Legal Commentary

Lakoff's Prescription: Political Misdirection

By Big Tent Democrat

George Lakoff is back selling his particular brand of "political discourse." He has always claimed Obama as a disciple (no one told Obama I think.) Lakoff's thinking is not exactly harmful but it is cloying. In a dkos diary, he writes:

[T]here will be a vision of America—a moral vision and a view of unity that the pundits often miss. What they miss is the Obama Code. For the sake of unity, the President tends to express his moral vision indirectly. . . . [Obama] connects with his audience using what cognitive scientists call the “cognitive unconscious.” Speaking naturally, he lets his deepest ideas simply structure what he is saying.

(Emphasis supplied.) Um, ok. I especially like the whole "express[ing] his moral vision indirectly" thing. Not the Straight Talk Express I take it. Anyway, this is all hooey. Obama did not invent the Post Partisan Unity Schtick though he is an especially fine practitioner of it. He is no Gladstone that's for sure. But the idea of seeking "unity" by ignoring actual policy is a particularly absurd Lakoffian conceit. Lakoff writes:

The third crucial idea behind the Obama Code is biconceptualism, the knowledge that a great many people who identify themselves ideologically as conservatives, or politically as Republicans or Independents, share those fundamental American values—at least on certain issues. Most “conservatives” are not thoroughgoing movement conservatives, but are what I have called “partial progressives” sharing Obama’s American values on many issues. Where such folks agree with him on values, Obama tries, and will continue to try, to work with them on those issues if not others. And, he assumes, correctly believe, that the more they come to think in terms of those American values, the less they will think in terms of opposing conservative values.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Obama's poll numbers are cratering with self-described "conservatives" while going up with self described liberals. This is of course, perfectly predictable because Lakoff's belief in the ephemeral is empty and useless. Lakoff writes:

The potential pushback will come not just from conservatives who do not share his values, but just as much from progressives who make the mistake of thinking that programs are values and that progressivism is defined by a list of programs. When some of those programs are cut as economically secondary or as unessential, their defenders will inevitably see this as a conservative move rather than a move within an overall moral vision they share with the President. This separation between values and programs lies behind the president’s pledge to cut programs that don’t serve those values and support those that do — no matter whether they are proposed by Republicans or Democrats. The President’s idealistic question is, what policies serve what values? — not what political interests?

If Lakoff mattered, this idea that the actual POLICIES a President and a government enact do not matter as long as "we share values" would be pernicious. The whole point of government is enacting policies, not some EST session.

Luckily for us, Lakoff does not actually matter and we can just point and laugh at the gibberish he presents.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 24, 2009 (boomark / email).