Want to know what Carl 'Saruman' Rove of Many Colors, Bush's former campaign advisor and propaganda sorceror is advising McCain to do? Read his article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122471862591760559.html
We've got to know what the opposition is planning. Sounds like Rove's advice is more smears and more reframing of Obama's tax plan from a conservative perspective.
Fortunately, our language framing wizard, George 'Gandalf' Lakoff the White has an outline for strategy for the Obama campaign. It's a bit old (just before the elections), but still looks good. View it here:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/01-0
If you'd like to donate to my grassroots campaign for Obama, click on the link below. This is a real close race and we need all the help we can get. You can make a difference. Even $5 will help.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/ivanrichmond
I found a great article about the Progressive view on taxation and how best to frame that view to the public:
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/progressive-taxation-some-hidden-truths.html
We may want to use these ideas in counteracting McCain's smears, like calling Obama's tax plan "socialist" or "welfare".
Hi,
I just read this really interesting article by George Lakoff, the UC Berkeley linguist and progressive who has been talking so recently about language framing in political campaigns. We're doing well, but I'm worried that we could still lose if we con't reframe McCain / Palin. Here's the article:
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1743
I hope the Obama campaign takes these ideas to heart. George Lacock is a respected author and describes how "framing" drives the issues and the debate.
http://www.truthout.org/article/dont-think-a-maverick
I heard George Lakoff speak on NPR regarding the the crafting of the political mind. He's author of The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 20th Century Politics With an 18th Century Brain in which he talks about how successful the Republicans have been at reframing issues and manipulating metaphors to their political advantage. Here's his take on the Palin choice and why the Dems need to make sure they don't just hammer on reality but also craft the framing:
The Palin ChoiceThe Reality of the Political Mindby George LakoffThis election matters because of realities-the realities of global warming, the economy, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, civil liberties, species extinction, poverty here and around the world, and on and on. Such realities are what make this election so very crucial, and how to deal with them is the substance of the Democratic platform <http://www.demconvention.com/assets/downloads/2008-Democratic-Platform-by-Cmte-08-13-08.pdf> .Election campaigns matter because who gets elected can change reality. But election campaigns are primarily about the realities of voters' minds, which depend on how the candidates and the external realities are cognitively framed. They can be framed honestly or deceptively, effectively or clumsily. And they are always framed from the perspective of a worldview.The Obama campaign has learned this. The Republicans have long known it, and the choice of Sarah Palin as their Vice-Presidential candidate reflects their expert understanding of the political mind and political marketing. Democrats who simply belittle the Palin choice are courting disaster. It must be t aken with the utmost seriousness.The Democratic responses so far reflect external realities: she is inexperienced, knowing little or nothing about foreign policy or national issues; she is really an anti-feminist, wanting the government to enter women's lives to block abortion, but not wanting the government to guarantee equal pay for equal work, or provide adequate child health coverage, or child care, or early childhood education; she shills for the oil and gas industry on drilling; she denies the scientific truths of global warming and evolution; she misuses her political authority; she opposes sex education and her daughter is pregnant; and, rather than being a maverick, she is on the whole a radical right-wing ideologue.All true, so far as we can tell.But such truths may nonetheless be largely irrelevant to this campaign. That is the lesson Democrats must learn. They must learn the reality of the political mind.The Obama campaign has done this very well so far. The convention events and speeches were orchestrated both to cast light on external realities, traditional political themes, and to focus on values at once classically American and progressive: empathy, responsibility both for oneself and others, and aspiration to make things better both for oneself and the world. Obama did all this masterfully in his nomination speech, while replying to, and undercutting, the main Republican attacks.But the Palin nomination changes the game. The initial response has been to try to keep the focus on external realities, the "issues," and differences on the issues. But the Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind-the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't win on realities. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism, activate the conservative view of the world, and use the advantages that conservatives have in dominating political discourse.Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse. There is a reason why Obama and Biden spoke so much about the family, the nurturant family, with caring fathers and the family values that Obama put front and center in his Father's day speech: empathy, responsibility and aspiration. Obama's reference in the nomination speech to "The American Family" was hardly accidental, nor were the references to the Obama and Biden families as living and fulfilling the American Dream. Real nurturance requires strength and toughness, which Obama displayed in body language and voice in his responses to McCain. The strength of the Obama campaign has been the seamless marriage of reality and symbolic thought.The Republican strength has been mostly symbolic. The McCain campaign is well aware of how Reagan and W won-running on character: values, communicatio n, (apparent) authenticity, trust, and identity - not issues and policies. That is how campaigns work, and symbolism is central.Conservative family values are strict and apply via metaphorical thought to the nation: good vs. evil, authority, the use of force, toughness and discipline, individual (versus social) responsibility, and tough love. Hence, social programs are immoral because they violate discipline and individual responsibility. Guns and the military show force and discipline. Man is above nature; hence no serious environmentalism. The market is the ultimate financial authority, requiring market discipline. In foreign policy, strength is use of the force. In fundamentalist religion, the Bible is the ultimate authority; hence no gay marriage. Such values are at the heart of radical conservatism. This is how John McCain was raised and how he plans to govern. And it is what he shares with Sarah Palin.Palin is the mom in the strict father family, upholding conservative values. Palin is tough: she shoots, skins, and eats caribou. She is disciplined: raising five kids with a major career. She lives her values: she has a Downs-syndrome baby that she refused to abort. She has the image of the ideal conservative mom: pretty, perky, feminine, Bible-toting, and fitting into the ideal conservative family. And she fits the stereotype of America as small-town America. It is Reagan's morning-in-America image. Where Obama thought of capturing the West, she is running for Sweetheart of the West.And Palin, a member of Feminists For Life, is at the heart of the conservative feminist movement, which Ronee Schreiber has written about in her recent book, Righting Feminism. It is a powerful and growing movement that Democrats have barely paid attention to.At the same time, Palin is masterful at the Republican game of taking the Democrats' language and reframing it-putting conservative frames to progressive words: Reform, prosperity, peace. She is also masterful at using the progressive narratives: she's from the working class, working her way up from hockey mom and the PTA to Mayor, Governor, and VP candidate. Her husband is a union member. She can say to the conservative populists that she is one of them-all the things that Obama and Biden have been saying. Bottom-up, not top-down.Yes, the McCain-Palin ticket is weak on the major realities. But it is strong on the symbolic dimension of politics that Republicans are so good at marketing. Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and its response to symbolism cannot be ignored. The initial Democratic response to Palin - the response based on realities alone - indicates that many Democrats have not learned the lessons of the Reagan and Bush years.They have not learned the nature of conservative populism. A great many working-class folks are what I call "bi-conceptual," that is, they are split between conservative and progressive modes of thought. Conservative on patriotism and certain social and family issues, which they have been led to see as "moral", progressive in loving the land, living in communities of care, and practical kitchen table issues like mortgages, health care, wages, retirement, and so on.Conservative theorists won them over in two ways: Inventing and promulgating the idea of "liberal elite" and focusing campaigns on social and family issues. They have been doing this for many years and have changed a lot of brains through repetition. Palin will appeal strongly to conservative populists, attacking Obama and Biden as pointy-headed, tax-and-spend, latte liberals. The tactic is to divert attention from difficult realities to powerful symbolism.What Democrats have shied away from is a frontal attack on radical conservatism itself as an un-American and harmful ideology. I think Obama is right when he says that America is based on people caring about each other and working together for a better future-empathy, responsibility (both personal and social), and aspiration. These lead to a concept of government based on protection (environmental, consumer, worker, health care, and retirement protection) and empowerment (through infrastructure, public education, the banking system, the stock market, and the courts). Nobody can achieve the American Dream or live an American lifestyle without protection and empowerment by the government.20The alternative, as Obama said in his nomination speech, is being on your own, with no one caring for anybody else, with force as a first resort in foreign affairs, with threatened civil liberties and a right-wing government making your most important decisions for you. That is not what American democracy has ever been about.What is at stake in this election are our ideals and our view of the future, as well as current realities. The Palin choice brings both front and center. Democrats, being Democrats, will mostly talk about the realities nonstop without paying attention to the dimensions of values and symbolism. Democrats, in addition, need to call an extremist an extremist: to shine a light on the shared anti-democratic ideology of McCain and Palin, the same ideology shared by Bush and Cheney. They share values antithetical to our democracy. That needs to be said loud and clear, if not by the Obama campaign itself, then by the rest of us who share democratic American values.Our job is to bring external realities together with the reality of the political mind. Don't ignore the cognitive dimension. It is through cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames that we understand and express our ideals.***************************************************
It is important for the Dems to attack the Republican policies as fundamentally unAmerican precisely because those policies sacrifice the well being of the middle class in order to prop up the extremely wealthy. Republican policies have destablized our democracy by shrinking the middle class and undermining our economic stability (two of the three prerequisites to a stable democracy!).
This posting was a reaction to Missteps in a Campaign August 24, 2008To My Fellow American Colleagues,
We were on the silly side of petty in responding to McCain's real estate woes. These arguments come across as so petty on the 20th round of punditry! Showing McCain is out of touch is a no brainer. The mistake in the arguments is punishing people for being wealthy or marrying "well." That's hypocritical. George Stephanopolis kept pounding on this issue until it sounded ridiculous. The continuous pounding by talking heads actually does more to derail messages that are perceived to be corrected. It confuses the issues.The Roosevelt’s and Kennedy's did so well with their message of public service. Everyone knew they were wealthy, not to mention the bootlegging legacy from which it came. They delivered for the public. Their actions spoke louder than words.How many houses McCain owns is a non-issue. A bigger issue is how people read Barack's response to Rick Warren's question on when life begins. Unfortunately, the populace isn't good at nuance so the "above my pay grade" comment went over their heads. That's why Republicans position Barack as elitist; he has a vocabulary and speaks in complex sentences. During the Rick Warren program when you compare McCain's clipped answers to Obama's thoughtful musings you see what I mean.
The American public has a short attention span. (Think 30 frames per second. And, you can thank Sesame Street for that.) Plus, the media has created sound bites and combined the online style of reporting and blogs can be dangerous. We all need to wake up and view the landscape for what it is. This is not about punishing wealthy people. When statements about "re-distribution of wealth" rears its head, it can be miscontrued as socialistic or communistic.Real change requires courage to take a stand for a vision. A vision, by its nature, is ephemeral. The challenge is moving the vision to manifest and ask the questionable questions and say the unspeakable things. Let's shift gears NOW! It's getting late. If you have doubts, ask yourself why this race is so close if the Bush years are so disgusting. Rather than focus on "gotcha's" and who was right, let's structure a path people can follow. Obama is sometimes too vague for the average bear. He must use more concrete language to create a mental image for a steel worker or stay-at-home mom. For example, driving the Ivy-League credentials is an example. Mainstream Americans are lucky to go to community college let alone Harvard. Biden is capable of this language. From my coach training, I would like to offer a tip: Clients often talk about a topic, not the emotions or depth of the feeling beneath the topic. That's what I see us doing. Get to the heart of it, relate emotionally, not intellectually. It's more about how people feel about themselves when they can't feed their families, not that they can't feed their families.
We would do well to adopt Thom Hartmann's philosophy about framing the argument. I'm a staunch Democrat and believe Thom Hartmann, http://www.thomhartmann.com/, when it comes to framing the conversation. His book, Cracking the Code, could be our handbook. It's brilliant.Please let me know how I may serve. Our future is at stake.Best regards,Michelle Cubas, Enterprise Business Coach
Our waiter at the local eatery saw my Obama shirt and said that he liked him but was afraid he'd raise taxes. I have the chart from the Washington Post comparing Obama's tax plan with McCain's committed to memory. I made him aware that in his tax bracket he's be getting a nice break.
Earlier while doing the Neighbor to neighbor canvass we has a small businessman complain about Obama's tax plan. Again we had to straigten him out on what was real and what was republican hype. This is going to take a lot of work. I am now going to prepare more material.
At the gas station a guy said he was for Ron paul but thought Obama a good second. I asked him to make sure his vote counted by going for Obama.
I formed a new group, "Harry Potter Fans for Obama", which I invite everyone to join.
As the anticipation for the election builds simultaneously with the anticipation for the release of "Half Blood Prince", we can cross energize the Obama and Potter fan-bases, and hopefully expand the former through the latter.
The common and fundamental note of "hope" that animates both the campaign and the book/film series is a powerful thing, as we have seen. The Harry Potter books have impacted the world and our culture in ways that have yet to be fathomed--and done so in an extremely 'saturated' way. The Obama campaign, too, has struck a chord deep in the hearts of millions who want to believe in something besides the ever-present stink of cynicism. This strikes me as a natural pairing, and may allow us to reflect on some interesting dimensions of our political lives using a narrative that was not drawn from RNC talking points, like the media narrative is.
Please join, blog, email, etc.--and send an owl to everyone you know!
I am having a wonderful time introducing a series of facinating books to those of us comitted to getting Barack Obama elected President. I am more convinced every day that in order to govern after he is elected, this campaign has to be one of substance. The people who elect Obama to be their next President need to understand what he is going to do as the Chief Executive.
George Lakoff is one of the most brilliant political thinkers out there today. His great contribution to progressive politics is to explain how conservatives have mastered the idea of framing issues in ways that resonate with the average voter. Progressives think about the Inheritance Tax, conservative anti-tax advocates relentlessly talk about the "Death Tax." One group sees the inheritance tax as an element of good goverment, the other sees abolishing it as one more step towards shrinking the government to the point that it can't do much anymore.
In his latest book The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politiics with an 18th-Century Brain, Lakoff explains that the stakes in the battle between conservatives and the rest of us are huge:
American values are fundamentally progressive, centered on equality, human rights, social responisbility, and the inclusion of all. Yet progressives have, without knowing why, given conservatives an enormous advantage in the culture war. The radical conservatives seek and have already begun to introduce: an authoritarian heirarchy based on vast concentrations and control of wealth; order based on fear, intimidation, and obedience; a broken government; no balance of power; priorities shifted from the public sector to the corporate and military sectors; responsibility shifted from society to the individual; control of elections through control of who votes and how the votes are counted; control of ideas through the media; and patriarchal family values projected upon religion, politics, and the market.
Chilling stuff and more than enough reason to muster our forces and run an effective campaign to oust the powers that be who have collectively allowed this to happen.
WASHINGTON - In a city full of people who can claim part of the "Reagan legacy," Peggy Noonan has a piece to herself. While others played roles in President Reagan's tax cuts or defense buildup, Noonan understood better than anyone the Gipper's special connection to America's mythic past.
Noonan knows the American Dream is the wellspring of political power. She even sprinkled some verbal fairy dust on George H.W. Bush in writing his 1988 convention speech, in which he looked over America and saw "a thousand points of light."
Now Noonan, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, has an issue with Barack Obama. "Has he ever gotten misty-eyed over . . . the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything?" she wrote late last month. "How about D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who flocked to Sutter's Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in them thar hills? There's gold in that history."
The column sparked some blog blowback (Henry Ford? Wasn't he a racist?) and a sideshow controversy over NBC anchor Brian Williams's praise for Noonan at the same time as he criticized a New York Times report on gay newlyweds. But Obama might take notice: Noonan's images may be gauzy but her conclusion - "There's gold in that history" - is indisputable, at least in politics.
As Garry Wills and others have pointed out, Reagan didn't so much conjure up images of American's past as its movie-past, the uplifting motion pictures of the Depression and World War II. In those movies, cowboys brought decency and civilization to the West, wives stood by their husbands as they headed off to war, and good old-fashioned hard work overcame even the greatest class barriers.
That's the America that Americans like to remember - an idealized version of themselves. It would be churlish to point out that those films didn't often address barriers of race or ethnicity or that the good old-fashioned ingenuity celebrated in biopics of people like Thomas Edison wasn't exclusively American: A lower-class Scotsman named Alexander Fleming achieved the greatest medical breakthrough of the 20th century despite the British class system, and the inventor of radio, Guglielmo Marconi, was an Italian fascist.
Nonetheless, Noonan is right to stand in awe of the story of how two bicycle-shop owners from Dayton, Ohio, cracked the mystery of heavier-than-air flight that had eluded the most brilliant scientific minds of Europe. The notion that it could only happen in America may be debatable, but it's not a debate that many Americans would welcome.
Barack Obama has his own perspective on the American Dream, one that's far more realistic than idealistic. At an age when others of his generation were reading the patriotic children's books like the Childhood of Famous Americans series, Obama was finding ways to fit into mainstream America as a biracial child. The fact that he did, he says, is a tribute to the American Dream.
Recently, he has emphasized more familiar aspects of his background, celebrating his grandfather's service in World War II and his grandmother's work on the homefront.
And yet there are some indications, such as his reluctance to wear a flag pin, that he wants to teach America a lesson about real patriotism versus the easy patriotism of symbols, stories, and myths.
There's something admirable about any decision to inflict political damage on oneself to promote a greater truth. And he is surely right that the measure of one's patriotism isn't how loudly it's proclaimed. But where patriotism is concerned, truth and fiction are often blurred, and sometimes the deepest, most sincere patriotic feelings are summoned by myths. (Reagan himself would confuse what he saw in movies with what he actually experienced.)
As a sometime-admirer of Reagan, Obama knows the power of American stories. His own rise has a mythical aspect, as celebrated by his own writings. So he might do well to answer Noonan by saying that yes, he stands in awe of the Wright Brothers, George Washington, and the westward pioneers.
Obama is, after all, seeking to stand among them.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.
As posted on http://obamalanduk.blogspot.com 8 April 2008
Today I had the pleasure of seeing my first official event... of the Clinton campaign. Chelsea Clinton spoke at the student union of the University of Southern Indiana. And the result was fascinating.The event was staged as a "town hall" setup. That is, it was a somewhat intimate setting, with a strong focus on questions from the audience. As there is more of a direct conversation with the community, there is generally less fanfare than one finds in a rally. Furthermore, this setup lends itself to policy oriented discussions, partly to avoid unplanned political maneuvers. In this respect, Chelsea shone brilliantly. She showed a mastership of the issues at hand, including specific policy knowledge, relevant statistics, and an ability to put her words into perspective. After seeing Chelsea today, I was impressed by an obviously well-educated, bright person. Furthermore, I was left with the impression that a Hillary administration would be well grounded in strong policy decisions.Unfortunately, good policy does not necessarily lead to good governance. In order to rule in our democracy, one must not only make good decisions but lead people into action as well. This sense of greater perspective is what lacks in the Clinton campaign (I'm not sure most people have a good sense of why Hillary even wants to be president). And this perspective was lacking in Chelsea's demeanor as well. There was no overwhelming theme framing the Chelsea's articulate responses, except a familiarity with mundane details.Furthermore, this lack of perspective was made all the more apparent by the elephant in the room. Barack Obama's campaign for change, which has also displayed credibility on the policy level, has consistently portrayed a message of urgency and inspiration. Obama's ability to consistently relate his policy stance back to the fundamentals of American democracy taps into a deeper sense of patriotism and humanity. This uniting element blatantly contrasts with a consistently lackluster, yet competent, performance from the Clinton campaign.On that note, registration for voting in the Indiana primary ended yesterday. Obama's registration drive resulted in 50,000 new voters, roughly 5% of the projected vote. In Evansville, we registered roughly 4,000, while the local Clinton campaign does not claim to have registered any.
An excerpt from the full entry:
It is also worth point out that neo-liberals believe that you can simply show people the logic of your position and they'll come over to your side. This is how the Clinton campaign has been run. Furthermore, Clinton has occasionally activated the strict father model in this race--particularly with the notorious red phone ad, but also with discussions of experience.
Obama has demonstrated much more effective handling of frames. Not only does he rely solely on the nurturing parent frame, but he uses positivity ("hope") to overwhelm the more negative ideas associated with the strict father model. He also successfully re-framed race in the eyes of many Americans in his recent speech.
Ursula K. Le Guin understands the two family frames a priori. I didn't understand until I read Lakoff and then thought for a good long time--probably because I didn't have the right frame for understanding what Le Guin was telling us.
Howard Dean came to Seattle on Tuesday night, and gave a great speech about what the Democrats have done, are doing, and what we're going to do in 2007, 2008 and beyond.
Gov. Dean gave the core values that he is recommending the Democrats run on in 2008. Those values are Strength and Toughness, Fairness and .. oh, yeah, Fiscal Discipline. Strength and Toughness because we need to fix the impression that Democrats are weak on security. Fairness because it's an good way to frame the cultural issues that drive our country apart. And Fiscal Discipline because, well, the Republican's haven't shown any.
Here's a popular narrative I've noticed about Obama's candidacy: Obama is the new Howard Dean. He is generating a lot of early and intense interest from a select group that is not representative of the electorate at large. His supporters are mostly young, they are mostly ____ x, y, z thing. The wave of publicity he's riding is too strong. He will peak too early and crash at a particularly inopportune moment, likely just before the Iowa caucuses, just like Howard Dean.
IMHO, this is the most promising counter-narrative: The Obama phenomena is more like the iPod than it is like the Deaniacs. He is popular not with youth, per se, but with the early adopters, a disproportionate number of whom are likely to be young. He is truly something new and different, a superior candidate who is getting his initial support from a select group who are more open to new ideas and experiences. As other people get more used to Obama, they will like him. There is no particular reason why it's bad to gain momentum early. Dean's problem was that an insufficient number of people supported him, not that people supported him early. It wasn't that the Dean wave crested too soon. It was that it was too small.
How important will it be for us to claim language that describes Obama, and not allow the standard descriptors to be employed?
I have noticed it around here and thought I'd see what others think. I am almost finished with Audacity of Hope and would not say there is much "liberal" about it. I am tired of the dominant paradigm that if you are for civil rights for everyone ("gay rights" in some circles) then you are "liberal." Bullshit. You are fair.
