This is the fourth book by George Lakoff that I've read and as always he has a great message for liberals. `The Political Mind' focuses on the misguided belief held by liberals that most voters are rational actors making voting decisions based on logic and self interest. In this world the roll of liberal leadership is to present ideas using empirical evidence and logical arguments banking on the belief that if voters only knew the true facts they would undoubtedly vote Democrat. Conservatives, on the other hand, target emotions and effectively create frames on which to hang their ideas. Despite Liberals faith in the rational voter, emotion and framing has been crushing logic until it's taken two endless military conflicts and what looks to be a total collapse of the American financial system to swing the pendulum. One need look no further than climate change and evolution to see that logic and evidence frequently fly right out the window.
Mr. Lakoff's proposal is that liberals need to create a complete narrative, or frame, in order to sell progressive ideals. The author is encouraging liberals to take a holistic view of politics rather than address each issue piecemeal. A progressive frame would be built around empathy as opposed to the conservative frame of authority, obedience and discipline. Mr. Lakoff writes, "To get the public to adopt progressive moral position you have to activate progressive moral thought in them by openly - and constantly - stressing morality, not just the interest of demographic groups" In the past progressives have been unwittingly promoting the conservative frame by using their language with phrases like `tax burden' and `war on terror'.
I have a few issues with Mr. Lakoff's books. The first is that his books are often so similar to prior books that they seem like just rehashes. If you've read the fantastic book `Moral Politics' you pretty much get most of what's presented in `The Political Mind'. Another problem is that the author tries desperately hard to categorize conservatives and liberals into strict father and nurturing parent. I would argue that this simplification as a model fails as often as it succeeds and the author tries way too hard to try and shoehorn each group into their category. The idea that conservatives crave authority and obedience fails when you consider the conservative purported belief in smaller decentralized government. President Clinton was twice elected but conservatives had zero respect for his position of as leader and consistently accused him of overreaching his authority.
Within the same paragraph the author blasts his own argument apart when he refers to Bob Dole seeing the government as the meddling strict father interfering in the lives of his grown children and then switches immediately to Dubya Bush's claim that, as a wartime president, he can wiretap citizens at will is the case. In the later case the nation is the Family, the president is the Parent and the Citizens are the Family members. So how can Conservatives see the government as both the meddlesome parent AND the protective parent? If conservatives are so much about authority why would they stress deregulation and smaller government while turning a blind eye to Bush's power grab. My belief is that it has less to do with strict father and nurturing parent and more to do with conservatives treating politics like a contact sport. It's the Vince Lombardi philosophy that `winning isn't everything, it's the only thing'.
`The Political Mind' often reads like a textbook and that's not necessarily a criticism since it is an instruction manual on selling ideas. My only concern is that we might see increasingly sophisticated psychological warfare employed on voters from both sides targeting the very core of human thought. It's scary to think that rational thought can so easily be usurped by clever marketing.
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Top reviews from other countries
andy jaunzems
Just barely started - I often have 3 or 4 ...
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 27, 2016Josh Wright
One of the more useless political psychology books out there...
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on February 20, 2019
