Ehe New York Eimes
`
`A hot metaphor emerges
`
`By William Safire
`
`Jan. 6, 2008
`
`LANGUAGE
`
`'The mostdifficult aspect of developing a weapons program," said President George W.
`Bush,trying to counter the CIA's NIE-jerk relaxation responseto Iran's nuclear
`ambitions, "or as some would say, the long pole in the tent, is enriching uranium."
`
`Whoare the "some" who would so say?
`
`One ofthe long pole-vaulters is the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, who said
`the day before, "Weapons-grade uranium is the long pole in the tent for a nuclear
`weapon."
`
`Their point wasthat the CIA's "high confidence"in its intelligence that Iran had
`stopped its secret weapons developmentsoon after therooffell in on Saddam Hussein
`wasStrictly short-pole stuff: that Tehran's continued enrichmentof uranium,
`ostensibly for peaceful civilian use, could - when enough was churnedoutbyits
`thousandsof centrifuges in a few years - easily provide the material for military use in
`a matter of months.
`
`As Bushpicked up on Hadley's trope, Vice President Dick Cheney swung the sameold
`pole with two different senses. Thefirst was the Hadley-Bush meaning,directed at
`Iran's way of makingthe fissionable material that can be used for either peaceful
`energy or warlike bombs. The second wasapplied by Cheney as a metaphorto define
`America's primary enemy, a more immediate threat than Iran: "Al-Qaeda in Iraq has
`been sort of the long pole in the tent, if you will, in termsof the opposition weface."
`
`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
`Exhibit 1026 - Page 1 of 3
`
`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
`Exhibit 1026 - Page 1 of 3
`
`

`

`Thelong tent pole is an aviation term, with engineering origins. Fred Shapiro, editor of
`"The Yale Book of Quotations," finds a use of the phrase in a 1970 technical review by
`the Society of Experimental TestPilots. "The phrase is not in quotation marks,
`suggesting it had already become a term that would be knownto their readers," says
`Shapiro, adding that the meaning seemsto be "the thing that must be dealt with first or
`most crucially for a larger project to be successful."
`
`"In the early 1900s," the lexicographer Barbara AnnKipfer informs me, "the striptease
`dance was addedto burlesque showsto entice men to return. Traveling tent shows had
`striptease acts. The smaller tent dancers started to dance aroundthe central pole in
`the tent. These tents became knownasthe dance-pole tents."
`
`But the aviators outstrippedthestrippers.
`
`Joan Hall, chief editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), finds a
`usage in a 1947 report of the Senate Committee on ArmedServices and reports the
`phrase has two senses: One, "the most important aspect of whatever problem is being
`addressed (the main pole in the centerof the tent)" and a morerecentsense, "the most
`intractable part of a given problem, where a person who seemsto be holding this up is
`called the long pole in the tent."
`
`In January 1979, Aviation Weekreported that an Air Force source noted "propulsion
`would bethe'long pole in the tent' if U.S.A.F. decides to develop an advancedcruise
`missile for earlier than the mid-1990s." The current editor of that magazine, Tony
`Velocci, informs methat "it's the thing amonga list of tasks for a project that will take
`the longestto do, or alternatively, the thing that will 'hold everything up.' " In 1987,
`whena youthful Jim Lehrer inquired about a future shuttle flight during an interview
`on the "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour," James Fletcher of NASAreplied: "The solid-
`rocket-motortest is what wecall the long pole in the tent. Thatis the thing thatis
`determining thefirst launch."
`
`Meanwhile, the trope was picked up in the army and used mainlyin its sense of "core
`of the problem"; in 1990, General Norman Schwarzkopf, trained in engineering and
`briefing his Desert Storm commanders,said, "Logistics is the long pole in the tent." But
`it can also specify timing: in May 2007, General David Petraeus,chief of U.S. forces in
`Iraq, told The Washington Post's David Ignatius: "How long doesreconciliation take?
`
`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
`Exhibit 1026 - Page 2 of 3
`
`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
`Exhibit 1026 - Page 2 of 3
`
`

`

`That's the long polein the tent."
`
`It's a phrase with two meanings, overlapping butstill distinct. I define one ofits
`meanings as "the central determinant, the pole bearing the most weightof the tent
`structure." The second meaning, rapidly becoming predominant becauseof its use
`recently by the two highestelected officials in the land, is "the source of delay, in the
`sense of 'holding everything else up.’ "
`
`Getthe delicious duality?
`
`The polemical pole not only holds upthe tent (in space), it holds up the tent-making (in
`time). Personally, I go for the temporal metaphoric sense, but you can teachit, if you
`will, either way.
`
`safireonlanguage@nytimes.com
`
`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
`Exhibit 1026 - Page 3 of 3
`
`Petitioner Walmart Inc.
`Exhibit 1026 - Page 3 of 3
`
`