefferson and FDR to bring about a change of regime (era of dominance by one party), that's a cyclical phenomenon that takes place in political time. So they're legitimate terms of art in political science, and would therefore be appropriate in an academic book. The fault lies more with the Washington Post writer, who shouldn't be bandying specialized terminology about in an article aimed at the general public. (Unless Washingtonians are assumed to be hip to this kind of lingo.)
As for the derivation of the terms, my guess would be that Skowronek got the idea from theology, which distinguishes between "secular time" and "***'s time" in a similar way.
Where "tectonics" fits in I have no idea, but in any event the quoted sentence is not great writing even in an academic setting.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]An article in the "Outlook" section of The Washington Post for Sunday, 9/26, p. B5, reports on a study by ... that different incumbents have confronted." My question is: What the **** are "secular time" and "the tectonics of political time"?[/nq]
"Secular time" is chronological time, measured in days, hours, minutes and seconds, as opposed to "sacred time", in which (to give but one example) "one day is a thousand years".
It seems that the author is misusing the term.
And likewise "tectonics", which i thought was a geological term.

Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

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