Response to “Rich” at A Parallax View
Written by Chris Schaffer on August 19, 2008 – 10:15 am -This post is a response to “Rich” at A Parallax View written by one of my good friends.
If you haven’t read “Moral Politics” yet. Do so immediately. Well worth the time and some of the high level philosophy better covered by Lakoff’s much longer works.
The book discusses the language and metaphor used by each political party. The more interesting part is that it is written by a very liberal professor who has to talk quite a bit about why conservatives win when it comes to talking and gaining the confidence of people.
When McCain talks about being rich, he says:
I think that rich is — should be defined by a home, a good job and education and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited.
This is a powerful metaphor. We get warm fuzzy images of families and good old fashioned values. Not only that, but every time any republican opens their mouth on this issue, a very similar set of words comes out. They have clearly defined what they want people to think about these topics.
The line from Obama that you quoted (from some other news source) is:
Obama added that those making more than $250,000 a year are in the top 3% or 4% of the population. He added, “Now, these things are all relative and I’m not suggesting that everybody that is making over $250,000 is living on easy street, …
All I have is a set of numbers that would be better displayed in a pie chart. A the last time I really felt an emotional connection to a pie chart was… well… never. The last part of the quote above is:
… but the question that I think we have to ask ourselves is if we believe in good schools, if we believe in good roads, if we want to make sure that kids can go to college, if we don’t want to leave a mountain of debt for the next generation, then we’ve got to pay for these things. They don’t come for free.”
Now I have an image. Schools, roads, and a politician stripping my wallet down to leather. It’s not the image he wants to put out, but that is what people are going to see when they hear him talk about taxes. The pie chart that shows most people will not only not pay more for these, but might get a tax break has no solid connection to the easily understood concept that things aren’t free.
The democrats continuously fail to realize the power of metaphor. It is the essence of how we think and reason in everyday life. Not only do democrats not use metaphor well, but they exert no control over how their members talk about issues. What we end up with are a bunch of very different sounding opinions from a bunch of politicians who we don’t identify with very well.
The republicans do control what party members say. They do not give opinions, they push a message. Their may have been fighting between the candidates during the debates, but now that McCain is “Red Leader” they have fallen nicely back into line with every member repeating the carefully crafted metaphor. It instills faith that they have a clear message, a plan, and are working toward some noble ideal… the fact that none of that may be true is of little value.
Obama began the campaign with a strong metaphor. Hope and Change. I have argued before that this has little real meaning. But now in context I can explain why. No one else around him is trumpetting the same message. Obama also doesn’t do a good job of using metaphor on his own.
The above statements from the recent debate show that Obama is attempting to use good old fashioned logic to persuade people at a speech. If he were in classroom, this would be great, but he is not. Facts, figures, and statistics do not excite people who are looking for meaning and to find faith in a candidate. “The top 3% or 4% of the population” is not Hope & Change.
I’m sure we’ll have some spirited debates on this point. And I very much look forward to them!
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