Why Sarah Palin is such a powerful weapon

The following essay is one that should have been read two years ago by Obama and his handlers. What George Lakoff is saying in "The Palin Choice" is that politics is marketing and marketing is all about positioning--that is, it's a powerfully scripted battle for the mind. That's the only space that counts. And that's the space that the Right is, and has long been, so good at occupying.

The Left still believes that it can use TV to address external realities such as war and poverty. Lakoff says those realities can't be addressed sensibly or sanely on TV (and, by implication, other corporate-owned broadcasting media). Why? When watching stagecrafted TV, there is no external reality: there is only the retinal reality of image and image-impingement, a situation where fear is easily aroused. It's all about what Othello demanded of Iago: "ocular proof." One carefully placed handkerchief was enough to convince the Moor his faithful wife Desdemona was an adulteress and make him kill her. The Republicans are masters of "ocular proof" and the unreliable retinal reasoning that makes lies into truths.

One thing my teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen always said, "The greater the surrounding darkness, the greater the number of glitters in it." The Republicans are masters of sequined, saccharine goodness--arousing darkness, then shining the familiar pinpricks of light, like lit houses seen on a dark night in a moving car, that seem to abate it. Hence Sarah Palin is the perfect embodiment of family values. What the Republicans know is that even the Liberal Mind is already overcrowded with a billion sound bites and visual cues and does not have, at least when watching TV, any kind of sustained conceptual or narrative power. That's why every TV should come with a surgeon general's warning. It demands, not just encourages, passive, Pavlovian behavior--resulting in minds that watch habitually but are never watchful. Just look at how we progressives become so easily fomented and self-destructive when seeing the symbols that bring such comfort to Republicans.

The mind of the citizen who owes his primary allegiance to America through television has a tightly packed molecular structure into which heavy atoms of truth and revelation fit as uncomfortably as a sumo wrestler trying to fit into the middle seat between aisle and window on a crowded airplane. There is simply no room in that space--or no comfortable room. And that is why Democrats keep losing the image wars. Want proof? Look how easily Queen Palin, with all her flaws and shortcomings, upstaged Obama and has continued to do so. Love her or hate her; it's really beside the point. Sarah has dominant position in the communal mind of America's citizens. Counting on disgust to displace her is a phony exorcism. All that happens is the mind becomes a negative space where it remains the captive of angers and resentments. The Right is counting on Stewart, Mawr and Colbert to attack Palin because it keeps her front and center in the media-enslaved mind. It will take feats of marketing even greater to displace or at least defang Palin. That's why the Republicans have a shot at the White House. Obama must stage a retinal coup as soon as possible. But he can't do it with an Iago like Howard Wolfson.

The only hope for democracy any and everywhere where these is corporate or state controlled TV is to ban poliiticial advertising for 60 days before any election. But the Right will cite Supreme Court decisions upholding advertising as protected First Amendment free speech.

This is the fourth day of Ramadan. In addition to praying without ceasing, maybe we all need to spend this month on a media fast--resisting its daily feasts of junk food for thought both day and night. I got a nice little mosque (actually, it's called a God's House) where you can join me in restorative silence; then afterwards, we can have a tea ceremony.


The Palin Choice
The Reality of the Political Mind
by George Lakoff

This election matters because of realities-the realities of global warming, the economy, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, civil liberties, species extinction, poverty here and around the world, and on and on. Such realities are what make this election so very crucial, and how to deal with them is the substance of the Democratic platform .

Election campaigns matter because who gets elected can change reality. But election campaigns are primarily about the realities of voters' minds, which depend on how the candidates and the external realities are cognitively framed. They can be framed honestly or deceptively, effectively or clumsily. And they are always framed from the perspective of a worldview.

The Obama campaign has learned this. The Republicans have long known it, and the choice of Sarah Palin as their Vice-Presidential candidate reflects their expert understanding of the political mind and political marketing. Democrats who simply belittle the Palin choice are courting disaster. It must be t aken with the utmost seriousness.

The Democratic responses so far reflect external realities: she is inexperienced, knowing little or nothing about foreign policy or national issues; she is really an anti-feminist, wanting the government to enter women's lives to block abortion, but not wanting the government to guarantee equal pay for equal work, or provide adequate child health coverage, or child care, or early childhood education; she shills for the oil and gas industry on drilling; she denies the scientific truths of global warming and evolution; she misuses her political authority; she opposes sex education and her daughter is pregnant; and, rather than being a maverick, she is on the whole a radical right-wing ideologue.

All true, so far as we can tell.

But such truths may nonetheless be largely irrelevant to this campaign. That is the lesson Democrats must learn. They must learn the reality of the political mind.

The Obama campaign has done this very well so far. The convention events and speeches were orchestrated both to cast light on external realities, traditional political themes, and to focus on values at once classically American and progressive: empathy, responsibility both for oneself and others, and aspiration to make things better both for oneself and the world. Obama did all this masterfully in his nomination speech, while replying to, and undercutting, the main Republican attacks.

But the Palin nomination changes the game. The initial response has been to try to keep the focus on external realities, the "issues," and differences on the issues. But the Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind-the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't win on realities. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism, activate the conservative view of the world, and use the advantages that conservatives have in dominating political discourse.

Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse. There is a reason why Obama and Biden spoke so much about the family, the nurturant family, with caring fathers and the family values that Obama put front and center in his Father's day speech: empathy, responsibility and aspiration. Obama's reference in the nomination speech to "The American Family" was hardly accidental, nor were the references to the Obama and Biden families as living and fulfilling the American Dream. Real nurturance requires strength and toughness, which Obama displayed in body language and voice in his responses to McCain. The strength of the Obama campaign has been the seamless marriage of reality and symbolic thought.

The Republican strength has been mostly symbolic. The McCain campaign is well aware of how Reagan and W won-running on character: values, communicatio n, (apparent) authenticity, trust, and identity - not issues and policies. That is how campaigns work, and symbolism is central.

Conservative family values are strict and apply via metaphorical thought to the nation: good vs. evil, authority, the use of force, toughness and discipline, individual (versus social) responsibility, and tough love. Hence, social programs are immoral because they violate discipline and individual responsibility. Guns and the military show force and discipline. Man is above nature; hence no serious environmentalism. The market is the ultimate financial authority, requiring market discipline. In foreign policy, strength is use of the force. In fundamentalist religion, the Bible is the ultimate authority; hence no gay marriage. Such values are at the heart of radical conservatism. This is how John McCain was raised and how he plans to govern. And it is what he shares with Sarah Palin.

Palin is the mom in the strict father family, upholding conservative values. Palin is tough: she shoots, skins, and eats caribou. She is disciplined: raising five kids with a major career. She lives her values: she has a Downs-syndrome baby that she refused to abort. She has the image of the ideal conservative mom: pretty, perky, feminine, Bible-toting, and fitting into the ideal conservative family. And she fits the stereotype of America as small-town America. It is Reagan's morning-in-America image. Where Obama thought of capturing the West, she is running for Sweetheart of the West.

And Palin, a member of Feminists For Life, is at the heart of the conservative feminist movement, which Ronee Schreiber has written about in her recent book, Righting Feminism. It is a powerful and growing movement that Democrats have barely paid attention to.
At the same time, Palin is masterful at the Republican game of taking the Democrats' language and reframing it-putting conservative frames to progressive words: Reform, prosperity, peace. She is also masterful at using the progressive narratives: she's from the working class, working her way up from hockey mom and the PTA to Mayor, Governor, and VP candidate. Her husband is a union member. She can say to the conservative populists that she is one of them-all the things that Obama and Biden have been saying. Bottom-up, not top-down.

Yes, the McCain-Palin ticket is weak on the major realities. But it is strong on the symbolic dimension of politics that Republicans are so good at marketing. Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and its response to symbolism cannot be ignored. The initial Democratic response to Palin - the response based on realities alone - indicates that many Democrats have not learned the lessons of the Reagan and Bush years.

They have not learned the nature of conservative populism. A great many working-class folks are what I call "bi-conceptual," that is, they are split between conservative and progressive modes of thought. Conservative on patriotism and certain social and family issues, which they have been led to see as "moral", progressive in loving the land, living in communities of care, and practical kitchen table issues like mortgages, health care, wages, retirement, and so on.
Conservative theorists won them over in two ways: Inventing and promulgating the idea of "liberal elite" and focusing campaigns on social and family issues. They have been doing this for many years and have changed a lot of brains through repetition. Palin will appeal strongly to conservative populists, attacking Obama and Biden as pointy-headed, tax-and-spend, latte liberals. The tactic is to divert attention from difficult realities to powerful symbolism.

What Democrats have shied away from is a frontal attack on radical conservatism itself as an un-American and harmful ideology. I think Obama is right when he says that America is based on people caring about each other and working together for a better future-empathy, responsibility (both personal and social), and aspiration. These lead to a concept of government based on protection (environmental, consumer, worker, health care, and retirement protection) and empowerment (through infrastructure, public education, the banking system, the stock market, and the courts). Nobody can achieve the American Dream or live an American lifestyle without protection and empowerment by the government.20The alternative, as Obama said in his nomination speech, is being on your own, with no one caring for anybody else, with force as a first resort in foreign affairs, with threatened civil liberties and a right-wing government making your most important decisions for you. That is not what American democracy has ever been about.

What is at stake in this election are our ideals and our view of the future, as well as current realities. The Palin choice brings both front and center. Democrats, being Democrats, will mostly talk about the realities nonstop without paying attention to the dimensions of values and symbolism. Democrats, in addition, need to call an extremist an extremist: to shine a light on the shared anti-democratic ideology of McCain and Palin, the same ideology shared by Bush and Cheney. They share values antithetical to our democracy. That needs to be said loud and clear, if not by the Obama campaign itself, then by the rest of us who share democratic American values.

Our job is to bring external realities together with the reality of the political mind. Don't ignore the cognitive dimension. It is through cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames that we understand and express our ideals.

George Lakoff is the author of The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 20th Century Politics With an 18th Century Brain