Lakoff: Don’t Think of a Maverick
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The Republican ticket has descended to new depths of sleaze, innuendo, and bald-faced lies. A lot of people are fretting and worrying that the Obama campaign has lost its way, and that the McCain campaign (with its laughable-on-the-face-of-it, terrifying-when-you-scratch-the-surface Palin VP pick) might actually have a chance to win this election. We’ve seen it before with Kerry, with Gore—some would say with Hillary. The spectre of yet another humiliating and stupefying defeat hangs over this election; the possibility of another Republican president after eight years of lies, corruption, and ineptitude is enough to turn the most stalwart progressive’s knees to jelly.
Now is the time for Obama to remember the lessons of framing and wrest control of this train back from the hands of the GOP.
Author George Lakoff (Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate) has a few words of advice for the Obama camp.
Throughout the nomination campaign I was struck by how well the Obama campaign was being run, especially how sophisticated the framing was. I was heartened that my five books on the subject might have had a real effect. But recently I have begun to wonder. It looks like, in certain respects, the Obama campaign is making some of the same mistakes of the Hillary campaign and the Kerry and Gore campaigns.
The Dayton speech on education had fine policy, but was the first really deadly dull Obama speech I’ve heard. It started out with lots of numbers. True, but dull. And he is promising more of the same policy wonk speeches. He’s right that we are facing serious realities, and he’s right to say what he intends to do, but the old inspiring Obama just isn’t there. And the surrogates - Biden and Hillary - are policy-wonking it, too.
I hope I’m wrong. Given my great respect for those who ran the nomination campaign so well, I wonder if I should say anything at all. But, as I predicted, Palin has turned out to be effective and the Obama campaign has not been effective in dealing with her. I’ve been getting loads of email asking me to say something to the campaign. So with some hesitation and a great deal of respect, I will simply point out what I see.
Four years ago I wrote a book called, Don’t Think of an Elephant! The title made a basic point: Negating a frame activates that frame. If you activate the other side’s frame, you just help the other side, as Nixon found out when he said, “I am not a crook,” which made people think of him as a crook.
The Obama campaign just put out an ad called “No Maverick.” The basic idea was right. The Maverick Frame is central to the McCain campaign, and as the ad points out, it’s a lie. But negating the Maverick Frame just activates that frame and helps McCain. You have to substitute a different frame that characterizes McCain as he really is. There are various possibilities. Let’s consider one of them. Ninety percent of the time, McCain has been a Yes-Man for Bush. Think in terms of questions at a debate. If the question is, is McCain a maverick?, you are thinking about him as a maverick, even when you are trying to find ways in which he isn’t. McCain wins. If the question is whether McCain is a Yes-Man for Bush, you put McCain on the defensive. People think of him as a Yes-man 90 percent of the time, and try to think of cases when he might not have been. This is not rocket science. It’s the first principle of framing.
