May 2005

The Features
 Guru Gone Wrong
The rhetoric according to George Lakoff

By Rebecca Clark
Queen City Forum Magazine staff writer

Why is the disagreement about abortion oddly explained as a matter of those who are “pro-choice” versus those who are “pro-life?” Didn’t you wonder when you were a kid: “How can both sides be pro?” And why did you get the feeling you were supposed to be both?

This, and other such uniquely political conundrums, can be explained by the concept of “framing,” a favorite buzzword in Democratic circles in recent months. The term comes from UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff, author of the election-year field manual “Don’t Think of an Elephant” and advisor to Howard Dean (among others) during his presidential run. Rallying in the wake of the 2004 election, Democrats locally and nationally are hailing Lakoff as their answer to Republican sound byte guru Frank Luntz. Mastermind of such rhetorical best-sellers as “death tax,” “ownership society” and “tax relief,” Luntz and his public opinion research empire have largely defined the Republicans’ communications strategy since the 1994 Contract with America.

George Lakoff

 

Lakoff argues that, when Democrats accept such “Luntzspeak” as the terms of the debate, they automatically cede the upper hand to conservatives. In feeding terms like “tax relief” through the media circuit, he argues, “the conservatives…set a trap: The words [draw] you into their worldview.” If Democrats buy into the terminology, then they have been brought into line with a Republican vision. If, on the other hand, Democrats oppose it, they are easily depicted as outside the mainstream. Politicians and others advancing a similar agenda – of free market conservatism and the traditional social order in this case – use these frames as often as possible to entrench them in the minds of the electorate and the media as the very terms of the debate.

Successful frames (Luntz’s word is “contexts“) are super-metaphors – brief, but loaded. They affirm a world of assumptions in a single sound byte. For example, to express their vision of America’s economic future Republicans talk about building an “ownership society.” Reading the term at face value, one can say it invokes the American dream of home ownership, the desire to be self-reliant. Narrowing in on a more distinctly Republican worldview, it invokes an America united by participation in the joys of private consumption. Using the phrase over and over again summons the libertarian strain of the American political tradition that has tended to find its home in the Republican Party. All of this is intended to get the people nodding their heads right along with them, to prime the voters for their proposals – privatization of Social Security and widespread tax cuts in particular. Democrats can only hope to regain ground, Lakoff argues, by defining themselves and key political debates in terms that evoke their own progressive values, which he identifies as empathy, responsibility and fairness, to name a few.

To accomplish this, Democrats must develop a political strategy that, like the Republicans’, takes language as seriously as it does research and facts.

Of course, the importance of well-crafted language to political success is by no means a discovery of George Lakoff, nor Frank Luntz for that matter. As far back as the ancient Greeks and Romans, political thinkers have reflected on the art of rhetoric. In his own how-to volume, “The Rhetoric,” Aristotle considered the importance of “putting the audience into a certain frame of mind.” He taught that logic was only one element of political rhetoric. The emotional force of a speech, as well as the credibility of the speaker, are also key factors. Lest we begin this discussion of political language naively, we should note that a “rhetorician,” as Aristotle’s translators point out, can mean either a trained speaker or a tricky speaker in ancient Greek.

Lakoff’s general rules for what makes a good frame are reminiscent of the key ingredients Aristotle identified. Responding to the widespread perception that Democrats wax wonky in communicating with the public, Lakoff reminds Democrats they must speak to the hearts, as well as the minds, of voters. Facts and figures, he argues, dominate their narrative while the clarification of vision and values is often neglected. “The truth alone cannot set us free,” he implores. (A couple students of Lakoff in the environmental community call this commitment to plain truths literal sclerosis.) As long as liberals and progressives insist that having the facts on their side is all that matters, they are doomed to impotence. On this point, Lakoff joins a growing chorus of spiritually minded progressives such as columnist E.J. Dionne, Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Michael Lerner of Tikkun. Lakoff also acknowledges the importance of a speaker’s credibility in maintaining that a good frame must reflect what the speaker truly believes, at the same time resonating with deeply and widely held values in the electorate.

As laid out in his 1996 volume “Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think” Lakoff’s political analysis is based on his work in the field of linguistics. He argues that our minds organize the world of politics through the metaphor of the family. Conservatives abide by a “strict father” worldview, where “the world is dangerous and difficult and children are born bad and must be made good.” The strict father is a disciplinarian – and always a father. Following a “nurturant parent” model, liberals “believe that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better.” According to Lakoff, 35 to 40 percent of Americans follow each model, though most draw from both at various points. A comeback, he argues, will require Democrats to put forth metaphors that subtly evoke the “nurturant parent” strain in the electorate.

Lakoff’s analysis of the Republican rise to power is understandably a source of great fascination for liberals eager to “know thine enemy.” His books have also inspired a newfound interest in wordsmithing among rank-and-file Democrats. Luntz’s public opinion research and communications advice may well contain transferable lessons, but this sudden interest in lifting tips from the Republicans’ playbook begs the question: Do Democrats really want to win the Frank Luntz way? Ironically, just as local progressives converged to heed Lakoff’s call for reframing in an April workshop given by Democracy for Cincinnati, some prominent Democratic leaders questioned the embrace of Lakoff. Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune (Dem.) and former Cincinnati mayor Roxanne Qualls (Dem.) offered major misgivings about a “frame-centered” approach to politics.

The panel, which included State House Rep. Steve Driehaus (Dem.) and Springer on the Radio’s Jene Galvin, discussed one of Lakoff’s favorite examples of a successful Republican “frame,” the catchphrase tax relief (as opposed to, say, tax cuts.) Lakoff explains that the word relief implies what precedes it must be an “affliction,” namely taxes. Liberals guarantee their loss with voters, he maintains, when they accept the conservative portrayal of taxation. He recommends instead that they frame taxes as a matter of investment, even patriotism.

Drawing on their experiences in the Greater Cincinnati area, Qualls, Portune and Driehaus disagreed with Lakoff’s claim that Republican frames are necessarily non-starters for Democrats. In their most benign incarnations, Republican frames merely affirm a love of Mom and apple pie, all things American and patriotic. Some are so amorphous and soft they become almost meaningless. Qualls joked during the panel, “Who among us is really against a ‘culture of life?!’” A few gasps were heard in the audience when the three affirmed they were for tax relief – for those who need it, at least. For Driehaus, Republican use of the phrase “tax relief” is notable first and foremost because it is hypocritical in light of the actual policies they represent. Tax relief for the Republicans, he explained, really just means “shifting the tax burden from the rich to middle and lower classes.”

 

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Portune suggested that “tax relief” has been successful not simply because it works rhetorically, but because it appeals to a widely held dislike for taxes in the electorate. Qualls agreed and asked the loyally Democratic audience whether even they truly wanted to be taxed just for the sake of being taxed. “Of course not!” she surmised. Voter aversion to taxes may be tied up in their feeling that they do not receive commensurate services for the taxes they pay, and/or that the government misuses their money. Democrats have every reason to “frame” themselves as the party of efficient delivery of quality public services, but taking pride in levying taxes will never make for a good sell. She and Portune reflected that the case of Hamilton County in particular, where citizens carry the second highest tax burden in the state under the leadership of a scandal-ridden Republican party, highlights the need for Democrats to be champions of sound government. Portune, who has actually built his political reputation partially on his record of working to reduce the tax burden, suggests Democrats should co-opt the notion of tax relief and redefine it in more progressive terms (i.e. maintaining or increasing tax cuts for the poor and middle classes and returning tax cuts for the wealthiest American to Clinton-era levels.)

For all his scrutiny of the Republican PR machine, Lakoff seems to miss this key lesson of Luntzpeak: steal the opposition’s best ideas – those with actual merit and strong public support – and make them your own. For example, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich explains how the younger Bush and his team have lifted the mantra of anti-elitism from the Democrats, but leveled it against so-called “cultural elites” – Hollywooders and “latte-drinking limousine liberals” instead of big business.

All the panelists seemed to agree with Lakoff that Democrats must forcefully defend themselves in the face of “misframes” by opponents. They embraced his call for values-animated language. As Driehaus put it, “Republicans have been busy framing the issues and Democrats on solving the problems.” What they seemed to question was the cynicism of his approach as well as his understanding of American politics. Lakoff’s message that Democrats are losing the battle of words is well taken, but what he has to offer in the name of a comeback campaign may be fatally flawed.

A successful reframing, in Lakoff‘s own estimation, must begin with a sound reading of the American electorate. On that note, many of Lakoff’s critics have charged “Lakoff the political analyst” is much less savvy than Lakoff the cognitive linguist. Former Gore speechwriter Kenneth Baer criticizes Lakoff for sizing up the American electorate through Berkeley-tinted lenses. Baer says “Lakoff [uses] his theories to push for an agenda that resonates with him…but reflects neither what most Democrats nor most Americans believe.” Lakoff’s overt contempt for all things remotely conservative thwarts his understanding of the American electorate. About conservatives’ stance on abortion, for example, Lakoff maintains they “are not really pro-life,” that the only reason they dislike abortion is because it allows promiscuous teenagers to get away with their sins and young women to delay childbearing while they pursue careers. That they are troubled by the termination of a pregnancy is merely a front. Lakoff’s understanding of the political spectrum boils down to the tired conviction of the ideological Left – that liberals are nice, and conservatives are just plain mean. I take many objections to the current direction of American politics, but I’m not willing to say conservatives “believe children are born bad,” or they simply hate women. Even if I did believe this, I know it wouldn’t get meor my cause very far to portray (aka “frame”) the problem as such. Lakoff would do well to follow one of Luntz’s more noble insights: “principle and communication work together. Ideology and communication often work apart.” Bill Clinton pursued a reframed progressive movement with more success than any Democrat in recent memory, but not surprisingly, he barely figures in Lakoff’s lesson book. (Clinton, after all, won 12 of the so-called red states in 1992 and 1996 with a platform rather similar to Kerry’s.) While Lakoff praises Clinton as a powerful communicator, he rejects his New Democratic policies as mere centrism, rather than progressivism reframed. Bill ( and now Hillary) Clinton framed the Democratic view of abortion, for example, as a practice that should be “safe, legal and rare.” Sen. Hillary Clinton has co-sponsored legislation entitled the “Putting Prevention First Act.” On affirmative action, President Clinton made the case: "Mend it, don't end it." On the economy, he was also able to weave a narrative about rewarding families that “work hard and play by the rules” that both emanated from a progressive spirit and appealed to a great majority of the electorate.Yet President Clinton’s narrative never caught on with the Democratic base. Hillary Clinton’s recent speech reiterating a “seek common ground” approach on preventing unwanted pregnancies was met with a good deal of outrage among staunch liberals, for whom the language of rights utterly defines their view of the abortion issue.

This Clintonian rhetoric is no doubt weakened by a credibility problem for both – President Bill for his various scandals and Senator Hillary for her transparent ambition to advance herself politically. If the New Democratic vision is to be received by the electorate and the Democratic base in particular as something more profound than triangulation, it probably requires a more authentic telling. The point remains, though, that the focus on reframing – at least that animated by Lakoff’s own version of “the story of America” – discourages a thoroughgoing reflection on the values dearest to progressives. In his introduction to the workshop, local organizer Greg Landsman explained by reframing their presentation of the progressive message, Democrats need not compromise on their values. Surely Kerry voters share common priorities that distinguish them from Bush voters on the whole, and many polls indicate that most Americans are sympathetic to the Democratic views on health care, the basic social safety net and environmental protection. Being the diverse umbrella organization that it is, the Democratic Party, not to mention the American electorate, is home to divergent views on a number of important issues, from the use of American power in the world to abortion to the role of religion in public life. Are Democrats willing and able to agree on what it is they stand for? And are they open to approaches to realizing those values that are outside the canon of New Deal and sixties liberalism?

Lakoff’s misreading of the electorate aside, other concerns remain about a frame-centered approach. As panel moderator Lynn Williams suggested, the Republican Party’s message is united by strict discipline from Karl Rove and other top advisors on down, whereas Democrats tend to prefer more decentralized communications strategies. Portune counseled that “framing without discipline” (i.e. without message control) just doesn’t work. It is worth noting that there is scant room for moderates and independent thinkers in the current Republican model for political success. Lakoff’s strict father/nurturant parent model reinforces the “us vs. them” mentality that Rove has so deftly played upon to elevate his Republican machine. (Hence, the calls from the Clinton and other New Democratic types to “seek common ground.”) We have undoubtedly suffered as a citizenry for the Republican divisive, if successful, rhetorical strategy. Is the Democratic base willing to pay the price of polarization, of patriarchy bashing its way back to the top?

Framing, moreover, must be understood as merely the neutral version of “spin.” It contains the potential to morph into a tool of Orwellian deception. Aristotle again serves as a useful reference: “A man can confer the greatest benefits by a right use of [rhetoric], and inflict the great injuries by using them wrongly.” Luntz’s makeover (“green washing” in environmentalist lingo) of the Bush environmental agenda uses catchphrases like “healthy forests” and “clear skies” to sell programs of a contradictory spirit. Interestingly enough, no one has emphasized the importance of the environment to the public more than Luntz himself, which is why he instructed Republicans in a recently leaked memo to dress their policies in the language of a “safe, clean and healthy” environment – regardless of their actual content. To know what the people value, it turns out, is not necessarily to serve them.

Lakoff is very frank in admitting that framing can serve either truth or lies. He takes care to discourage the use of framing for the task of deception. At the end of the day, though, we are still left with the cynical lesson that winning in politics has little to do with the merits of a given candidate or policy. In the America of suburban consumers (or are we exurban now?) where public life almost always has to do with buying something, we engage in the commercial far more often than the civic. Life, as they say, moves faster in this, the information age; speechmaking has largely been abandoned for sound byting. Lakoff’s notion of frames would seem to reinforce the sound byte culture that has so degraded our political life.

Portune and Qualls, as well as State Rep. Steve Driehaus, maintained that they would never have been elected were such calculated rhetoric so central to political success. Portune attributes his upset of Bob Bedinghaus in 2000 largely to voter perception that Bedinghaus, embroiled in the Bengals stadium scandal, was a liar. In short, it was scandal in the opposing party that elevated him to office. Regarding his 2004 race against David Grossman, Portune concludes voters felt an emotional connection and comfort with him. (And the ethical violations committed by the Grossman campaign certainly didn‘t hurt.) Portune, like a number of national politicos, also attributed Bush’s victory to voters’ personal comfort with him.

Driehaus agreed that this theory may explain higher profile races like Portune’s, where voters get to know a candidate individually. Yet he clarified a place for framing in those races where party affiliation is still most important. He described a conversation he had with a voter in one of his races for the (district) Ohio state house. The voter explained: “I’d love to vote for you because of who you are, but I can’t ‘cause you’re a Democrat.” Lakoff’s critique, then, speaks to progressives’ Democratic and liberal problems.

Driehaus explained how he successfully redefined himself after attack ads dubbed him, in familiar style, as “out of touch with mainstream values.” He put on a brief TV commercial in which, with family at his side, he stated, “My opponents say I don’t share your values. Maybe they should come to the west side and see what we’re really like. These are my values: honesty, integrity, commitment to family and commitment to community.”

Driehaus’s response may be an example of a narrative informed by a more sound understanding of the American electorate. Daily Kos blogger Pericles (aka Doug Muder) proposes an alternative to the strict father/nurturing parent model. While he agrees with Lakoff’s basic notion of the “nation-as-family” metaphor, Muder questions how well the strict father/nurturant parent sums up America‘s “cultural war.” Lakoff only considers variants of the nuclear family and, in doing so, Muder argues, he “misses the overall context of obligation.” What is important is not what kind of parent we believe in being, but what we owe each and why we owe it. Drawing on sociologist James Ault’s account of his “life amongst the evangelicals,” Muder proposes the real divide in America is between the “Inherited Obligation Family” and the “Negotiated Commitment Family.” In the former, (the ‘conservative’ worldview,) the traditional extended family is the norm. “Life is defined by roles and relationships that are given, not chosen.” In the liberal worldview, the “family” has a broader definition. “Responsibilities come from the commitments you have made and not from congenital obligations.” It is no coincidence, then, that liberals tend to talk about the importance of community and conservatives that of family. In identifying with both traditional bonds and relationships of choice, Driehaus was able to redefine his candidacy in a way that disposed voters to his moderate progressivism.

Particularly in the truly embittered political climate we confront after the 2004 election, his approach suggests the first line from the Republican playbook (especially from 2000) that Democrats ought to focus on co-opting – that Democrats will win by being the party to unite rather than divide the American people. Progressives may well need a storyteller to help lead them into the promised land. Indeed rhetoric has always been central to political success, but judging by the experiences of these Cincinnati Democratic leaders, Lakoff and his frames are not up to the task.

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