Mary Matalin speaks for Constitution Day at Coastal

Mary Matalin, a highly-known political contributor, joined the Coastal Carolina University community to talk about the language of politics in the 21st-century. Her expertise comes from her time working under President Ronald Regan and serving as an assistant to George W. Bush.

Her lecture was based around three words: Populism, polemics and polarization.

Matalin believes one of the issues with politics is that both sides have different meanings for politic words.

Populism is defined that ordinary people are working toward the concerns of ordinary people. Polemics is a debate tactic; in which it seems like the only goal of one of the speakers is to undermine everything their opponent has to say.

Matalin is optimistic that this will change because people do not like to constantly argue, it is not in our nature.

As for polarization, it describes when people become completely divided.

Throughout all of the lecture, Matalin said she was optimistic for the future.

She believes millennials are going to change the way politics is today. She said it’s not going to be a fast change, but it will happen eventually.

Matalin has hope because of the new generation. A generation of information, of new ideas and more advanced technology.

Gambit Weekly