Lakoff's Trial Run

I would refer you to footnote one in the "Death of Environmentalism" paper:

"The term "framing" -- once associated with activities like "framing the constitution" or "framing legislation" -- is today being used by environmentalists and other progressives as a more sophisticated-sounding term for "spinning." The work of linguist George Lakoff on how conservatives more effectively frame public debates than liberals is being badly misinterpreted. Lakoff argues that progressives need to reframe their thinking about the problem and the solutions. What most within the community are saying is that we simply need to use different words to describe the same old problems and solutions. The key to applying Lakoff's analysis is to see vision, values, policy, and politics all as extensions of language."

Frankly, if we really want to solve a lot of problems, we have are going to have to throw caution to the wind and start pushing ideas that nobody (yet) cares about. Why? Because at the moment we are out of power, and cannot set the agenda by being purely reactive. We're fighting in hostile territory almost by definition. I think this is largely what Kerry tried to do. Oops.

Then again, in 2002 we tried to turn a "security" debate into an "economic" debate, and our efforts failed miserably.

It's really a lose-lose proposition.

There is of course the Clinton hustle - talk about "the big issue" in a way which always ties back to "my issue." In 1992, everything was about the economy, even if it, well, wasn't. But it worked.

My proposition: We are for national security because we have this fresh new idea called energy independence! Look how we are being tough on terror AND bold decisive leaders!...

... hello? anybody? free sample? guaranteed to make the kids happy... anybody? help?!?

(back to the drawing board)

Where "framing" is useful, why language is important, is in defining the problem, not just using value-laden terminology (spin), which is what Lakoff has mostly focused on as a linguist.

I see it all the time at work: How a problem is defined suggests certain kinds of solution. Is it a resource problem? A scoping problem? The value of that kind of framing is that it can push us to different ideas, which don't just come to us out of the blue. Reclassifying, redefining problems is a systematic way to come up with new approaches.

Greg's boy Cherny does basically that when he talks about problems in terms of "choice." To an extent, Bienart's article about terrorism was similar--it defined what the foreign policy challenge should be. What Cherny and Bienart have that Lakoff doesn't is, for lack of a better term, political intelligence.

I'm scared by the Lakoff movement. Our problem on the left (encompassing center left to far left) is not that we frame our arguments in the wrong language, it's that we're not advocating strong positions. Voters want to know what our candidates think! They want to see somebody who will back a position even at the cost of some votes. They want to see principles. All the language in the world won't solve that problem. Ideas! It's about ideas! And, idealogically, I am far to the left of what's presented on this site, but I like this site because it doesn't back down from taking a position.

Tx Bubba -- Well stated.

Mike M. -- You have succinctly stated one of many problems with John Kerry. I like engaging you in dialogue, even if you don't agree with me. Exchanges of ideas are always good.

I found that Jim D had posted this on Burnt Orange on 10 June 2004:

"I tried defending KOS's honor over at Greg's Opinion, who's getting a big kick out of a (temporarily) failed experiment in KOS-style democracy."

"Sometimes Greg's Opinion ('Go to heck, damned hippies, and take your love beads and your Howard Dean buttons with you!') can be kind of square-ish, although we love him anyway."

I laughed when I read this, and am glad that we have a chance to engage Jim D in dialogue, whereas when I tried to voice contrarian points of view on Burnt Orange Karl T. endeavored to chase me off the Blog. However, all the same, I did realize that these dueling perceptions that Jim D described have divided the two wings of the Democratic party for a very long time.

Indeed, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I am so troubled by MYDD, DAILY KOS, the Kossacks, the Deaniacs, ACT, MOVE.ORG and Michael Moore precisely because they remind me of the "Get Clean for Gene McCarthy" crowd in 1968, McGovern's Army in 1972 and the people that a man I used to despise named Spiro T. Agnew called the "Rad-Libs." He went even farther than that. Agnew, a true hate monger and a crook convicted of taking kick backs, called the Rad-Libs "nattering nabobs of negativism," a phrase that I believe that the frequently sneering and supercilious William Safire coined for him. I still revile Agnew for how he violated his oath of office in Maryland, took kickbacks, turned his back on Rockefeller Republicanism, and became a McCarthyite "hatchet man" for Tricky Dick. However the phrases Rad-Lib and nattering nabobs of negativism do come close to describing how I view MYDD, DAILY KOS, the Kossacks, the Deaniacs, et al. I gave money to MoveOn.ORG and ACT in 2004 in an effort to get out the vote, but will not do so in 2006 or 2008.

Finding this quote from Jim D also reminded me of some passages from Teddy White's "The Making of the President -- 1972."

Teddy White quoting the perceptions of the McGovernites of Ben Wattenberg, a key operative of Henry M. Jackson:

Wattenberg -- "Their struggle is between their wild wing and their mild wing ... There won't be any riots in Miami because the people who rioted in Chicago are on the platform committee"

Teddy White's cogent statement of his respect for the sincerity and idealism of the McGovernites, combined with his simultaneous belief that they were at odds with heartland sentiment -- "New people with new ideas now held the party (My Note: i.e. the New Left); they had defeated the old in fair and decent combat ...; they had well expressed their purpose to the country; but they had also burned their bridges to the past, in procedure, in personnel, in philosophy and, finally, ... to the key people who might have best expressed their new philosophy to the millions who had for so long found their political home in the Democratic Party. ... [The] party beyond the hall (My Note: at the Miami Convention] was larger and more important then the [McGovernite] delegates and committeemen who had made the old home, for so many, in one week, such a disturbing place to be."

I realize that the Deaniacs, Kossacks and company mostly were not even around during the period to which I hark back. However, similarities exist between the Deaniacs and the McGovernites. Bill Clinton managed, to some extent, to wrest power from the post-Vietnam Liberals, the New Left, the Democratic Party's post-1968 interest groups, and the advocates of litmus tests and the politics of victimization. Following Al Gore's defeat in 2000 amidst all of the Machiavellian machinations of Bush and the Right in Florida, the post-Vietnam Liberals and New Left went on the counteroffensive, blamed the "demise" of the Democratic Party on Clinton and New Democrats, and called for the purification of the Party. Howard Dean became their darling when he thundered early in the primary process that he was a representative of "the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party," echoing Paul Wellstone. The Deaniacs even lambasted John F. Kerry, one of the original post-Vietnam New Left Democrats for going mainstream, being too moderate despite his extremely high liberal ratings, and of being a captive of corrupt inside-the-beltway power brokers.

This was all terribly reminiscent of the "Get Clean for Gene McCarthy" kids and McGovern's army of New Leftists and peace activists demanding the purging of Humphrey, the Cold War Liberals, Mayor Daley, Arthur Levitt, George Meaney and the old guard at the AFL-CIO. In 1972, George McGovern turned his back on long-standing party professionals (and not just the bosses), nearly the entire Democratic foreign policy establishment, socially conservative and patriotic Blue Collar and Union Workers, the men and women who would later be called Reagan Democrats in places like Macomb County, many White ethnics, and the South. Actually, as the 1972 elections showed, McGovern was out of touch with nearly the entire country. Even many life-long Democrats who had voted Democrat as far back as FDR and before and hated Richard M. Nixon with almost religious voted for Nixon-Agnew out of horror over what they perceived McGovern to have done to the Party of FDR, Truman and JFK. From McGovern on, the post-Vietnam Liberals destroyed these linkages that had carried the Democratic Party to victory after victory from 1932 into the late 1960s. The Deaniacs, the left wing bloggers (MYDD, DAILY KOS, etc), MoveOn.org and company, which is to say the New New Left if you please, almost seem bent on making it impossible to ever repair the damage, with their: anti-mainstream-values philosophy, their renewed insistence on ideological litmus tests, their violent reaction to the emergence of national security Democrats, their near abhorrence of religion, and their condescending attitude towards the South and rural America.

I will get off my soap box. I do not mean any disrespect towards Jim D. In fact, I know little about the gentleman. It is Saturday morning and I am merely in a reflective mood as I drink my coffee. Finding Jim D's quote at Burnt Orange simply reminded me of all that has transpired since the dismal demise of the Democratic Party post-Tet Offensive and post-McCarthy and -McGovern. We Democrats must not seek to purge anyone. We are the minority party and must instead strive to build a big tent coalition, bringing back into the Democratic Party some of the Americans who once swore by the old Democratic icons, as well as these Americans' children and grandchildren. Simultaneously, as Jim D. suggests, we Democrats must vigorously and sometimes heatedly debate our differences, with the result hopefully being a better and stronger Democratic Party. If nothing else, perhaps we can all agree that we do not like the direction in which George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the ultra-Conservatives (right wing extremists?) are taking our beloved country.

With regard to environmentalism, I have regarded myself as an environmentalist ever since I was a kid. I regard it as one of the hallmarks of true Liberalism and Progressivism. Unlike Lakoff, I do not wish to associate myself with the Left, so I will use those words. In any case, Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican progressive and one of my non-Democratic heroes, was most certainly an environmentalist. Scoop Jackson, another of my heroes, was one of the foremost figures in the successful attempts to revive environmentalism in the 1960s and 1970s.

Why is environmentalism doing so poorly? I am of two minds.

In one sense, the hand wringing is pointless. The Right Wing of the Republican Party controls the White House, the Congress and the Courts. Despite all of the talk of Liberal judicial activism, the LBJ judges who remain on the bench are old. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton had little chance to leave their mark on the judiciary, at least compared with Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush the Elder, and Bush the Younger. Frequently, when the Right Wingers complain about activist Liberal judges, they are ironically referring to Nixon and Ford judges, and sometimes even George Herbert Walker Bush's judges. The Republicans plan to pack the courts with even more Conservatives. In any case, national security and values were such important issues in 2004 that environmentalists could scarcely make themselves heard, which was a true shame. I myself have ceased my contributions to my many favored environmental groups, believing that we must first wrest some of this power from the ultra-Conservatives.

In another sense, it is true that environmentalists have some self-inflicted wounds. I believe that environmentalism has become too insular and incestuous. Liberal environmentalists only seem to talk to each other and their supporters and do not seem to realize that the country and world around them are changing. I think that environmentalists must begin to balance protection of the environment, habitat and the "biosphere" with economic requirements in order to be taken seriously in this age of economic globalization and when we really do need to find and pump more oil and gas. Richard Nixon built an oil pipeline, for example, across Alaska, but Liberal Democrats forced that Republican Administration to put in place quite effective environmental protections. We need to conserve energy, revolutionize the internal combustion engine, press for high gas mileage, and promote hybrid cars. However, we are going to have to drill more oil somewhere also to help decrease our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. That somewhere may lie in off shore areas and in Alaska. I hate to say it, but it is probably true, as failed Alaska Senate candidate Tony Knowles and other development-minded Democrats have asserted.

I agree with the environmental community that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are not to be trusted when it comes to the environment. They are throw backs to the Gilded Age, dominated by the Robber Barons. They are the modern incarnation of the greedy plutocrats that progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson spent so much time fighting. That is why I fear ANWR drilling so much. However, if we are going to drill in ANWR, I think we must also demand that the Bushes (George W. and Jeb) not be allowed to take Florida offshore areas off the table. Moreover, we must demand in exchange for dramatically expanded exploration, drilling and pumping all manner of reasonable environmental safeguards, conservation, improved gas mileage, etc. I do not care if middle and upper class Americans want to drive SUVs. What bothers me is that SUVs and all American automobiles get such horrible gas mileage. It does not have to be that way.

A couple more things before I get off this pro-environment soap box. We cannot turn our backs on extractive indusries. Not just oil and gas, but also lumber, mining and all of the rest. However, we should not allow Bush and the Right to give away our public lands and to allow greedy industrial and commercial titans to despoil our natural heritage. Develoment, yes. However, with very strong conditions. I obviously have not even begun to talk about Republicans' assault on the EPA and the White House's apathy towards, and even acquiescence in, pollution of our air and water. Again, development, but with strong environmental safeguards. We must seek to force George W. Bush to be true to TR's progressivism, if not that of the Democratic Party.

Well, the first thing you need to know is that I am, like, not a gentleman. That's my old man, man...

:: takes a hit ::

ROFL. I enjoy your input on these matters, SJD!

Jim D -- Good comeback. I am probably older than your father, albeit perhaps a bit younger than your grandfather, although I am quite sure that all three of you are "gentlemen." Indeed, not being a product of the cyber age and the Blogosphere, I even had to do a google search to determine the meaning of the term "ROFL." Imagine. I should have known. Perhaps I have something to learn from "Young Turks" such as yourself and maybe you have somethings that you could learn from Old Men like myself, even if I am well past my prime of life. I keep trying to remind myself that I am not as old as Methuselah, although it frequently seems to me that I have been present since the antediluvian era. Indeed, I can actually remember when the Democratic Party was the indisputable majority party, it was popular to be a Liberal, the Party controlled most of Washington, and Republicans whined that they would be in the minority forever because of that "damned Roosevelt."