The Mind and the Obama Magic
Barack Obama should not move, or even appear to be moving, toward right-wing views on issues -- even with nuanced escape clauses. Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, and the NY Times Editorial Page all agree, for various reasons. I agree as well, for many of the same reasons, as well as important reasons that go beyond even excellent political commentary. My reasons have to do with results in the cognitive and brain sciences, as discussed in my recent book, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st Century Politics with an 18th Century Brain.
But before I get into the details, it is important to get a sense of why Obama might be "moving to the Right." There are at least three possibilities. The first is for political expediency. The second is to reassure voters that he is a responsible leader, not a crazy radical. The third is that he thinks that nuanced positions don't have the effect of the moving to the right.
Let's start with the first possibility -- expediency, the one assumed by most observers.
The Political Expediency Argument
The usual political wisdom is (1) voters vote on the basis of positions on issues, (2) there is a left-to-right spectrum of voters defined by positions on issues, (3) most voters are in the "center." Polls are constructed to appear consistent with this tri-partite hypothesis. The Dick Morris strategy, based on this hypothesis, says: if a Democrat moves the Right, he will get more votes because he will "take away" the other side's issues. If Obama and his advisors believe this, then the more they more to the Right, the bigger their win should be. But all three hypotheses are false, and so is the conclusion based on it.
First, voters mostly vote not on the details of positions on issues, but on five aspects of what might be called "character," as Richard Wirthlin discovered in the 1980 Reagan campaign. They are Values (What are the ethical principles that form the basis of your politics?); Authenticity (Do you say what you believe?); Communication (Do you connect with voters and inspire them?); Judgment; Trust; and Identity (If you share voters' values, connect with them, tell them the truth effectively while inspiring trust, then they will identify with you -- and they will voter for you. Positions on issues matter when they come to stand symbolically for values. Reagan and George W. Bush understood this. Carter, Mondale, Gore, and Kerry did not. And in the primaries. Hillary Clinton did not get it (she focused on policy, while Obama and McCain focused more on character, on who he was).
Values, authenticity, communication, judgment, and trust are not irrational reasons for voting for a president, even over positions on specific issues. The reason is that situations change, and what you rationally wind up depending on are just those virtues.
Obama introduced himself to the primary voters not as a policy wonk, but as a person of character, who announced his values, said what he believed (no pussyfooting), communicated beautifully and powerfully, and gave examples of his good judgment -- he was someone you could trust and identify with. That was a major part of the Obama magic. If Obama even appears to adopt Right-wing views for the sake of getting more votes, he will appear to be giving up on his values, renouncing his authenticity and believability, clouding his judgment, and raising questions about whether he can be trusted. The Obama magic will be in danger of fading.
Let us now turn to the second reason. There are two major modes of thought in American politics -- conservative and progressive, what I've called "strict" and "nurturant." We all grow up with brains exposed to both and capable of using both, but usually in different areas of life. Some people are conservative on foreign policy and progressive on domestic policy, or conservative on economic issues and progressive on social issues -- or the reverse. There is no left-to-right linear spectrum; all kinds of combinations occur. I've called such folks "biconceptuals." Brainwise, they show a common situation called "mutual inhibition," where two modes of thought are possible but the activation of one inhibits the other. The more you activate a conservative mode of thought, the more you inhibit the progressive mode of thought -- and the more likely it is that the conservative mode of thought will spread to other issues.
Interestingly, many people who call themselves "conservatives" actually think like progressives on a range of issue areas. For example, many "conservatives" love the land as much as any environmentalist; want to live in communities where people care about each other, that is, have social not just individual responsibility; live progressive business principles of honestly, care for their employees, and care for the public; and have progressive religious values: helping the poor, caring for the sick, being good stewards of the God's creation, turning the other cheek. One view of "bipartisanship" for progressives is finding self-described conservatives and independents who have such progressive values and working with them on that basis. That's what Obama did when he went to Rick Warren's megachurch and it is his strategy in Project Joshua. Note that this is the opposite of the form of bipartisanship that involves really adopting right-wing values, or even appearing to. What this bipartisan strategy does, from the brain's viewpoint, is to activate the progressive mode of thought in the brains of conservatives, and thus tends to inhibit conservative thought.
But the form of bipartisanship that involves adopting, or appearing to adopt, right-wing views has the opposite effect. It strengthens conservative thought in the brains on those biconceptuals and weakens progressive thought. In short, it actually helps conservatives. Rather than "taking arguments away from them" it strengthens their basic values and hence all their arguments. It give conservatives more reason, not less, for voting for conservatives.
If Obama adopts, or appears to adopt, right-wing positions, he may still win, since McCain is such a weak candidate. But it will hurt Democrats running for office all up and down the ticket, since it will strengthen general conservative positions on all issues and hence work in the favor of conservative candidates.
As has often been said, if you are a conservative, why vote for the progressive spouting conservative views when you can vote for a real conservative?
In short, if Obama adopts, or appears to adopt, rightwing views, he will not only hurt himself, but also hurt other Democrats.
The Responsibility Position
Suppose that Obama's motivation is not political expediency, but rather an attempt to counter both rightwing and centrist stereotypes of progressives as being irresponsible.
Adopting, or appearing to adopt, rightwing positions is not going to work, and will only hurt, for reasons given above. What is the alternative?
In The Audacity of Hope, Obama portrays what I would call progressive ideals as simply American ideals, and he continued that account throughout the primary campaign. I think it is a correct account. And I think it is the key to uniting the country without adopting rightwing views. From this perspective, responsibility and the strength and judgment to act responsibly works with empathy (caring about other people) to define the basic American ideals: freedom, fairness, equality, opportunity, and so on. One can speak from this perspective of "full responsibility" both social and individual as central to the American vision, and they say what it means to be both responsible and committed to American ideals in each issue area. Moving to rightwing views, and abandoning American ideals, is never necessary to win.
The Nuanced Policy Position
It is possible to add nuance to a policy to make it look like you are moving to the right without actually doing so in policy terms. This can seem to do double duty, avoiding criticisms without making really substantive changes. It is an illusion.
When Obama ran for Senator in Illinois he had to at least appear to support Illinois industries -- coal, ethanol, and nuclear energy. He has used nuanced escape clauses, such as if it turns out to be economically feasible, while aware that sequestered coal, corn ethanol, and nuclear could not be economically feasible. Is this good politics? It may have been for a new senator, but it is not for a president. The reason again is that doing so activates a conservative mode of thought and inhibits a progressive mode of thought, making the move to real alternative energy that much harder.
Positions like this depend on a deep mistake about policy. There are two aspects to policy: cognitive and material. Material policy is about the nuts and bolts, how things are to work in the world. Cognitive policy is about what the public has to have in its brain/mind in order to fully support the right material policies. Coal, nuclear energy, and ethanol are policy disasters, and even giving them support with nuanced escape clauses hurts the possibility of real energy reform, but it activates, and hence strengthens, the conservative modes of thought that lie behind those proposals.
The bottom line: A nuanced policy that looks like a rightward move has the cognitive effect of a rightward move. Cognitive effects matter awfully in presidential campaigns.
Can You Avoid Attacks?
No. No matter how many rightwing views you move toward, you will be viciously attacked as too liberal, as influenced by radicals, as inexperienced, as unpatriotic, as all words and no content. Stick to your core values. Be yourself. Voters will respect you.
Why Understanding the Political Mind Matters
Politics looks different from the perspective of the cognitive and brain sciences. That is why I have written The Political Mind. Your arguments change when you start with how the brain and mind really work.
From the brain's perspective, the pragmatic arguments and moral arguments converge: Don't adopt rightwing positions for the sake of political expediency (that will backfire) or to demonstrate responsibility (that too will backfire). The best way to be expedient is to be authentic, stick to your core values, show and discuss responsibility, and thus garner trust. That is how to lead our nation, and to do so responsibly and toward fulfillment of its ideals.
George Lakoff is the author of The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 20th Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain. He is Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley.
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Garner trust? Give us a break. Simplistic phrase for the hardest thing to accomplish by consistency alone. You can trust the village idiot for example, but still vote for the wiliest man in town to beat out the next town in competition for investments. Bush probably fooled no-one as trustworthy in and of himself - he was trusted to fulfill his role as a puppet. And he didn't even do that right.
The only people who really know how the public thinks about politicians are seasoned politicians, all of whom have no real core values. They know the game isn't about who can be trusted, but who can best persuade voters to misplace it with them.
You can trust the blog author to be promoting his book - which from this blog I trust will be another rundown of an untested and largely untestable theory.
The whole article is one giant overthink.
Obama is just a politician, twisting and turning whichever way he thinks will help him win the election.
He's also the most likable candidate since Reagan and Kennedy, which means he'll win the election no matter how many sides of any issue he may take.
Hello higher taxes and trillion dollar government programs.
Hello "change".
S'cuse me podner, but what the hell do you think the Idiot-in-Chief has been doing with our tax structure and the national debt?? Can you say multiple trillions? On a NON-WAR, which he's incapable of ending much less of winning.
Let's call it what it really is: Marketing. Obama has a great marketing team. They like to think of themselves as "strategists", such as the way they are framed in the Rolling Stone Obama playbook this week, but in reality, they are marketing hacks, who create manipulative frameworks for selling people on kool-aid. The bigger challenge they have had is to find a message that gets the people to drink it. This they did wrapped in anti-war rhetoric and it worked. Now they are not looking so smart, then boxed themselves in and want to run a 360 reversal in a compressed time frame. No six-week, two ply plan for undoing the Rev. Wright background and more kool-aid to wash that down nicely . No three-week cycle to Phlieger-proof their candidate and get that to wash down with another gulp of the kool aid. Today they are finding it difficult to drive the big five flip-flops under the bus, and it will start to show in the polls. Just give it one more day or two...
It's evident with all this Obama flip flopping on the war, that he is long on marketing and short on substance. Why can't Obama talk about some of the issues I have talked about on realcrash.
(continued)
Have you forgotten that in this election, the public seems to hate both parties almost equally? That the two candidates from each party are both considered to be divergent from their respective partisan dogmas is not coincidence. Americans are sick of being tugged in each direction and want someone with the ability to think for themselves and lead for once.
I'm not sure how to put this so I'll just say it bluntly:
Barack Obama is not the bleeding-heart liberal the left wants to believe he is. He never has been. He never said he was. Just because he's half-black and he was against the war doesn't mean that he's going to follow in lock-step with everything Kos tells him to do. And now that they've decided that he's "wandering off the reservation", the left is seemingly doing all it can to pounce on him and reinforce a meme that the GOP is currently touting: that he is just an ordinary politician.
But the simple fact that he isn't who Kos, Krugman, HuffPo et al. want him so desperately to be IS WHY HE IS THE NOMINEE RIGHT NOW. If he was regurgitating every left-wing talking point, how could he be a truly transcendental politician?
This "rightward shift" idea is a desperate myth propagated by a strange confluence of the radical right and a desperate fringe of the left. The right want to destroy his character by portraying him as inconsistent on important issues (he's not) while the left want Obama to be a leader, but take orders from them and them only.
Not all liberals are against the death penalty.
Not all liberals are socialists.
Not all liberals support gun bans.
Excellent post! Finally intelligence with some common sense to boot!
Could not agree more. Good job.
What the hell is a "transcendental politician"? A politician who transcends politics? Brilliant.
Not all liberals are against the death penalty.
Not all liberals are socialists.
Not all liberals support gun bans.
Then they are not true Liberals.
It's amazing when i hear or see people say Obama should say this or how come I havent' heard him say this or that. Half the times I laugh because if you are a true follower of Senator Obama and watched most of his speeches he has usually spoke on or touched on most things that the critics are excusing him of. He needs a website with all of his speeches so the truth can be told, and it's not just the bloggers , MSM is ten times worse, they don't research anything thoroughly and continue to misconstrue Obama's views and statements while McCain makes 3 gaffes a day and no one says anything.
And how to Obama's positions look to a brain which has read "The Audacity of Hope" and followed Obama's policy positions since the beginning of the campaign?
Answer in one word: Unchanged.
Hear, hear, I second that. If I had more than 3 spare minutes at a time I'd dig out the quotes and create the form response to the flip-flopper charges myself.
It's people like you who allow me to continue to have faith in HuffPo readers. All those people claiming they were hoodwinked or betrayed only fooled themselves. It was there all along. What did they think he meant in his 2004 Dem Convention speech when he said we're not red and blue not left and right but purple and United? I guess they thought he meant he'd convert them all into liberals with an incredible speech.
Unchanged, that's right. Thank you. I've been trying to make that point to my news group for weeks just to have them copy and paste mam talking points and call them facts.
"The best way to be expedient is to be authentic, stick to your core values"
That is true, but how do we know what Obama's core values are? Perhaps he was pandering to the left to get the nomination, and has now returned to his core values. The problem with changing your positions with the political winds is that no one can know what you believe, or even if you have core values. Such a politician does not deserve our trust.
Very interesting piece. For what it is worth, and this is an unscientfic sample, I have gauged the reaction of some extended family members to Obama. Many of them fall into the category of voter (middle to just right of center) that a "paint by numbers general election strategy" typically aimed to attract in previous elections. Throughout the spring, these individuals were very much attracted to Obama because he did seem different etc. and they really felt an urgent neeed for change etc. Now, as the good Senator is heading toward the "middle" (and i would argue it is the old middle not the one that has emerged in the past couple of years), they are expressing considerable disappointment with his obvious strategy and many have concluded he is "just another politician" etc. Many have said that "he does not really to stand for anything because he's moderating his positions too much." Rather than being comforted because he sounds like the folks they voted for in the past, they are "frightened" (that is their word) and not ready to trust him as a result. Again, this is unscientific, but these reactions tell me a good deal because the individuals in question (known very well to me) have represented the basic "thinking" of swing voters in past elections.
Uhm' can we let Obama be Obama, he knows what he's doing. I don't care what you guys say, Obama is not going to win with just a bunch of "lefties" and "progressives" PERIOD. He is not McGovern, Dukakis, Kerry or Gore who were all War Vets or served militarily who let themselves get swiftboated by non- military sorry ass candidates. They had no where near the "game" Obama has.
I keep telling folks this man is if for All PEOPLE! , Dem's, Repub', Independen
If you read his book you would know this already and you would know his positions. He has not "moved to the center" he has simply emphasized and brought out other positions that he already had, he did not have to bring these positions up against Hillary like Faith Based Iniatives for example, he has always believed in this but it doesn't cater to the left as well, which is sad, so he couldn't emphasize it during the primaries.
I thought I was alone. I thought I was the one who misunderstood The Audacity of Hope. It turns out just a few of us read it. Right on!
I read it too. Fired up - ready to go
"Uhm can we let Obama be Obama, he knows what he's doing."
My sentiments, exactly!
Senator Obama has been straightforward about his approach to government, all along. People have been pinning their "hopes" on him and such projections are bound to be interrupted by reality. Its funny that people think that "Change" can occur in politics without them having to bother to "change" their own ideas as part of that process. Read his books. Sen. Obama believes in problem solving, not ideological domination. Senator Obama is clear, many of the American populace are not.
"Left" and "Right" values do not hold a comprehensive solution to every problem we face. We need someone who can see that answers aren't found in TV dinner packages.
After nearly 8 years of pigheaded, a little flip-flopping looks pretty good.
I'm happy to read this admission from Lakeoff that he and other Liberals (the term "progressive" is subjective and wrong in my view), believe that a continued brainwashing of leftist views will eventually "correct" all these flawed conservative views. And you wonder why conservatives view Lakeoff and his kind as arrogant elites?
That is the grand plan for Liberals: take over the media and the universities and find a charismatic champion to help brainwash the rest of the country. This scheme is about as Orwellian as they come. Also, it proves that LakeOff and his kind don’t actually value bipartisanship; what they want is to never ever have to admit that their views are flawed. It is better to kill the opposition than to accept a different view.
Obama is correct assuming his primary goal is to win the Whitehouse. His move to center is a move to a majority of more clear-thinking voters. The quickest way to hand the election to McCain is for Obama to keep pandering to all the activist-Liberals that worked so hard to help him bear Hillary. I say go for it because McCain is the better man.
The center isn't conservative. On most issues, people are a bit left of center. Most people want universal healthcare. Most people believe abortion is up to the mother. Most people want the war in Iraq to be ended. Where have you been?
Too bad misfit, that your brain won't allow anything like reason to penetrate. You are locked into neoconservatism like a robot. That makes you an automatic negative person who cannot respect the intelligence of someone else. You like to throw that term elitist around. I would say anyone who thinks they know better than others what elitism is, is elitist. Live with that.
Wow socialmisfit, you're lack of comprehension of the article is really astounding.
I think you are spot on in 90% of what you say. The only thing I would disagree with is that he hasn't moved to the center. I think the Netroots and the activist-libs latched onto him because they did not like Hillary and because he was the only true anti-war candidate. They failed to read The Audacity of Hope or fully contemplate what "moving beyond the traditional left-right divide" actually meant. In the chapter entitled (go figure) "Faith" Obama talks all about faith-based initiatives. You don't blame the teacher when you don't do your homework.
To all my lib friends that responded. Read Sowells book "A Conflict of Vision". Also read a little Adam Smith and a bit of Ayn Rand. You see, I get my dose of your ideology every day just by picking up the paper and watching TV. I also get to talk to all the college kids in my town to learn just how far left they have been pulled. All you get is the same Kool-Aid and then demonstrate vitriol when you face an argument different than your vision. Your problem is that you actually believe that everyone thinks like you, or else they must be too stupid to be consequential. Lakeoff admits in this article that he believes the population is malleable and will sway to the left if Obama plays to the left. That is the epitome of arrogance and elitism.
Obama knows that he cannot win a general election by aligning himself with liberals. His move to center is a move to America. Lakeoff and other liberal elites feel betrayed and are looking for answers other than the truth. I do think McCain is marginally the better candidate; and I think a more left-aligned Obama will hand him the election.
Thank you Dr. Lakoff for taking that right-wing, left-wing thing out of my head. It wasn't serving to explain the behavior I was seeing. I'm going to have to read your book.
George, you, Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, and the "NY Times Editorial Page" do more to create the false impression that Obama is moving to the right than the Right is doing to create that impression.
*Please Stop!*
No one can freeze into a statue -- especially a presidential candidate (of any stripe). You will better serve the cause of getting a Democrat (namely Obama) in office by quitting this fixation on his perceived "movement to the right" and starting to write about the nuances of his policies -- and why they matter. You are, in fact, doing what you write about -- playing to the mind-tricks of perception by continuing this particular dialog.
Need any proof? The responses here, alone prove that -- just because a well-respected commentator writes something, it's the gospel truth. I've seen this time and time again. All it takes is someone famous to say something and most people will think that way. In this case -- It's Not Helping, It Is Hurting!
I thought it was nonsense, myself, so I guess my response is a counter example. Not everyone believes it's gospel. I would add that Obama's support for the FISA "Compromise" bill is wrong headed and not about left, right or middle. And either he believes absolutely in his soul that the bill is moral and right and most importantly supports the Constitution or he doesn't. If in his soul he knows that it is an evil compromise, then he has an obligation to openly and publicly renounce it. Oh well.
Hey Kiddy, Legislators work within a context that is hard if not impossible to empathize with if you are not in that circumstance. When the congress is so nearly equally divided, compromise is all there is. No one gets exactly what they want, so they grab ahold of what seems the best of the crop and run with it. It is an imperfect system, but no one has devised a better one as of yet. We all just need to get smarter, pat attention and be more active in changing things.
I don't think mouselion that you are correct on this. What these commentators are doing is promoting discussion which helps to educate all of us. While I am certain about McCain, Obama is much more complex. It takes longer to understand Obama, but a picture is slowly emerging. He truly wants to be a uniter, which may be what the times call for. It is hard for a candidate to get their message out as we know. The media wastes so much time on triviality and devotes too much time even to specific important issues. So, one has to really work to actually figure out what Obama is up to.
True, but to truly promote discussion is the objective -- not playing to perceptions.
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