It's Obama's style. Haven't you learned that yet?

The PolicySpeak Disaster

PolicySpeak is the principle that: If you just tell people the policy facts, they will reason to the right conclusion and support the policy wholeheartedly.

PolicySpeak is the principle behind the President's new Reality Check Website. To my knowledge, the Reality Check Website, has not had a reality check. That is, the administration has not hired a first-class cognitive psychologist to take subjects who have been convinced by right-wing myths and lies, have them read the Reality Check website, and see if the Reality Check website has changed their minds a couple of days or a week later. I have my doubts, but do the test.

To many liberals, PolicySpeak sounds like the high road: a rational, public discussion in the best tradition of liberal democracy. Convince the populace rationally on the objective policy merits. Give the facts and figures. Assume self-interest as the motivator of rational choice. Convince people by the logic of the policymakers that the policy is in their interest

But to a cognitive scientist or neuroscientist, this sounds nuts. The view of human reason and language behind PolicySpeak is just false. Certainly reason should be used. It's just that you should use real reason, the way people really think. Certainly the truth should be told. It's just that it should be told so it makes sense to people, resonates with them, and inspires them to act. Certainly new media should be used. It's just that a system of communications should be constructed and used effectively.

I believe that what went wrong is (a) the choice of PolicySpeak and (b) the decision to depend on the campaign apparatus (blogs, Town Hall meetings, presidential appearances, grassroots support) instead of setting up an adequate communications system.

What Now?

It is not too late. The statistic I've heard is that over 80% of citizens want a public plan, but the right wing's framing has been overwhelming public debate, taking advantage of the right's communication system and framing prowess.

The administration has dug itself (and the country) into a hole. At the very least, the old mistakes can be avoided, a clear and powerful narrative is still available and true, and some powerful, memorable, and accurate language should be substituted for PolicySpeak, or at least added and repeated by spokespeople nationwide.

The narrative is simple:

Insurance company plans have failed to care for our people. They profit from denying care. Americans care about one another. An American plan is both the moral and practical alternative to provide care for our people.

The insurance companies are doing their worst, spreading lies in an attempt to maintain their profits and keep Americans from getting the care they so desperately need. You, our citizens, must be the heroes. Stand up, and speak up, for an American plan.

Language

As for language, the term "public option" is boring. Yes, it is public, and yes, it is an option, but it does not get to the moral and inspiring idea. Call it the American Plan, because that's what it really is.

The American Plan. Health care is a patriotic issue. It is what your countrymen are engaged in because Americans care about each other. The right wing understands this well. It's got conservative veterans at Town Hall meeting shouting things like, "I fought for this country in Vietnam, and I'm fight for it here." Progressives should be stressing the patriotic nature of having our nation guaranteeing care for our people.

A Health Care Emergency. Americans are suffering and dying because of the failure of insurance company health care. 50 million have no insurance at all, and millions of those who do are denied necessary care or lose their insurance. We can't wait any longer. It's an emergency. We have to act now to end the suffering and death.

Doctor-Patient care. This is what the public plan is really about. Call it that. You have said it, buried in PolicySpeak. Use the slogan. Repeat it. Have every spokesperson repeat it.

Coverage is not care. You think you're insured. You very well may not be, because insurance companies make money by denying you care.

Deny you care... Use the words. That's what all the paperwork and administrative costs of insurance companies are about - denying you care if they can.

Insurance company profit-based plans. The bottom line is the bottom line for insurance companies. Say it.

Private Taxation. Insurance companies have the power to tax and they tax the public mightily. When 20% - 30% of payments do not go to health care, but to denying care and profiting from it, that constitutes a tax on the 96% of voters that have health care. But the tax does not go to benefit those who are taxed; it benefits managers and investors. And the people taxed have no representation. Insurance company health care is a huge example of taxation without representation. And you can't vote out the people who have taxed you. The American Plan offers an alternative to private taxation.

Is it time for progressive tea parties at insurance company offices?

Doctors care; insurance companies don't. A public plan aims to put care back into the hands of doctors.

Insurance company bureaucrats. Obama mentions them, but there is no consistent uproar about them. The term needs to come into common parlance.

Insurance companies ration care. Say it and ask the right questions: Have you ever had to wait more than a week for an authorization? Have you ever had an authorization turned down? Have you had to wait months to see a specialist? Does you primary care physician have to rush you through? Have your out-of-pocket costs gone up? Ask these questions. You know the answers. It's because insurance companies have been rationing care. Say it.

Insurance companies are inefficient and wasteful. A large chunk of your health care dollar is not going for health care when you buy from insurance companies.

Insurance companies govern your lives. They have more power over you than even governments have. They make life and death decisions. And they are accountable only to profit, not to citizens.

The health care failure is an insurance company failure. Why keep a failing system? Augment it. Give an alternative.

The Needed Communication System

A progressive communication system should be started. It should go into every Congressional district. It should concentrate on general progressive ideas. President Obama has articulated what these are.

• The basic values are empathy (we care about people), responsibility for ourselves and others, and the ethic of excellence (making ourselves better and the world better).

• These values form the basis of democracy: It's because we care about our fellow citizens that we have values like freedom and fairness, for everyone, not just the powerful.

• From that, it follows that government has two moral missions: protection (of consumers, workers, the environment, the old, the sick, the powerless; and empowerment through public works; communication, energy, and water systems; education; banks that work; a court system: and so on. Without them, no one makes it in America. Taxes are what you pay for protection and empowerment by the government, and the more you make the greater your responsibility to maintain the system.

Appropriate language can be found to express these values. They lie at the heart of all progressive policies. If they are out there every day, it becomes easier to discuss any issue. This is what it means to prepare the ground for specific framings.

The Culture War is On! You Can't Ignore it

President Obama wants to unify the country, and he should. It is a noble idea. It is the right idea. And he started out with the right way to do it. Campaign for what you believe -- for empathy, social responsibility, making the nation better. Activate the progressive values in the many millions of Americans who have some conservative values and some progressive values.

But also inhibit the radical, harmful conservative ideology in the brains of our countrymen, by directly saying what's wrong with it. Yes, there are villains. They have a very potent communications system and can organize their troops. Every victory makes them more powerful. They have put together powerful narratives. We need more powerful ones.

Much more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/the-policyspeak-disaster_b_264043.html

The argument against Obama and any health plan that increases government intervention fits into a well-worn story line that gained its greatest power under President Reagan, said Drew Westen, an Emory University professor of psychology and psychiatry who wrote "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation."

"The anti-healthcare reform argument fits into a really well-branded theme from Reagan," Westen said in an interview, "that Democrats never met a government program they didn't like or a tax they didn't want to raise."

Westen became a favorite of Democratic audiences during the last election for his argument that the party had been too passive, letting Republicans seize the visceral arguments that tend to move voters.

Obama has had little to say about Republican-driven deregulation and the economic calamities that followed an over-reliance on free markets, Westen said.

"Roosevelt never missed the chance to remind people it was the Hoover Depression," Westen said, "or to say that was what happens when you have powerful moneyed interests with no real control placed over them."

The political theorist argued that by refusing to name the plan's real adversaries -- including Republicans and health insurance firms and pharmaceutical companies -- Obama has denied himself the antagonists that would help him tell the healthcare story to the public and the press.

"People are anxious and angry -- over the economy, over losing their jobs and home foreclosures -- and the Democrats have refused on principal to define what people are angry about and what is making them anxious," Westen said. "You couldn't have asked for a better bonanza for the Republicans.

"It's become more and more clear that one of Obama's greatest strengths, his cool under fire, is also one of his greatest weaknesses, because he is incapable of empathizing with the anger of the American people."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-et-onthemedia26-2009aug26,0,4419688.column