Bush isn’t Incompetent?
George Lakoff on why Bush isn’t incompetent… rather the entire conservative agenda is a failure, and Liberals would be well-served to recognize that and not play into Bush’s “folksy” charms, but attack the agenda and its failures instead.
Lakoff’s prescription is correct, but his description is wrong. Yes, the Conservative agenda is a demonstrated failure (witness the horrible results every time they get their way), but that doesn’t mean George W. Bush is competent. He’s also wholly incompetent. That’s part of his “folksy charm” unfortunately.
June 30th, 2006 at 5:53 am
GWB’s business record would seem to argue for incompetence, but that’s really beside the point; the man is a pawn, a puppet, a figurehead, a pretty-face for folks to talk about while Papa Bush and his cronies (including Dick and Ron and other PNAC signatories) very successfully line the pockets and amass the power intended by their schemes.
This conversation reminds me of my biggest complaint against Michael Moore’s “Farenheit 9/11″: Painting W as a fool is essentially disarming. Fool or not, he is the tool of evil men with evil plans and wholly lacking in any scruples that would hold them back.
As for horrible results every time they get their way, that’s the just sour grapes of someone who doesn’t own any stock in KBR. The results are only “horrible” in the eyes of literate critical thinkers…which is not the largest part of the country. For most of our countrymen the results are fabulous: Communism is still dead, and we’re gonna do to Terror what we did to the USSR. (And our jobs and community services and infrastructure are all fair trade for that lofty goal; after all, who are we to complain about pot-holes in our highways when them poor Eye-rackies can’t even get power?)
Lakoff has come to annoy me. This is not a debate, this is a power stuggle. The neocons use language to attack; Lakoff, presumably, should know the difference between legitimate discourse and verbal assault, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to him talk about framing. Grr.
ps: looks like there are two “get comments by email” on this form; is one for all comments and the other just for this post?
June 30th, 2006 at 9:27 am
I don’t see the two links for getting comments?
As for painting GWB as a fool. I think it is more than fair game for a movie. It’s very different when one is talking about real politics. I don’t think the two are the same (you give movies way too much credit). So I don’t have any problem with Moore’s movie… it ultimately doesn’t have any real power.
I do have a problem with Bush, though. I don’t get your problem with Lakoff. You act as if this being a “power struggle” is something new or as if, for most of us, it comes down to anything but language. And in that context, I think Lakoff is spot on.
June 30th, 2006 at 10:54 am
Thinking about this– isn’t there a built-in contradiction in what you are saying? You don’t think much of the abilities of the American public in general to understand sophisticated discourse: “The results are only “horrible†in the eyes of literate critical thinkers…which is not the largest part of the country.”
But then you seem to think that Moore’s film wasn’t sophisticated enough because it lacked nuance. If it *had* nuance, who would have appreciated it?
I guess that’s the essential crux of my position regarding the movie– I think (I KNOW from experience) that many people were swayed agsinst Bush by the film, shallow or not. I KNOW that a lot of people lack the will or ability to think very much on these issues so they are easily swayed by rhetoric. That’s why I don’t see the harm in the movie. It’s not as if anyone who really thinks about the issues is going to be changed by the film– and those who would be aren’t likely to read or care about more sophisticated conversation…
July 1st, 2006 at 11:30 am
I certainly don’t think the flick would have been more effective simply for adding stronger critical thought and nuance. My beef is that it simply wasn’t enough of a call to arms. My take on the film was that it was too easy to see W as a fool rather than a powerful agent of evil.
July 1st, 2006 at 11:47 am
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Yeah, F911 was just a flick; could’ve been better, could’ve been worse, and I’m glad it was made.
Lakoff, that’s another issue, and one I’m not really sure fits in a comments box. Generally, Lakoff’s discussions of framing presuppose a meta-frame (if you will allow me such) of legitimate discourse. But when conversing with a Coulter or O’Reilly or Limbaugh there is no such meta-frame; the meta-frame those folks play by is power. What’s fascinating, from a strict game-theory analysis POV is that the same set of complimentary acts will allow both players to “win” according to their criteria; a Lakoff gets to walk away from a hypothetical O’Reilly taping feeling smug and superior about what an intellectual thug O’Reilly is, meanwhile Bill gets to show the Fox viewers what a terrorist-sympathinzing pantywaist Lakoff is.
The fascinating theoretical aspects of one set of acts allowing both players to “win” because each is playing on a different payoff grid notwithstanding, Lakoff is ostensibly trying to make the move from purely academic concerns into effective political life, which is to say, he may be winning by his old standards, but he’s getting creamed again and again in the new ring into which he has stepped.
But don’t spend too much time picking apart the above; it’s nothing like the wellformed essay I’ve been meaning to write since getting active with ACLU earlier this year. In a nutshell I’d say Elgin’s “Gentle Art…” books are more important for liberals confronting neocons than Lakoff’s book; the essay to support this conclusion is only hinted at in the above.
Hmm, maybe I should take a stab at it Monday…but then when will I get time to read the 185 page Hamdan decision (in which, so far as I’ve previewed it, SCOTUS hands W his ass in a paper bag)? (I was also gonna take another stab at re-enabling comments Monday.)
All for now.
July 1st, 2006 at 11:51 am
s/plim/plem/
July 1st, 2006 at 4:02 pm
I had to logout to see the second subscription checkbox. An error in my form logic- I’ll fix it later (they both work and do the same thing
re: Lakoff. I’m not going to try to pick your argument apart, but I get the distinct feeling that you are interpreting Lakoff through a previous engagement and your interpretation of his position given a lot of other knowledge about him that I don’t have. All I have to go on is the article I linked to and despite re-reading your paragraphs multiple times I just don’t see the connection.
Lakoff isn’t making a political engagement here, he’s giving advice to those who do. That advice is, as I read it, to take on O’Reilly and Coulter and their ilk not by picking apart the decisions of the President, but by taking apart these results of the successful application of the Conservative agenda. That seems like pretty sound advice to me, though for much simpler reasons to my mind!
If that’s not what you think the hypothetical O’Reilly guest should do, then what is? I don’t get your whole “it’s now about power” thing unless you are arguing that all political discourse is moot in the face of other power, which seems unreasonably cynical and gives pretty short shrift to the power of words…
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:26 am
s/giving advice/giving BAD advice/
What the hypothetcial O’Reilly guest should do is not go on the show unless s/he wants to advance O’Reilly’s cause. Pretending that his or any such show is a neutral forum for a fair and balanced discussion of issues on their merits is naive in monumental proportions. Lakoff, however, seems to be willing to encourage folks to continue engaging thugs on their own terms, as if “framing” can make the difference at the hands of someone who has only one goal—to increase their ratings (or book sales or whatever) by making liberals look like losers.
Maybe after I finish diddling my comments set up I’ll try my hand at really explaining where I’m coming from—I know there are parts of my thoughts that aren’t getting explicated here. For now let it stand that anyone who thinks they can get the better of a bully deserves the headaches they get.
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:44 am
I kind of thought you were going to say that. Unfortunately, I think your cure of not countering folks like O’Reilly and Coulter and ultimately Bush and Rove is worse than the disease. And by “engage” I mean in any way or forum, not necessarily on their own home ground.
I still believe Lakoff’s advice– to attack the philosophy and the flawed outcomes– is sound, and am awaiting anything persuasive to convince me otherwise…
Your advice sounds like you’ve never vanquished a bully. But people have. Often. Thankfully…
July 3rd, 2006 at 7:51 am
I ahould note that there is a small (to me) part of what you are saying that I agree with: that trying to effectively counter someone like O’Reilly on their own show is going to be the weakest place in which to do it and benefits are likely to be small (but not nonexistent, I would like to point out) compared to their ratings and sales.
But this is small because Lakoff’s advice isn’t just about going on O’Reilly’s show– most of us will never have that opportunity. His advice is about the general style of discourse “we” are taking on our blogs, in our conversations, in our small press essays, etc. And while you keep hinting at some better way to engage the conservatives (which I think you’ll agree must be done), you aren’t giving up much except your dislike of Lakoff. And I still suspect that comes from something other than this article… that if this had been written by someone anonymous to you that you would not have disagreed.
And finally, if you can beat up the bully, that’s still good medicine. How do you think bully’s get taken down anyway? By waiting for some fairyland vision of “each getting their own” to come to life? I know how my dad taught me the first time I came home crying because I’d been pushed around: he sent me back out and told me not to come back until I’d given as good as I’d got. And you know what? I did– and not only were we ALL better off for it, but the bully’s career came to an end.
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:09 am
[...] Link thinks Lakoff is being dim. I disagree. Here’s how I’m interpreting Lakoff: Let’s say I go to coffee and run into my friend Carol, who is quite conservative and a definite Republican. Let’s say we allow ourselves to have a political conversation. My inclination might be to attack Bush for all the (as they seem to me) obvious reasons, many of which I have written about before: his incompetence, the insult of his stupidity, his lack of understanding of foreign perspectives, his shallow ideas of democracy, etc. [...]