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TechnoratiBarack Obama and the Framing of the Debate
In the first presidential debate of the general election, polls show that Barack Obama dominated in the discussion of economics. A USA Today/Gallup poll shows that 34% of viewers had more confidence in Obama's economic agenda as a result of the debate, while only 26% said they had less confidence. McCain's results were nearly the opposite, with only 23% having more confidence and 37% having less confidence.
On the other hand, McCain and Obama broke even when viewers were questioned about any shift in their perceptions regarding the candidates' stances on foreign policy. This was in spite of McCain's strident defense of a deeply unpopular war.
Professor George Lakoff has popularized understanding of the use frames in political debate, and I believe his theories provide us a strong road map for understanding these results. Lakoff believes that whoever frames the debate, will win the debate. And while Obama strongly framed the economic debate, he accepted far too much of McCain's frame for the foreign policy debate.
On economic issues, Obama presented the difference clearly: government regulation and progressive taxation to build the economy from the bottom up vs. deregulated markets and other policies designed to stimulate the economy from the top down. Obama argued for the former clearly and compellingly, and as a result, his individual policies fell neatly into place, creating a strong sense of internal logic to what he was saying, and creating an aura of integrity for himself around those issues.
On the other hand, in the discussion over foreign policy, Obama accepted much of McCain's frame, and it blunted what should have been a natural advantage in that arena. The more conservative version of the narrative goes as follows:
Small but powerful bands of ruthless terrorists are hell-bent on killing us and destroying our culture. These terrorists exist in dozens of countries. Their grievances are unreasonable and unresolvable and therefore can not be addressed with negotiation or good will. Overwhelming and unilateral military force is the only way to protect ourselves.
The progressive version of the narrative, on the other hand, says, more or less:
Diplomacy, negotiation, justice, and development are the foundation of peace. Terrorism is the violence of the weak against the strong, and terrorist groups recruit from amongst the angry, the poor and the oppressed. Overwhelming military force and occupation results in the killing of innocent people, even if some legitimate terrorists are stopped in the process. That, in turn, leads to increased support for radical ideologies and groups that practice terrorism.
Of course, these are oversimplifications, but they should be good enough to demonstrate the point. Obama invoked both frames intermittently, and it created a lack of internal consistency to his positions which weaken both his positions and his apparent integrity.
For example, Obama invokes the conservative frame in several ways such as: agreeing that we need to use overwhelming military force as our tool in Afghanistan - and perhaps more strikingly, even in Pakistan, with or without the support of the Pakistani government; stating that Al Qaeda exists in 60 countries, creating a justification for attacking a huge number of countries in the world; using the phrase "hunt and kill," thereby dehumanizing the enemy; and finally, accepting that the "surge" has been successful, thereby supporting the idea that problems can be solved through a simple increase in military force.
On the other hand, he argues we should leave Iraq in 16 months. But the questions is, why? If indeed terrorists are in 60 countries, which would certainly include Iraq, and overwhelming military force is the proper method, and the surge is working, then why should we leave Iraq a couple years earlier, if it means the possibility of rolling back all the progress we've made there? It appears cowardly and weak, and it doesn't make any logical sense. At best, it appears selfish - cutting our losses and leaving Iraq to fend for itself.
Leaving Iraq does make sense though, if you believe that the violent nature of the occupation in and of itself creates terrorism. The solution may be U.N. troops, assistance to pro-democracy groups in Iraq, development assistance and more, but unilateral and overwhelming force will fail in the long-term. The downturn in violence in Iraq can be seen as a temporary improvement held together by massive amounts of U.S. tax dollars rather than as proof of a successful strategy that will persist.
Of course, the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 911 is also compelling, but by talking about the fact that Al Qaeda exists in 60 countries, Obama works against the premise of this frame, which is that terrorism is isolated to specific groups and actions, rather than a ubiquitous and ever-present evil, particularly in the Islamic world.
Obama invokes the progressive frame as well, in pushing for direct talks with Iran, where his arguments are persuasive in that they are a simple matter of common sense. But he doesn't take his foreign policy frame far enough, and ends up creating a patchwork of individual positions that aren't bound by a strong frame, and in turn, have loads of internal contradictions. So, McCain, despite his support of an deeply unpopular war, ended up breaking even with Obama.
Obama, while hinting at and skirting the edges of the progressive frame, never argued forcefully for it, in a way that would be convincing to those who didn't already share the paradigm. In addition, Obama's individual policies should fit into the overall frame. For example, Obama could have talked about his actual plan to provide a large amount of development assistance to Afghanistan. The idea is not to rule out military force in all situations, but rather to invoke cooperation and negotiation in all its forms, as the primary method of achieving peace.
It's understandable that candidates are afraid to speak out against dominant paradigms, fearing that voters accustomed to a certain point of view may not be persuadable, but those who are able to articulate clear frames will not only change minds, but they will earn respect of undecided voters, who are looking for integrity as much as they are any particular policy position.
19 Comments so far
Show AllFollowing is an article reporting [revelations] of important nature about McCain, and everyone will want to have read this.
"McCain Said to Conceal Facts About POWs Left in Vietnam
by Sherwood Ross
Global Research, September 29, 2008"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10380
People who weren't going to vote for McCain anyway definitely still won't, but will surely be very glad to have read the above article; and all other U.S. citizens, or all of humanity, should find the article to be one of serious political importance. And U.S. military veterans who [care] about the Constitution, etcetera, and how service members are treated by the [goons] of this govt will definitely want to have read this article.
Very important! Otoh, people who were going to vote for McCain probably will go into yet another denial, about what the above article says; ... as usual.
Two ROTTEN candidates for the presidency (Obama being the other, instead of meaning Palin, who's nonetheless also rotten), that is, two leading rotten candidates doesn't make for the results matching with what we should be hoping for. It makes for ... rather ... [despair], and ... [outrage].
Where's the human earthquake that's missing in the USA right now?! There was one on Feb. 15, 2003, but where's the one needed NOW?! It may not have been a massive human earthquake in the US on that date, but the international movement, all combined, was referred to as a 'human earthquake' by some fine writers, and I expect the part in the U.S. was one of the associated quakes. There's little real quaking now though; except for the threat of robbing U.S. taxpayers to bail out criminal financial "elites" and their banks, etcetera, causing quaking in the U.S. What's that; money counts, but life walks ... or is buried?
One of the biggest targets of politicians is the payday loan industry as far as the economy is concerned. Across the country, specifically in Georgia, North Carolina, and Oregon they are trying to rid their states of the industry altogether. The result was that bankruptcies, foreclosures, and also the number of overdraft fees due to bouncing checks went through the roof, which doesn’t do anything for the citizens afflicted in these turbulent times, and only is really good for the banking industry.
In spite of the negative effects it has, other states are looking to follow the example and do the same. Even at the national level, there is a presidential candidate weighing in his own agenda on the issue. If these measures both on state and nationally levels become successful, the results would be increased unemployment, more debt, more foreclosures, and an even worse economy.
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"Ric Abreu October 1st, 2008 1:25 am
...
Obama stepped up the campaign of fear-mongering in support of the bailout, saying that its defeat would mean that “thousands of businesses could close around the country,” and “millions of jobs could be lost.”"
YEP, that's fearmongering on his part, alright. The following very short video of Billary speaking on or to some U.S. tv "news" media has her saying that Obama has told her, personally anyway, that he no longer was holding to his 2002 opposition to the war on Iraq and that he was unable to say that he would not have also joined the authorizers of recourse to war against Iraq; iow, he likely would have signed the authorization (for war of aggression) if he had been in a position to be able to actually vote on this. No surprise to me, for I argued startin some years ago that his 2002 words of opposition were not supported by anything really substantial, for he was not then in any position to be able to vote on the authorization and ... heh, "politics is full of hypocrisy", 99.9% full anyway.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=6xYV683E1Vc
Need some alka-seltzer?
The following interview with RFK Jr closes with him saying that Obama's receiving $66mn per [month]. Now who the hell is doing that; is it masses of lemming voters, or the rich "elites" he's really but secretly working for, well, somewhat secretly anyway? $66mn a ... bleep ... month?!
"RFK Jr., : "Is Your Vote Safe?"
Interview with Mike Papantonio, Air America Radio
by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Global Research, September 29, 2008
Truthout - 2008-09-22"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10386
Quote:
Pap: "And if Democrats won't talk about this how the hell's anybody gonna know about it? I'm involved with this kind of thing every day - I didn't know that until you just told me. The media is not talking about it. How in the hell is somebody gonna find this out? It's just incredible.
Bobby: "Hopefully - Obama is getting 66 million dollars a month - hopefully somebody in the Democratic organization is going to pay some attention to this before election day."
END QUOTE.
It's URGENT for all U.S. voters to read that whole interview, too, btw!
Thanks for the links. I did hear that Obama had said if he would have been a US Senator he isn't sure how he would voted. I am. He would have voted for it. He is such a hypocrite to have spent all the primaries attacking Billary for her vote. He feined being an antiwar candidate just long enough to secure the nomination. Now he's a full fledged little chicken-hawked warmonger.
In the aftermath of the bill’s defeat, the Democrats have once again taken the lead in the effort to hold a revote and push the measure through. Speaking Tuesday at the University of Nevada at Reno, Obama said that he had spoken with Bush, the Democratic majority leader of the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada, and other leaders about reviving the bailout plan.
Obama stepped up the campaign of fear-mongering in support of the bailout, saying that its defeat would mean that “thousands of businesses could close around the country,” and “millions of jobs could be lost.”
He added, “To the Democrats and Republicans who opposed this plan yesterday, I say: Step up to the plate and do what’s right for this country.”
read more: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/demo-o01.shtml
Rob Arnow is a graphic designer and political activist living in San Francisco and a conventional DPA defender of the status quo.
From the moment Paulson broached the idea of using at least $700 billion in taxpayer funds to buy worthless mortgage-backed securities from the major banks, the Democratic leadership, including the party’s presidential candidate, Barack Obama, backed the scheme.
They accepted the basic framework of Paulson’s proposal. They echoed his claims and those of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke that immediate legislative action was required to avert an economic catastrophe.
Despite their control of both houses of Congress, the Democrats never advanced their own plan to deal with the financial crisis. With Wall Street and the entire ideology of American “free market” capitalism discredited in the eyes of the American people, and popular opposition to the bailout mounting, the Democrats were in a position, as the nominal opposition party, to demand significant reforms of the banking system.
read more: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/demo-o01.shtml
Wow. A graphic designer and "activist" re-framing Obama's neo-conservative views as weak "progressive" ones without any convincing examples. Is this guy buddies with the editors, or is CD running out of authors?
Obama is a power-hungry fraud.
Did me and Arnow see the same debate?
I never heard Obama tap into the "progressive version of the narrative" at all. He was solidly a supporter of the "terrorists are out to kill us all" camp, he even went out of his way to mention Hamas and Hizballah as part of this "terrorist threat", with Iran being a rogue state supporting them. Never was there even a hint of the stupendous suffering of millions of iraqis and afghanis at our hands. He out-hawked McCain.
I starting the debate pretty sure I would grudgingly vote for Obama, when it was over I was, and am, seriously considering voting for Nader.
And on domestic issues, I'm really tiring of this "helping the middle class" crap. If someone is genuinely economically distressed by our economic system to the point of needing help, than shouldn't they be considered "poor" not "middle class"? But we can't dare use that the word "poor" can't we? Not with all the racist and classist baggage successfully attached to the word over the past 30 years.
i have always been stunned at the way a:
1. Head of a small household in a mobile home, working say, a $10.00/hour non-union job for 60 hours a week with no medical insurance or retirement plan; and a,
2. $300,000 a year McMansion dweller with a million bucks in investments in their 401K,
will both decribe themselves as "middle class", even though thay have virtually NO class interests in common. The much more numerous households in category 1 above need to stop calling themselves "middle class" and start calling themselves (proudly) "poor" and start acting in their real class-interests.
Correction: In my post here of 2:06 PM I had read both this article and the one by Ira Chernus on this same day's Common Dreams articles, conflated the two in my mind and posted on this thread what more properly belongs on the Chernus thread since it was he who used the term "moral pragmatism" to describe Obama's approach, though he did it in the language of "narratives" rather than "frames." I have transferred my comment to the Chernus thread, with my apologies for the confusion.
I'd like to see a stronger and more coherent statement of a "frame" which might be considered a progressive frame if Obama's foreign policy is indeed to be seen within the realm of a progressive foreign policy. There is the making of such a frame in the history of the Democratic Party, from Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy, if not the more recent ones, Johnson, Carter and Clinton. The key should be FDR's articulation of a "good neighbor" policy toward Latin America to replace the neighborhood bully tradition of relations in that area (a policy of course abrogated by Reagan). Within that frame as well would be Truman's efforts toward the establishment of the United Nations and the Peace Corps initiative of JFK. In all these cases, the emphasis is on the U.S. as a member and not as the dominating "leader" of the world, eschewing the frame of national pride and "defense of freedom" toughness within which McCain locates his foreign policy frame. The author's articulation of an Obama frame of "moral pragatism" which accepts the premise of an all-threatening world terrorism which is countered by negotiation and diplomacy rather than military force (except, pragmatically, as an instrument of last resort) is outstandingly vulnerable to being out-framed by the national honor frame. Whether the expected October surprise of a major terrorist attack materializes or not, the swift-boating assassins in the GOP camp are already busy tainting Obama as a "Muslim" while they distribute copies of the anti-Muslim film "Obsession" in swing states; Obama cannot of course to be trusted in dealing with a terrorist attack from Muslim sources. The present (confused) version of an Obama foreign policy frame seems to be a recipe for defeat, at least on the foreign policy front, which could again supersede "economy stupid" campaign considerations in the event of an almost-certain international crisis. Only, I think, a Democratic frame that returns to the vision of the U.S. as a world citizen and not as a "full spectrum" dominator will the campaign find a "winning" frame. But wasn't that Lakoff's point: that Republicans consistently out-do Democrats in their constructions of frames with broad popular appeal?
The debate, and this article itself, is framed by the individuals who self-edit themselves. Both candidates know the boundaries of what they can and cannot say. Neither one is going to get themselves in trouble by bringing up the dirty stinking garbage that our domestic and foreign policies spew from. The boardrooms of corporate America, shoving money into the military industrial complex, and using our troops to eliminate foreign business completion abroad. Debate that.
Hoa binh
Obama can not use the progressive foreign policy frame, because he does not believe in it. Not only does he not believe in the progressive version of the narrative, he has not confidence that adopting that frame will resonate with American voters, who he is convinced need to hear about one willingness to use overwhelming military force in order to feel safe.
None the less this is article makes a strong point and I wish the Obama campaign would heed its message. I don't care for Obama, he is Tweedle Dum, but I really hate McCain, he is definitely Tweedle Dummer
"Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"Obama can not use the progressive foreign policy frame, because he does not believe in it. Not only does he not believe in the progressive version of the narrative, he has no confidence that adopting that frame will resonate with American voters..."
- That's exactly right.
Putting aside Obama for the moment, however, it's interesting to speculate whether ANY American politician could get away with the "progressive narrative" suggested by Mr Arnow. What would happen if an American pol tried to explain terrorism in those terms:
" ....Terrorism is the violence of the weak against the strong, and terrorist groups recruit from amongst the angry, the poor and the oppressed. Overwhelming military force and occupation results in the killing of innocent people (which...) in turn, leads to ... support for radical ideologies and groups that practice terrorism."
- Though I agree with that explanation, I doubt a US politician could get away with saying any such thing publicly -- EVEN IF he did believed it. IMO, many voters might be receptive to hearing something like that. However, it would be instantly torn to shreds by the media, who would ridicule it as naive, & paint it as "coddling" terrorists. The firestorm that would result would make the Jeremiah Wright dust-up seem tame.
The same social forces that compelled Bush to say something so monumentally false & stupid as "They hate us for our freedoms," a few days after 9/11 -- and that caused virtually the entire US media to refrain from pointing out the grotesque falsity of that remark -- would come into play immediately, if a political figure tried to show any sort of "understanding" for terrorism. The diseased state of American political culture won't tolerate any truthful discourse on the subject of terrorism, any more than it tolerates (or tolerated) truthful rational discourse about, say, Communism, socialism, Castro, Israel, or the JFK assassination. It's an ultra-sensitive area.
Obama's biggest blunder was not challenging the myth of the "successful surge".
In order to make the surge look successful, the US has let Afghanistan and other parts of Iraq fall while bribing insurgents in Bagdad not to kill US forces. Even a high school student that got a B in debate would be able to make a strong case against the successful surge myth.
then why don't you make one?
sounds like you think something worked, since the violence is down dramatically, and your suggestion that the only differences were made by "bribing insurgents" is kind of whack-o
So how about you perethok? Are you a fan of the surge?
Here is a link to just one good case against the surge myth
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/98171/
There are others available from a simple google search.
As for you assertion that the theory of bribing insurgents is kind of whack-o, consider the statement in the above referenced article "the surprise decision of radical Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr to order a unilateral cease-fire by his militia". One very reasonable cause of al-sadar's order would be just such a bribe.
"Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
Guys, guys...the surge was simply a tactic. Not a strategy. As a tactic it was brilliantly sucessful. To deny it was sucessful is not true. So now what? It was sucessful, where does that leave us? Still stuck in Iraq.
And of course we have bribed insurgents. Money is cheaper than our troops. We paid lots of small bribes in Viet Nam to villagers, etc. Why not one big bribe to Sadr?
"Guys, guys...the surge was simply a tactic. Not a strategy. As a tactic it was brilliantly sucessful. To deny it was sucessful is not true. So now what? It was sucessful, where does that leave us? Still stuck in Iraq."
I think most of these folks here are looking at the long term picture. It was nothing but a "quickie fix" designed to prolong the failure. Even General Betrayus admitted it. Why Obama can't take a cue from that is simple. He loves the status quo and will only change it when "they let him". You should read David Sirota's article "Mr. Obama Goes to Washington" and you'll see who he really is.
"Why not one big bribe to Sadr?"
And where are we gonna get the money from? The Bank of China again?