Thursday, December 23, 2004

Confusing the messenger with the message

Chris Nolan has been talking about George Lakoff and is pretty unimpressed. He reposts an email he received that generally approves of his criticism of Lakoff and those who follow him. I'd recommend reading it even though I have a serious disagreement with both Nolan and his correspondent. I've seen these kind of complaints from others (Kevin Drum for example) and I think it is time to clear up what appears to be a fundamental confusion: George Lakoff is not equal to the whole issue of political framing.

Lakoff has provided a valuable service to many Democrats who have a fundamental difficulty understanding the communication problem they face. I know many Democrats who simply can't understand why anyone in their right mind would find George W. Bush appealing. They continually express amazement that anyone with an ounce of brains could be bamboozled by this charlatan.

What Lakoff has done is describe precisely what it is that Democrats haven't been able to get on their own. He has done it in a way that has allowed a lot of Democrats to understand just why the Republican message might be appealing. For that accomplishment alone he has earned a place in the Democratic heavens.

But Lakoff has also provides Democrats with the tools they can use to fashion a more appealing message without necessarily sacrificing their core values. Democrats have been trying to re-fashion themselves for years now, but much of that work has come in the form of actually changing those core values. Something many Democrats have rebelled against. Lakoff has given Democrats the hope that there message can still resonate if it is properly presented. Again, another accomplishment for which he deserves praise.

But now we get down to the core of the problem. While Lakoff has done yeoman's work in analyzing the Republican message and in describing tools that Democrats need to fashion their own message, his own personal attempts at fashioning a Democratic/Progressive message have been weak at best. The "Nurturant Parent" is just not a model that appeals, even to a lot of Democrats.

It is the latter problem that I think gets on the nerves of people like Kevin Drum, Chris Nolan and Chris' correspondent. I don't have a problem with that. It doesn't appeal to me that much either (I've described my problems with it elsewhere). The problem I have with Mr. Nolan and the others is that they appear to reject Lakoff and any who follow him in toto simply because they don't like this particular aspect of his work.

Mr. Nolan's correspondent is absolutely right that George Lakoff the man will never appeal to the kind of people Democrats need to appeal to. But that's not the point. George Lakoff the man is not the message we are trying to sell to the American public. He is simply doing some of the grunt work that will be necessary to develop that message.

I know very few Lakoff fans who have embraced Lakoff's "Nurturant Parent" model. But it is not that model for which he is praised. For Mr. Nolan and others to criticize us simply because they don't like one aspect of Lakoff's work is just silly. Using pejorative terms like "Doormat Democrats" is especially ironic since many who are in the reform movement see Lakoffian analysis as one of the keys to kicking out the very "Doormat Democrats" that Mr. Nolan criticizes.

Hell, I've been criticizing "Doormat Democrats" for years! Do Chris and others really think I want us to go back to that?

Lakoff is just this guy, y'know. A pretty smart guy, but not the be-all and end-all to this discussion. His work is just step 1 and 2 in the 100 step program to taking back this country. Don't harsh on the guy simply because you don't like his suggestions for step 3.

Job Description

"How about we change Rummy's title to Secretary of Self-Defense?" -- djinniya, commenter on this post on the DailyKOS

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

More of the same

Third Presidential Debate, Oct. 13th, 2004:

SCHIEFFER: Let's go to a new question, Mr. President. Two minutes. And let's continue on jobs.

You know, there are all kind of statistics out there, but I want to bring it down to an individual.

Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?

BUSH: I'd say, Bob, I've got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 21st century. And here's some help for you to go get an education. Here's some help for you to go to a community college.

We've expanded trade adjustment assistance. We want to help pay for you to gain the skills necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century.

You know, there's a lot of talk about how to keep the economy growing. We talk about fiscal matters. But perhaps the best way to keep jobs here in America and to keep this economy growing is to make sure our education system works.

I went to Washington to solve problems. And I saw a problem in the public education system in America. They were just shuffling too many kids through the system, year after year, grade after grade, without learning the basics.

And so we said: Let's raise the standards. We're spending more money, but let's raise the standards and measure early and solve problems now, before it's too late.

No, education is how to help the person who's lost a job. Education is how to make sure we've got a workforce that's productive and competitive.

Got four more years, I've got more to do to continue to raise standards, to continue to reward teachers and school districts that are working, to emphasize math and science in the classrooms, to continue to expand Pell Grants to make sure that people have an opportunity to start their career with a college diploma.

And so the person you talked to, I say, here's some help, here's some trade adjustment assistance money for you to go a community college in your neighborhood, a community college which is providing the skills necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century. And that's what I would say to that person.

Today:

About 90,000 students could be disqualified from receiving Pell Grants and other forms of federal and state financial aid under a change, scheduled to be issued on Thursday by the U.S. Education Department, in the formula the government uses to calculate a student's need for aid.

The department plans to announce in the Federal Register that it is, for the first time in a decade, updating the amount it forgives most families for their state and local tax payments when determining how much income the families have left over to pay college costs.

According to an analysis by the American Council on Education, about 1.3 million students and their families will see their eligibility for federal financial aid drop next year, when the formula change takes effect, because the new formula will show them to have more money available for college than before. The families of some of the 90,000 students disqualified from Pell Grants could also appear to be rich enough under the change, according to the council, that they will be ineligible for state and institutional aid as well.

[...]

Over the last several weeks, Bush-administration officials had been cagey about whether they were going to exercise the authority they had been given. Lobbyists were not surprised that the department's leaders decided to announce the change two days before Christmas.

"It's not unusual for federal agencies to release unpleasant news when people aren't paying attention," said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education.

(Courtesy Suburban Guerrilla)

The scam

What really ticks me off about the whole Bush Social Security "Reform" scam is the blatant hypocrisy of the whole thing. If the Republicans honestly believe that people would be better off managing their money the way they see fit then they should simply propose a cut in the payroll tax and then let the people invest or spend the returns as they see fit. Bush's proposal does the former but then requires people to put that money into government regulated investment accounts.

What is conservative about that?

Bush's Complex Social Security System

A commenter on the DailyKOS has come up with a great idea for an attack on the Social Security "reform" movement (link):

Average Guy (not a redneck, just a decent looking middle-class guy) sitting on his couch watching a TV. Kids running in and out of the house.

Wife calls out from the kitchen: "Honey, the privatized Social Security account is due."

Husband: "Gee, Honey, I just don't know whether we should go for the hedge funds or the junk bonds this time. What do you think?"

Wife: "Oh, I don't know hon. Maybe we should call the family stockbroker."

Husband looks into camera dumbfounded: "Uh, family stockbroker?"

CAPTION ACROSS SCREEN: Privatizing Social Security is for People Who Don't Need It. Count on the party that created it to save it. THE DEMOCRATS

This is an aspect of the privatization debate that most people just haven't thought about. There may be more people involved in the stock market today than ever before (I have a 401k, but hell if I know what I am invested in right now), but there are still a lot of people who have no experience with it and don't want any experience with it!

A winning argument in this debate is that the current Social Security system is simple. It doesn't require a whole lot of thought to deal with the current system. Bush wants to replace this simple system with a complex Frankenstein monster of investment options. The Bush system will require people to hire accountants if they want to understand what they are getting into. Either that or start to learn the meaning of terms like dividend, price/earnings ratios, market capitalization, and so on.

Isn't having to do our taxes once a year complicated enough?

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

The Art Of Political War

I said in my previous post on Social Security that we should allow the question of motives to distract us in the attack on those who want to destroy Social Security. I want to expand on this a bit because it is a very important point.

Let's be clear on something: questioning the motives of the opposition is perfectly legitimate line of attack. It's just that we have to remain focused, laser-like, on the most essential point of this debate: the mythical "crisis" in Social Security. Any other debate is a distraction.

Democrats have a tendency to go for broad based attacks, under the theory that attacking on multiple fronts will show the oppositions position as being weak. We make two mistakes when we do this.

The first mistake is not realizing that we don't need to defeat the opposition. We only need to win over the audience.

The audience is the mass of voters who have to decide which position makes the most sense to them and to whom they will throw their support. This audience is made up of people who do not devote much of their attention to the intricacies of policy debates. It just doesn't interest them. This is not a fault. It's just who they are.

Now, to such an audience, an attack on multiple fronts may actually appear to be a sign of weakness on the part of the attacker. It can look like the attacker is just flailing around, looking for a weakness, and failing repeatedly. "If they had a legitimate argument to make", thinks the audience, "they wouldn't keep shifting gears while making it."

The second mistake is even more fundamental and it is one I actually learned of while playing video games. I learned that when attacking an opponent, it pays to focus all of my firepower on one target at a time. While doing so I will suffer cuts and bruises from several angles, but by focusing my power I can quickly destroy that one target and thus reduces the overall firepower that is directed against me. If I repeat this process, a large force will be steadily weakened until it can no longer harm me effectively. I then let my forces go hog-wild on the remaining stragglers.

The second mistake is in thinking that the hits you will take from leaving the secondary targets alone will make you vulnerable to defeat.

The same principle holds true in politics. If you focus your attack on one or two targets, especially the most formidable ones(*), you can destroy that target quickly and reduce the overall firepower of the opposition without necessarily sacrificing a lot of your own blood in the process. The most formidable target in the current debate is the multi-year propaganda campaign that has instilled in people the idea that Social Security is one step away from total collapse. It is that idea that must be destroyed before any meaningful debate about the future of Social Security can progress. It is that idea that is the main weapon in the Republican arsenal. It is that idea which Democrats must not give any credence to as doing so will only strengthen the Republican position.

So, in short, the attack on motives is not a bad one. It's just that there is an even better target of opportunity that will produce better results.

Ironically, it is often the case that a proposal that is weak on multiple fronts may actually have a greater chance of success. When you have so many target opportunities the temptation can be strong to attack on multiple fronts. This can spread your forces so thin that the proposal will get through and win passage despite its many failures (the same irony abounds in the ascendancy of George W. Bush).

When taking down an enemy like the effort to gut Social Security what you need to do is focus your attack on one or two key points, break the lines of the opposition, and then destroy them from within. You may be surprised just how weak the enemy is once you dispatch their greatest weapon.

(* This is a key element of Karl Rove's political strategy: always attack the opposition at their strongest point. Once you defeat that the rest will be nothing but a mop-up operation.)


Believe it or not, I learned this lesson from video games.

Comments

I just discovered that Blogger now offers its own commenting system. I've turned it on for now just to see if it is any better than Haloscan. I'll leave the Haloscan comments on for now (Haloscan is the first comment link, Blogger is the second). Let me know which you prefer.

The Battle For Social Security

In the upcoming battle over Social Security "reform" Democrats need to be united in their opposition to the Republican plan to gut the signature program of Democratic politics. But we also need to deal with the inevitable claims that such opposition is simply a knee-jerk opposition to reform. We can't do it by simply denying it nor can we do it by offering counter reform proposals. The first will just lead to a childish "are-to/are-not" debate while the latter will simply give weight to the underlying argument of the critics of Social Security. They want people to believe that Social Security needs reforming. If Democrats offer a counter-proposal then they have already ceded 3/4 of the battlefield to the Republicans.

We must repeat again and again and again the following mantra: "Social Security is the most successful government program ever instituted and is as healthy as it has ever been". Then challenge the nay Sayers to prove otherwise.

DO NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH THE ASSUMPTION THAT SOCIAL SECURITY NEEDS TO BE FIXED!

Challenge that assumption in any form it is presented.

If something needs to be fixed then that means that it is broken. Social Security is not broken. It has the most stable funding base of any government program in existence (even defense appropriations have to be approved from year to year). It is as solvent today as it was the day it was created.

We need to be clear on this. Democrats are not opposed to reform when reform is needed. In the case of Social Security, it is not needed.

Once you adopt this as your baseline then the rest of the argument will follow, including the fact that the proponents of reform are being consistently disingenuous (i.e., lying) about the need for fundamental change.

NOTE: Avoid getting into a debate about the motives of the reformers. Doing so will simply divert the debate away from the essential point that "Social Security is the most successful government ever instituted and is as healthy as it has ever been."

This is absolutely essential. Technically, we don't have the votes to stop them gutting Social Security if they want to. But if they have to do it in an entirely non-partisan fashion then it will be a lot harder for them to get some of the more moderate Republicans on board. Just as an example, the Save Social Security blog (an essential resource in this fight) has the Republican Senator Gordon Smith from my own state of Oregon listed as being on the fence ("Recognizes the need for some kind of reform, but has not decided on either the measure or the depth of the fix required"). That's a big clue right there that the Republicans are not united behind Bush on the need for fundamental Social Security reform.

If the Democrats can stay united on this they can hang this albatross around the Republicans and make them pay for it big time (think the hurt Democrats went through in '94 after the Clinton Health Care plan failed).

If the Democrats can stay united they might even be able to break the Republican coalition and hand Bush a defeat on the signature issue of his second term (so much for that "political capital" eh?)

But this can happen only if Democrats do not give the Republicans a bi-partisan lifeline. This is why any Democrat who is even considering cooperating should hear the message loud and clear that they will suffer dearly if they go along.

Democratic leaders must learn to fear their own constituency more than the squawking of the Republican right. But this will require that we are united in our efforts to keep the Democrat leaders united.

This is the line in the sand folks.