Framing the Arguments

Some time ago, I read a survey that indicated that Americans are actually quite liberal. When divorced of "hot button" words and political phrasing, Americans by a vast majority supported education, universal health care, a strong retirement system, higher wages, fair taxation, equal rights and yes, the right of homosexuals to enter into a caring union with legal rights (if not marriage, then something damned close). Yet we continue to as a people vote for politicians whose records indicate they're diametrically opposed to those "liberal" values we as a people hold dear. Today while mowing the yard I began to wonder why that might be.

Then I remembered "Strange Wine", a selection of short stories by Harlan Ellison first published in 1978. In the introduction, he talks of working with Dan Blocker, Hoss on "Gunsmoke" for those of you not old enough to remember when TV was largely clean. A woman came up to them, recognized Blocker, and proceeded to harangue him about how they should get rid of Hop Sing, the Chinese cook, and replace her with some good woman. Blocker tried his hardest to tell the woman that "Gunsmoke" was only a fantasy but she would not be moved. Her television had become her reality. Ellison continues his diatribe about the evils of TV, of how the brain actually partially shuts down while watching television, how the body burns fewer calories watching TV than doing nothing. And then it hit me - that's the problem. A majority of Americans don't read, they don't surf the internet for their news, they don't think, they get their news from Fox or CBS or CNN or some other outlet (I don't mention PBS or NPR because they're "highbrow" outlets).

The Right has co-opted broadcast news. They've whined and howled enough about the "liberal media" that the media have moved to the right in the case of Fox News or in the case of less partisan outlets, they've gone for balance. Balance in journalism, while it sounds like a noble cause, circumvents the prime directive of the journalist, objectivity. Republicans, too, have been far better at sound byte framing of issues than have we. Our arguments are subtle, intellectual. Frist talks of the death tax. That's direct, visceral, and wrong.

We have to become better at framing our positions so that Joe Sixpack can be imprinted with them while slack-jawed in front of what my dad calls the one-eyed monster. Answering "you voted for the death tax," we should say "I voted against shifting the tax burden from Paris Hilton to you," or "I voted against putting your children and grandchildren an additional trillion dollars in debt to give the richest one percent of the nation a tax cut." Framing immigration: The Republican plan would create an underground economy of near slavery. Framing health care: Shall we let children suffer and die to give the rich a tax cut? Framing outsourcing: Shall we enrich shareholders at the expense of American jobs? On Iraq: What exactly are our troops dying for?

We have to do two things to win elections. First, we need to employ the oldest political tactic in the book, ridicule. The Republicans have painted themselves as incompetent, bumbling and corrupt. In short, we need to make jokes at the expense of these jokes. Second, we need to express our positions viscerally. Paris Hilton never worked a day in her life. Why should we make her richer? The third thing we need to do is, once we've won, govern according to strict principles. William Jefferson must go; otherwise, we're no better than Delay's party.