Framing 2008

Cognitive linguist George Lakoff is making the rounds with another exposition of the ideas that make him such an important contributor to the day's discourse on government, policy and ideology. I'm a fan, but there's another reason for my thinking that this latest piece, "Why Voters Aren't Motivated by a Laundry List of Positions on Issues," is important now.

The article (written with colleague Joe Brewer at the Rockridge Institute) reiterates a core Lakoff contention: That behind each "material" policy prescription -- universal health care, charting a new foreign policy course, immigration reform, stimulating the economy -- are a set of underlying, subliminal assumptions that voters fail to understand and policymakers obscure, sometimes deliberately but frequently because they don't really understand them either. These "cognitive-level" assumptions make up the framing of the issue addressed by the policy. In policy debate, Lakoff asserts persuasively, the side that succeeds in imposing its framing of the question generally has the high ground and wins the argument.

Lakoff is unapologetically liberal, although he's pragmatic enough to prefer the term "progressive." He's argued, with increasing urgency over the last several years, that conservative ideologues have understood the cognitive level framing of issues for a generation and have been able to shape issues in American politics far more effectively than progressives have because they succeed in forcing each discussion into the conservative frame. This, in essence, is how the Gingrich mob pulled the rug out from under Bill Clinton in the '90s. It's how Karl Rove's boys got George W. Bush taken seriously in 2000 and re-elected in 2004. In general, the Republicans have mastered framing and the Democrats haven't.

I'm putting Lakoff's latest version of this conception in front of my little audience here to make a specific point. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are in a close and increasingly divisive race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Party leaders like James Carville and Howard Dean are trying to put the best face on this by suggesting that their constituents like both candidates and have trouble making a choice between two equally qualified people. I wish I could feel that way.

Read the Lakoff article and consider the distinctions between policy on the material level and the cognitive level. I believe this distinction matters, and that it provides an insight into the differences between Obama and Clinton. Clinton has a capacity to convey confidence in her competence. Obama motivates. He moves people because he disturbs his audience's cognitive-level perceptions of whatever he's talking about, and then gives them another way of feeling good about progressive positions. Many Democrats adopt progressive prescriptions because they are the endorsed planks of the party to which they belong; they're no different from rank and file Republicans in this respect. Obama gives these same Democrats a way to feel that these ideals are their own.

There is a faulty view of voting behavior – widely held by political strategists on the left – that people already know what they want. All you have to do is conduct a poll to find out where they stand on the issues, then build a platform of positions that accords with the polls, and they will vote for you. Missing from this view is the importance of cognitive policy – the ideas necessary to understand what the issues are and how they should be addressed. It is the ability to understand where a candidate is coming from that makes public support possible. Endorsement quickly follows when this understanding combines with a sense of shared values.

- George Lakoff, Joe Brewer

Barack Obama instinctively gets cognitive-level framing. Hillary Clinton may get it, but she really, really has to work at it. I'm being a little charitable here -- honestly, I don't think Hillary gets it at all, which is why her rhetorical style and her hammering on the "experience" talking point leave me cold.

I've seen it again and again in the debates. The journalists who formulate and pose the questions often have challenged the Democrats with issues incorporating conservative framing: Should English be the national language? Why pull out of Iraq just as the surge is starting to work? Should we build the fence along the Mexican border? Hillary plunges in and tries to just answer the question. Barack listens to the question, grasps the framing, and reframes the issue on the fly to force listeners (a) to understand the bias behind the question and (b) to provide an answer that expresses a position on the larger issue beyond the original frame.

In other words, Clinton is conducting a purely material-level campaign -- which works with a large slice of the Democratic rank and file. She does this well enough to win in some of the biggest primary states, against a fellow-Democrat who is conducting a very different campaign. Obama campaigns on both the material and the cognitive level, which is why he wins in landslides among the voters principally motivated by "change."

The general election is going to be a referendum on eight years of ideological conservative government, and thus highly winnable for Democrats, if Democrats control the framing. John McCain is already on the trail attempting to divert attention from the Bush Administration's record, even as he embraces that record more literally than did any of his rivals in the Republican primaries. Republican framing in 2004 was about fear, and fear won over all of John Kerry's rational but ineffectual material-level arguments about his policy differences with Bush.

I look for McCain to adopt the same playbook this year, because it works. The Democrats had better adopt a different plan. Bad enough as the economy is, I believe Americans largely view it through the conservative Republican frame -- government bad, free market/private sector good. Taxes, environmentalism, regulation and illegal immigrants bad, growth good. China bad, American entrepreneurship good. Head to head against Clinton, McCain wins these arguments.

The Democrats have to make the electorate really uncomfortable this year. It's going to take much more than a rational argument about competence and experience to win. My take is that Obama has the tools to shift the framing. Hillary, a smart and accomplished woman, has yet to prove to me that she has them. I think the difference could be decisive.
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