Posts from — July 2004

Barack Obama

There are lots of comments and reactions that I have to the ongoing Democratic Convention in Boston, but I simply don’t have time right now. I am finishing up my conclusion and handing in my PhD dissertation on Monday. I still have more work to do than I would like.

Very very briefly – I would just like to reaffirm my respect for the way the Dems are handling this one – and (so far) especially the brilliance and care of Jimmy Carter, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and Theresa Heinz Kerry (who will make a very fine first lady). In all their different ways, they remind us what America is and can be at its very best.

And as rushed as I am, I have to document a prediction for the future here. Barack Obama will someday be president of the united states. He will have to pay his dues in the Senate (and he will be a great Senator – although he’s not yet even elected!) and prove himself over and over. But he’s the real deal. A newcomer, he zoomed right up there. His speech was candid, electrifying, and inspiring. He transcended all the divisions, he touched on all the great issues – and he did it in a way that created confidence and caring in all who heard him.

Ok, I was blown away. I was already in a near-rapturous state from Monday’s convention, and the Tuesday line-up was wonderful too – so much so that I couldn’t tear myself away no matter how much I really should have. I was already "pumped up," no doubt about it.

However, in a very special way, Obama’s intelligence and talent seems to beam right through screen at me. It really was amazing. Whatever it is, whatever it takes, he’s got it. And his message, like Bill Clinton’s, represents a politics of hope.

Just a couple of outstanding snippets:

"People will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or the Pentagon. Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. No, people don’t expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice."

"There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

"I’m not talking about blind optimism here-the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too."

Well done, Mr. Barack Obama – well done! I’ll be keeping an eye on you!

The Ethical Dilemnas of Stem Cell Research>

Ron Reagan’s speech at the Democratic Convention last night was carefully nonpartisan. He never mentioned any of the candidates by name, and he ended his talk with the plea to cast a vote for stem cell research. Ron Reagan imagines a time when you could go to the doctor, have some of your own cells harvested – say, from your arm – where they could be cultured and grown into any sort of cell with your own DNA and injected into areas that need replacing (such as brain cells for Parkinson’s, bone marrow for leukemia, etc). He called this possibility "what may be the greatest medical breakthrough in our, or any, lifetime" and exhorted Americans to choose between "reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology."

As far as I can tell, the science has not yet developed to the point where stem cells can actually be coaxed from cells in your arm. Stem cells are "unspecialized" cells that have the ability to generate healthy new cells, tissues and organs – at this point, it seems they are taken from the very early stages of the human embryo – long before any nervous system, heart or heartbeat, brainwaves, and so on. Pluripotent stem cells are isolated from human embryos that are only a few days old – studying them helps us understand how they are able to differentiate themselves into any kind of cell needed in the body. Previous cell lines were created from the "discards" of fertility treatments and from cells combined specifically for the purpose, and from what I can tell, it is also possible to use umbilical cord cells (which would be a great way!).

I’m not sure that I understand all the ehtical issues involved at this point – but I certainly do believe that this research is important enough for there to be a real national debate about it.

The best place to check the facts is at factcheck.org. It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and provides regular updates on claims made by the candidates. Excellent.

There is a great collection of essays at ToppleBush about President Bush’s record. The link goes to essays about his presidential record, listed by issue, and covers 9/11, The Iraq War, The War in Afghanistan, Foreign Policy, the Economy, Enron, the Environment, Domestic Policy, and general commentaries of various kinds. They also have other aspects of his record (as governor of Texas, military, etc).

Don’t miss Paul Krugman’s article on Bush as the Arabian Candidate.

Bush Watch also has some good editorials.

I was happy that I stayed awake last night to watch Bill Moyer’s Now on PBS. The linguist George Lakoff was on. He did an absolutely marvelous piece on the framing of language in politics, which he has been publishing quite a bit about recently.

He argues that Republicans understand framing better than the Democrats. The Democrats, a bit ironically, are still in thrall to a notion of rationality in which you simply speak truth to power and reasonable people are persuaded. The Republicans know better.

An example that Lakoff uses is the mental frame evoked by the oft-repeated phrase "tax relief."

"The relief frame is an instance of a more general rescue scenario in which there is a hero (the reliever), a victim (the afflicted), a crime (the affliction), a villain (the cause of affliction) and a rescue (the relief). The hero is inherently good, the villain is evil and the victim after the rescue owes gratitude to the hero. The term tax relief evokes all of this and more. It presupposes a conceptual metaphor: Taxes are an affliction, proponents of taxes are the causes of affliction (the villains), the taxpayer is the afflicted (the victim) and the proponents of tax relief are the heroes who deserve the taxpayers’ gratitude. Those who oppose tax relief are bad guys who want to keep relief from the victim of the affliction, the taxpayer. Every time the phrase tax relief is used, and heard or read by millions of people, this view of taxation as an affliction and conservatives as heroes gets reinforced." – from "Framing the Dems : How conservatives control political debate and how progressives can take it back"

How should progressive democrats REFRAME? As an issue of membership and patriotism, says Lakoff. "Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized society that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there’s an infrastructure that has been paid for by previous taxpayers. Wealthy Americans use that infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of it that other people don’t. Are you paying your dues, or are you trying to get something for free at the expense of your country?"

Republicans spent millions every year on thinktanks to strategize on such issues. Frank Luntz puts out "a 500-page manual every year that goes issue by issue on what the logic of the position is from the Republican side, what the other guys’ logic is, how to attack it, and what language to use."

Last night Lakoff pointed out that the common sense Healthy Forest act was framed as a conscious opposite. It is "common sense" so experts (ecologists, environmentalists, biologists, etc) are not needed. It will make forests "healthy" – a conscious and Orwellian obliteration of the reality. Lakoff says the strategy is not simply to negate and to say that it is NOT a healthy forest initative. That has about as much power as Nixon saying "I’m not a crook." Rather, it needs to be reframed – perhaps as The Forest Destruction Act, The Razing Act, The Slash and Burn Act.

I think he’s right. Progressives (he says we won’t be able to use the word "liberal" again for years) have to learn this strategy of reframing and repetition. It may be sad, but this is in fact the way people think.

Lakoff is part of the Rockridge Institute (as well as being a professor), where you can read more about reframing and political discourse.