Lakoff on the strategy behind the Palin pick

Some great insight from UC Berkeley linguist and political theorist George Lakoff on the background behind McCain's decision to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate here.

[T]he Palin nomination changes the game. The initial response has been to try to keep the focus on external realities, the "issues," and differences on the issues. But the Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind-the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't win on realities. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism, activate the conservative view of the world, and use the advantages that conservatives have in dominating political discourse.

Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse. There is a reason why Obama and Biden spoke so much about the family, the nurturant family, with caring fathers and the family values that Obama put front and center in his Father's day speech: empathy, responsibility and aspiration. Obama's reference in the nomination speech to "The American Family" was hardly accidental, nor were the references to the Obama and Biden families as living and fulfilling the American Dream. Real nurturance requires strength and toughness, which Obama displayed in body language and voice in his responses to McCain. The strength of the Obama campaign has been the seamless marriage of reality and symbolic thought.

The Republican strength has been mostly symbolic. The McCain campaign is well aware of how Reagan and W won-running on character: values, communication, (apparent) authenticity, trust, and identity - not issues and policies. That is how campaigns work, and symbolism is central.

Lakoff's main point is that Democrats should take the Palin pick very seriously, remembering the lessons learned the hard way from the Reagan and George H.W. Bush campaigns. To treat her as a joke and a source of derision could end up blowing up in our collective faces.

The again, the fact that Palin was ultimately tapped as the Republican ticket's Vice Presidential nominee really is a joke is just as likely to end up blowing up in John McCain and his advisors' faces.