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Master speaker George Lakoff.
Photo by David Wasserman

by Timothy Lesle
George Lakoff, Master Speaker

—The text of Lakoff's comments on Hurricane Katrina and John Roberts is available here.

“Katrina should be a watershed in American politics.” So said cognitive scientist George Lakoff, senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute and author of  Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. Like no other event in recent history, the hurricane's damage to the Gulf Coast, and especially New Orleans, has brought issues like poverty, ecology, and pollution into the living rooms of average Americans. “Whoever frames this first wins,” he told an overflowing Summit audience today. “The Bush administration is framing it.”

By relentlessly drilling their own concepts into the media—and thus into the minds of the populace—Lakoff says that the administration and its conservative allies are using Katrina to tell people that smaller government is better; bad things happen that you can’t avoid; big government and red tape are the problem; more tax cuts will be needed to stimulate the economy; evacuees are actually better off or should even be punished for not leaving sooner. Meanwhile, Democrats are avoiding any public comments or criticism for fear of appearing partisan, thus letting an opportunity slip away to show that there is a better way. And while conservatives are visiting the disaster sites and victims, liberals are playing the blame game, making them look cold.

But the factors that have aggravated the situation—lack of preparation, slow federal response, mismanagement, failures to communicate—are not necessarily the causes of the problem. Instead, Lakoff says, they are the effects of a failed moral and political philosophy. He describes the right’s value system as being based on the concept of individual struggle in a sink-or-swim world. It was this attitude that spawned the host of factors and decisions that made Katrina much worse than it might otherwise have been. Progressive values, on the other hand, are based on empathy—caring for and about others—paired with responsibility—acting on that empathy. Basically, we’re all in this together.

Lakoff closed his talk by citing some recent poll numbers. Thirty-five percent of the population thinks Bush is doing a great job on Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath—but these 35 percent are his unwavering conservative base. Meanwhile 42 percent think he’s doing a terrible job. And, Lakoff adds, political independents believe that Bush is doing a bad job by a margin of five to one. These independents, on the verge of moving away from Bush, are what will make this moment a defining one in our history.

-- 09/10/2005 Sat
8pm