The Obama Code

As President Obama prepares to address a joint session of Congress, what can we expect to hear?

The pundits will stress the nuts-and-bolts policy issues: the banking system, education, energy, health care. But beyond policy, there will be a vision of America--a moral vision and a view of unity that the pundits often miss.

What they miss is the Obama Code. For the sake of unity, the President tends to express his moral vision indirectly. Like other self-aware and highly articulate speakers, he connects with his audience using what cognitive scientists call the "cognitive unconscious." Speaking naturally, he lets his deepest ideas simply structure what he is saying. If you follow him, the deep ideas are communicated unconsciously and automatically. " The Code is his most effective way to bring the country together around fundamental American values.

For supporters of the President, it is crucial to understand the Code in order to talk overtly about the old values our new president is communicating. It is necessary because tens of millions of Americans--both conservatives and progressives--don't yet perceive the vital sea change that Obama is bringing about.

The word "code" can refer to a system of either communication or morality. President Obama has integrated the two. The Obama Code is both moral and linguistic at once. The President is using his enormous skills as a communicator to express a moral system. As he has said, budgets are moral documents. His economic program is tied to his moral system and is discussed in the Code, as are just about all of his other policies.

Behind the Obama Code are seven crucial intellectual moves that I believe are historically, practically, and cognitively appropriate, as well as politically astute. They are not all obvious, and jointly they may seem mysterious. That is why it is worth sorting them out one-by-one.

1. Values Over Programs

The first move is to distinguish programs from the value systems they represent. Every policy has a material aspect--the nuts and bolts of how it works-- plus a typically implicit cognitive aspect that represents the values and ideas behind the nuts and bolts. The President knows the difference. He understands that those who see themselves as "progressive" or "conservative" all too often define those words in terms of programs rather than values. Even the programs championed by progressives may not fit what the President sees as the fundamental values of the country. He is seeking to align the programs of his administration with those values.

The potential pushback will come not just from conservatives who do not share his values, but just as much from progressives who make the mistake of thinking that programs are values and that progressivism is defined by a list of programs. When some of those programs are cut as economically secondary or as unessential, their defenders will inevitably see this as a conservative move rather than a move within an overall moral vision they share with the President.

This separation between values and programs lies behind the president's pledge to cut programs that don't serve those values and support those that do -- no matter whether they are proposed by Republicans or Democrats. The President's idealistic question is, what policies serve what values? -- not what political interests?

2. Progressive Values are American Values

President Obama's second intellectual move concerns what the fundamental American values are. In Moral Politics, I described what I found to be the implicit, often unconscious, value systems behind progressive and conservative thought. Progressive thought rests, first, on the value of empathy--putting oneself in other people's shoes, seeing the world through their eyes, and therefore caring about them. The second principle is acting on that care, taking responsibility both for oneself and others, social as well as individual responsibility. The third is acting to make oneself, the country, and the world better--what Obama has called an "ethic of excellence" toward creating "a more perfect union" politically.

Historian Lynn Hunt, in Inventing Human Rights, has shown that those values, beginning with empathy, lie historically behind the human rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Obama, in various interviews and speeches, has provided the logical link. Empathy is not mere sympathy. Putting oneself in the shoes of others brings with it the responsibility to act on that empathy--to be "our brother's keeper and our sister's keeper"--and to act to improve ourselves, our country, and the world.

The logic is simple: Empathy is why we have the values of freedom, fairness, and equality -- for everyone, not just for certain individuals. If we put ourselves in the shoes of others, we will want them to be free and treated fairly. Empathy with all leads to equality: no one should be treated worse than anyone else. Empathy leads us to democracy: to avoid being subject indefinitely to the whims of an oppressive and unfair ruler, we need to be able to choose who governs us and we need a government of laws.

Obama has consistently maintained that what I, in my writings, have called "progressive" values are fundamental American values. From his perspective, he is not a progressive; he is just an American. That is a crucial intellectual move.

Those empathy-based moral values are the opposite of the conservative focus on individual responsibility without social responsibility. They make it intolerable to tolerate a president who is The Decider--who gets to decide without caring about or listening to anybody. Empathy-based values are opposed to the pure self-interest of a laissez-faire "free market," which assumes that greed is good and that seeking self-interest will magically maximize everyone's interests. They oppose a purely self-interested view of America in foreign policy. Obama's foreign policy is empathy-based, concerned with people as well as states--with poverty, education, disease, water, the rights of women and children, ethnic cleansing, and so on around the world.

How are such values expressed? Take a look at the inaugural speech. Empathy: "the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job, the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child..." Responsibility to ourselves and others: "We have duties to ourselves, the nation, and the world." The ethic of excellence: "there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of character, than giving our all to a difficult task." They define our democracy: "This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed."

The same values apply to foreign policy: "To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and make clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds." And to religion as well: By quoting language like "our brother's keeper," he is communicating that mere individual responsibility will not get you into Heaven, that social responsibility and making the world better is required.

3. Biconceptualism and the New Bipartisanship

The third crucial idea behind the Obama Code is biconceptualism, the knowledge that a great many people who identify themselves ideologically as conservatives, or politically as Republicans or Independents, share those fundamental American values--at least on certain issues. Most "conservatives" are not thoroughgoing movement conservatives, but are what I have called "partial progressives" sharing Obama's American values on many issues. Where such folks agree with him on values, Obama tries, and will continue to try, to work with them on those issues if not others. And, he assumes, correctly believe, that the more they come to think in terms of those American values, the less they will think in terms of opposing conservative values.

Biconceptualism lay behind his invitation to Rick Warren to speak at the inaugural. Warren is a biconceptual, like many younger evangelicals. He shares Obama's views of the environment, poverty, health, and social responsibility, though he is otherwise a conservative. Biconceptualism is behind his "courting" of Republican members of Congress. The idea is not to accept conservative moral views, but to find those issues where individual Republicans already share what he sees as fundamentally American values. He has "reached across the aisle" to Richard Luger on nuclear proliferation, but not on economics.

Biconceptualism is central to Obama's attempts to achieve unity --a unity based on his understanding of American values. The current economic failure gives him an opening to speak about the economy in terms of those ideals: caring about all, prosperity for all, responsibility for all by all, and good jobs for all who want to work.

I think Obama is correct about biconceptualism of this sort -- at least where the overwhelming proportion of Americans is concerned. When the President spoke at the Lincoln Day dinner recently about sensible Midwestern Republicans, he meant biconceptual Republicans, who are progressive and/or pragmatic on many issues.

But hardcore movement conservatives tend to be more ideological and less biconceptual than their constituents. In the recent stimulus vote, the hardcore movement conservatives kept party discipline (except for three Senate votes) by threatening to run opposition candidates against anyone who broke ranks. They were able to enforce this because the conservative message machine is strong in their districts and there is no nationwide progressive message machine operating in those districts. The effectiveness of the conservative message machine led to Obama making a rare mistake in communication, the mistake of saying out loud in Florida not to think of Rush Limbaugh, thus violating the first rule of framing and giving Rush Limbaugh even greater power.

Biconceptual, partly progressive, Republicans do exist in Congress, and the president is not going to give up on them. But as long as the conservative message machine can activate its values virtually unopposed in conservative districts, movement conservatives can continue to pressure biconceptual Republicans and keep them from voting their conscience on many issues. This is why a nationwide progressive message machine needs to be organized if the president is to achieve unity through biconceptualism.

4. Protection and Empowerment

The fourth idea behind the Obama Code is the President's understanding of government--"not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works." This depends on what "works" means. The word sounds purely pragmatic, but it is moral in operation.

The idea is that government has twin moral missions: protection and empowerment. Protection includes not just military and police protection, but protections for the environment, consumers, workers, pensioners, disaster victims, and investors.

Empowerment is what his stimulus package is about: it includes education and other forms of infrastructure--roads, bridges, communications, energy supply, the banking system and stock market. The moral mission of government is simple: no one can earn a living in America or live an American life without protection and empowerment by the government. The stimulus package is basically an empowerment package. Taxes are what you pay for living in America, rather than in Congo or Bangladesh. And the more money you make from government protection and empowerment, the more you owe in return. Progressive taxation is a matter of moral accounting. Tax cuts for the middle class mean that the middle class hasn't been getting as much as it has been contributing to the nation's productivity for many years.

This view of government meshes with our national ideal of equality. There needs to be moral equality: equal protection and equal empowerment. We all deserve health care protection, retirement protection, worker protection, employment protection, protection of our civil liberties, and investment protection. Protection and empowerment. That's what "works" means--"whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified."

5. Morality and Economics Fit Together

Crises are times of opportunity. Budgets are moral statements. President Obama has put these ideas together. His economic program is a moral program and conversely. Why the quartet of leading economic issues--education, energy, health, banking? Because they are at the heart of government's moral mission of protection and empowerment, and correspondingly, they are what is needed to act on empathy, social and personal responsibility, and making the future better. The economic crisis is also an opportunity. It requires him to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the right things to do.

6. Systemic Causation and Systemic Risk

Conservatives tend to think in terms of direct causation. The overwhelming moral value of individual, not social, responsibility requires that causation be local and direct. For each individual to be entirely responsible for the consequences of his or her actions, those actions must be the direct causes of those consequences. If systemic causation is real, then the most fundamental of conservative moral--and economic--values is fallacious.

Global ecology and global economics are prime examples of systemic causation. Global warming is fundamentally a system phenomenon. That is why the very idea threatens conservative thinking. And the global economic collapse is also systemic in nature. That is at the heart of the death of the conservative principle of the laissez-faire free market, where individual short-term self-interest was supposed to be natural, moral, and the best for everybody. The reality of systemic causation has left conservatism without any real ideas to address global warming and the global economic crisis.

With systemic causation goes systemic risk. The old rational actor model taught in economics and political science ignored systemic risk. Risk was seen as local and governed by direct causation, that is, buy short-term individual decisions. The investment banks acted on their own short-term risk, based on short-term assumptions, for example, that housing prices would continue to rise or that bundles of mortgages once secure for the short term would continue to be "secure" and could be traded as "securities."

The systemic nature of ecological and economic causation and risk have resulted in the twin disasters of global warming and global economic breakdown. Both must be dealt with on a systematic, global, long-term basis. Regulating risk is global and long-term, and so what are required are world-wide institutions that carry out that regulation in systematic way and that monitor causation and risk systemically, not just locally.

President Obama understands this, though much of the country does not. Part of his challenge will be to formulate policies that carry out these ideas and to communicate these ideas as well as possible to the public.

7. Contested Concepts and Patriotic Language

As President, Barack Obama must speak in patriotic language. But all patriot language in this country is "contested." Every major patriotic term has a core meaning that we all understand the same way. But that common core meaning is very limited in its application. Most uses of patriotic language are extended from the core on the basis of either conservative or progressive values to produce meanings that are often opposite from each other.

I've written a whole book, Whose Freedom?, on the word "freedom" as used by conservatives and progressives. In his second inaugural, George W. Bush used "freedom," "free," and "liberty" over and over--first, with its common meaning, then shifting to its conservative meaning: defending "freedom" as including domestic spying, torture and rendition, denial of habeus corpus, invading a country that posed no threat to us, a "free market" based on greed and short-term profits for the wealthy, denying sex education and access to women's health facilities, denying health care to the poor, and leading to the killing and maiming of innocent civilians in Iraq by the hundreds of thousands, all in the name of "freedom." It was anything but a progressive's view of freedom--and anything but the view intended in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.

For forty years, from the late 1960's through 2008, conservatives managed, through their extensive message machine, to reframe much of our political discourse to fit their worldview. President Obama is reclaiming our patriotic language after decades of conservative dominance, to fit what he has correctly seen as the ideals behind the founding of our country.

"Freedom" will no longer mean what George W. Bush meant by it. Guantanamo will be closed, torture outlawed, the market regulated. Obama's inaugural address was filled with framings of patriotic concepts to fit those ideals. Not just the concept of freedom, but also equality, prosperity, unity, security, interests, challenges, courage, purpose, loyalty, patriotism, virtue, character, and grace. Look at these words in his inaugural address and you will see how Obama has situated their meaning within his view of fundamental American values: empathy, social and well as personal responsibility, improving yourself and your country. We can expect further reclaiming of patriotic language throughout his administration.

All this is what "change" means. In his policy proposals the President is trying to align his administration's policies with the fundamental values of the Framers of our Constitution. In seeking "bipartisan" support, he is looking beyond political affiliations to those who share those values on particular issues. In his economic policy, he is realigning our economy with the moral missions of government: protection and empowerment for all.

It's Us, Not Just Him

The president is the best political communicator of our age. He has the bully pulpit. He gets media attention from the press. His website is running a permanent campaign, Organizing for Obama, run by his campaign manager David Plouffe. It seeks issue-by-issue support from his huge mailing list. There are plenty of progressive blogs. MoveOn.org now has over five million members. And yet that is nowhere near enough.

The conservative message machine is huge and still going. There are dozens of conservative think tanks, many with very large communications budgets. The conservative leadership institutes are continuing to turn out thousands of trained conservative spokespeople every year. The conservative apparatus for language creation is still functioning. Conservative talking points are still going out to their network of spokespeople, who still being booked on tv and radio around the country. About 80% of the talking heads on tv are conservatives. Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are as strong as ever. There are now progressive voices on MSNBC, Comedy Central, and Air America, but they are still overwhelmed by Right's enormous megaphone. Republicans in Congress can count on overwhelming message support in their home districts and homes states. That is one reason why they were able to stonewall on the President's stimulus package. They had no serious media competition at home pounding out the Obama vision day after day.

Such national, day-by-day media competition is necessary. Democrats need to build it. Democratic think tanks are strong on policy and programs, but weak on values and vision. Without the moral arguments based on the Obama values and vision, the policymakers most likely be unable to regularly address both independent voters and the Limbaugh-FoxNews audiences in conservative Republican strongholds.

The president and his administration cannot build such a communication system, nor can the Democrats in Congress. The DNC does not have the resources. It will be up to supporters of the Obama values, not just supporters on the issues, to put such a system in place. Despite all the organizing strength of Obama supporters, no such organizing effort is now going on. If none is put together, the movement conservatives will face few challenges of fundamental values in their home constituencies and will be able to go on stonewalling with impunity. That will make the president's vision that much harder to carry out.

Summary

The Obama Code is based on seven deep, insightful, and subtle intellectual moves. What President Obama has been attempting in his speeches is a return to the original frames of the Framers, reconstituting what it means to be an American, to be patriotic, to be a citizen and to share in both the sacrifices and the glories of our country. In seeking "bipartisan" support, he is looking beyond political affiliations to those who share those values on particular issues. In his economic plan, he is attempting to realign our economy with the moral missions of government: protection and empowerment for all.

The president hasn't fooled the radical ideological conservatives in Congress. They know progressive values when they see them -- and they see them in their own colleagues and constituents too often for comfort. The radical conservatives are aware that this economic crisis threatens not only their political support, but the very underpinnings of conservative ideology itself. Nonetheless, their brains have not been changed by facts. Movement conservatives are not fading away. They think their conservative values are the real American values. They still have their message machine and they are going to make the most of it. The ratings for Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are rising. Without a countervailing communications system on the Democratic side, they can create a lot of trouble, not just for the president, not just for the nation, but on a global scale, for the environmental and economic future of the world.

George Lakoff is Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of The Political Mind and Don't Think of an Elephant!

Comments

[lvh]

He can sure "spin" a story...

[Bonifer]

Dr. Lakoff, your analysis is strong, and deeply informed. Seen through the stereoscopic lenses of linguistics and cognition, it's one mind-boggling Viewmaster picture you paint.

There are many ways to view the reality of Obama, however, just as there are many ways to look at any reality. Intensely intellectual is certainly one way of seeing it. I just don't think it's a very useful or even instructive point of view.

Here's my issue with the intensely intellectual view: The value that Obama and his team introduce to the game is our own potential as citizens to model their behaviors. And I don't know how to model 'biconceptualism' or 'the systemic nature of economic and ecological causation.' I'm stymied rather than invigorated by your thinking. Intimidated instead of inspired.

Talking about emotion is not emotion. Analysis is not participation.

It's like you've given me a physics lesson on the golf swing of Tiger Woods, and I'm still trying to whack the ol' gutta-percha across the sheep pasture with my niblick.

[superstition]

Human action does stem from self-interest. The notion that this realization conflicts with empathy (a muddy version of reciprocity) is false. Reciprocity is the foundation of social behavior. "Conservatives" often justly warn against the erosion of individuality offered by "pro-social behavior", and "liberals/­progressiv­es" justly warn against the erosion of individual happiness by socially corrosive behavior (like homophobia).

A hive like the Borg represent, almost, the pinnacle of society, in which there is a single collective harmonious mind made up of each individual member. This is also a nightmare for those who value uniqueness. The Borg parasitically consume the uniqueness of other cultures and, one may argue, offer less of their own (although this is debatable). The Wild West, or mafia, represent the nightmare of "conservative" individuality. Anarchy deprives people of happiness. So, there is always a conflict between society and the individual. Every limitation of uniqueness is simultaneously negative and positive. Some, however, are more corrosive - like serial killing. Morality is just the distillation of this analysis, and it's muddy.

The key is to maximize uniqueness as well as individual happiness. If one looks at a rainforest and compares it to a monoculture, one sees positives and negatives in both. Even technology is not wholly positive. Computer chips production, for instance, require an ever-increasing energy input or something like that, as they become more complex and miniaturized.

[Sam Crowell]

What an exceptional analysis! A value orientation embedded in our linguistic metaphors and articulated in terms of applied policy has been missing from democratic and progressive messages. To place these values in terms of "American values" and to show their application to a complex and intricately connected world is not only brilliant politically, but it helps create a new memetic foundation to build upon and extend.

[DavidEBrown]

Thank you Dr. Lakoff.

I encountered this earlier on the FiveThirtyEight website. I’ve been trying to fully understand and integrate its richness of meaning ever since. Your students are privileged to be able to benefit from your depth and breadth of insight, and your ability to communicate it so well to others.

This profoundly enhances, work I've been doing re: the value of respect for others, and our common needs. We must use a style of communication and negotiation that focuses on a thorough understanding of these common interests (such as safety, value, power, etc.) and implement those values in a non-threatening way. This requires respectful engagement via non-critical listening, and an ability to look beyond surface meaning to the basic common values and human needs that are driving both behavior, and its expression.

It's going to take the nation some time to adapt to, believe in, and profit fully from, President Obama’s approach, but those of us who already support him would do well to remember these factors when he takes a position which, on the surface, seems at odds with who we believe him to be. He has enormous patience, as did Ghandi, MLK, Jr, and their predecessor. We need to have a little confidence that, while he may appear to, and perhaps even actually does, misstep occasionally, his fundamental approach is sound.

I’ve a lot of work to do.

Thank you again, I’ve benefited enormously.

[Jimboy17]

Why is it necessary to give this a snazzy label? To call it a 'code' invokes that dreadful book by Dan Brown. There is nothing really that new here, president Obama simply organizes his thoughts consistently and coherently around a core set of values which he expresses through actions and words. That he does not spout ideology dogmatically isn't necessarily indicative of anything other than the fact that he was well-educated. This kind of rhetoric is taught at better liberal arts schools around the world. My concern is that having high-profile academics speak of an 'Obama Code' simply gives ammunition to the wingnuts who want to scream about hidden agendas, secret societies, moon landing conspiracies and the like.

[wanttruth]

Interesting post.

[MyLeftMind]

Obama should use “biconceptualism” to solve the gay rights issue the GOP keeps bludgeoning Democrats with. If we establish federal marriage equality, this issue will eventually go the way of anti-miscegeny laws. Fixing this issue NOW gives us two years to minimize the GOP’s use of fear mongering as a midterm election strategy. The long term effect of stabilizing marriage rights across all states reestablishes Dems as the party of civil rights and equality.

We should demand Congress modify IRS code and applicable federal laws to accommodate states that allow civil unions. Congress should repeal the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA), eliminate Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DODT) and enforce the equal protection clause between states, all in the context of aligning federal policy with state laws and same sex couples’ constitutional rights.

We’re at the same impasse we experienced in the 1950s civil rights movement. People said it was too soon, society wasn’t ready. Finally the federal government took a stand, which will eventually happen with gay rights. The question is, how long will we let Republicans drag us through this conflict? Like AAs, gays aren’t going to stop demanding equality, nor should they. They pay taxes, go to work and raise kids, just like heterosexual Americans. They deserve nothing short of full equality, and it’s going to take the federal government to ensure it happens.

[joeneri]

This is a wonderful article.

"Progressive taxation is a matter of moral accounting." This quote perfectly exemplifies the philosophy of Teddy Roosevelt and should be a reminder to the party of what they should really be standing for.

[KofTX]

By far, this article is one of the most informative, socially and politically relevant articles I've every read on the Huff. I'd like to say thank you and that I will do all that I can to spread this wealth of knowledge.

[jadeba]

Great article, Mr. Lakoff. I've been a fan of yours for some time. You're spot on about the conservative movement, their ideology and utter inability to comprehend the concept of the common good. As most of us have been throwing up our hands and beseeching President Obama to give up on bipartisanship, you've explained beautifully why he continues to do so. Lesser human beings would have given up long ago.

[MacQ]

MR LAKOFF:
You had me interested (almost) until you defined conservatism as 'individual responsibility without social responsibility". That's pretty ignorant.

How do you square that with the fact that conservatives far outstrip progressives in charitable giving?

All that empathy!!

No, what I've noticed is that we all have empathy. The difference is that Conservatives step up to help their fellow man personally. Progressives want the government to do it. (I guess so they won't have to be bothered and can just concentrate on all that empathizing.)

[gaja]

I find you dry and pedantic - and what is your proof that "conservatives far outstrip progressives in charitable giving?"

Unless you are referring to the "conservative" --George W. Bush who "charitably gave" all of his friends and buddies billions of dollars in government contracts and jobs they were not qualified to do!

[MomfromTexas]

I did a google search and came up with this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html?_r=1

I have to say, as a Progressive in a red state and a VERY red county, that I don't find what this article is saying to be true, AT ALL. I do a lot of work with nonprofits, and almost all of them in this area are kept afloat by Progressives. The group of Progressive friends I have, I have met primarily through my work with nonprofits and my charity work. If the conservatives are donating a lot of time and money in my area, then it's all going to their churches and the public schools. I will give this conservative community that--we have superb public schools that have everything they need and then some. It is the primary reason I've stayed in this community. I keep saying that I'm leaving when my son graduates in three years.

[RRonin]

Perhaps it is that conservatives "step up to help their fellow man personally." Because they need to hear a personal expression of gratitude from that fellow man. It's not enough for them to do the right thing just because they know it's the right thing.

[jadeba]

That's a laugh! I've never seen or experienced anything to indicate that conservatives have empathy - they're self centered and self interested. The conservative outrage over the possibility that someone (undeserving in their ming) of help in fending off foreclosure is one good example. Repeatedly, the claim it's "unfair", they pay their mortgage, why should they help anyone else? Really generous thinking. Totally heartless is more like it.

Conservatives buy their friends and influence, plus they tend to have more money. Maybe they like the bragging rights. Perhaps they give out of occasional pangs of guilt. I doubt what you've said is true anyway, because, conservatives lie. Not all, most of them.

[bay415]

So my only wanting to pay my own mortgage is "heartless". Let me ask you Jadeba, how many mortgages besides your own do you pay? Your neighbors? Friends? Family. My guess is none. So shove it.

[demockracy]

First, the studies that note this liberal/co­nservative divide in giving are seldom non-partisan. They typically cite absolute donations rather than portions of income. The U.S. as a whole is something like 19th in giving foreign aid when considering it as a portion of GDP, while liberal (heck, socialist!) Norway is #1. Of course the U.S. gives more than Norway in absolute dollars, even when you subtract the enormous amount of military aid included in those figures.

And you could say the difference in giving came from public policy differences too. Because of the U.S.'s increasingly regressive tax policies (Reagan and Bush 41 quadrupled payroll taxes...because lowering the top rates brought in so much more money! Right?! The Reagan Deficit exceeded all previous administrations' combined.)

The bottom 90% of incomes have stagnated for the last 30 years, while the top 0.01% got a 497% raise (in real dollars!). The tax consequences of charity are much greater for the top than the bottom, so there's an element of enlightened self-interest in that "charity."

[stell]

Why can't all of this be done without adopting the conservative language? You capitulate, you cede the argument when you do that. Re-frame the words and re-define them. When you talk about tax cuts, etc. you are speaking their language.

[Fein]

I love your article Mr. Lakoff.

You put your finger on it, Obama's not speaking down to us like we're used to.

Those who're intellectually able to keep up with him can see this picture.

How strange it is to have to really think about what our leader is saying to understand all the nuances. I can get used to it!

[aniram63]

I read this article shortly after it posted and enjoyed the enlightening analysis of the subtle shift in perspective we're witnessing and being (subtly) invited to join. The speech before Congress last night provides textbook examples for Lakoff’s points. The value statement at its climax--“I know that every American who is sitting here tonight loves this country and wants it to succeed”--laid the foundation for progressive action in sometimes hostile climates. Patriotism is too often used as a weapon of mass destruction (at home and elsewhere). Last night we were encouraged to make that loudly applauded point of agreement (love of country) the starting and ending point for debate, because it is "the foundation on which the American people expect us to build common ground."

This speech is an instructive companion to the article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/24/obamas-tuesday-speech-pre_n_169420.html

[MDHutchinson]

Dr. Lakoff,
First off, let me just acknowledge my gratitude to you and Drew Westen who have done so much to explain the importance of branding and framing political debate. After watching Obama's speech last night, I have a feeling someone on his team has been listening.
My one point of contention with this excellent article. You write "the mistake of saying out loud...not to think of Rush Limbaugh, thus...giving Rush Limbaugh even greater power."
A week ago, I would have agreed with you. However, I'm now convinced that Obama is intentionally elevating people like Limbaugh as part of a strategic move. As Dr. Westen has noted, there are about 30% of Americans who are incapable of detaching themselves from their conservative principles. Obama cannot win these people over, nor should that be his intent.
Instead, he should focus on the 70-75% of the country that IS responsive to his message and one way to do that is to frame the issue as one of reasonable and pragmatic progressivism vs. an entrenched and out of touch right-wing fringe as represented by people like Limbaugh.
However, I realize that I may be wrong and am open to a different interpretation, but for now, as the Republican party continues to marginalize itself, I think Obama is wise to link conservative opposition to Limbaugh.