If this George Lakoff observation is accurate, I have a question: Why did Obama piss away the “overriding narrative” that he used to pwn the GOP during the 2008 campaign? The generous side of me says that keeping the economy from falling into a full blown depression, learning the nuclear lunch codes and seeing the alien spaceships and shit housed 10 miles under Area 51 kept him busy. The less generous side of me says that Obama hasn’t really changed anything, but he is now being contrasted with a GOP that is SOOOOOooooooo…. ‘effed up and off on an ideological bender that he looks like a goddam strategic genius by comparison.
For the first two years of his administration, President Obama had no overriding narrative, no frame to define his policymaking, no way to make sense of what he was trying to do. As of his 2011 State of the Union Address, he has one: Competitiveness.
The competitiveness narrative is intended to serve a number of purposes at once:
1. Split the Republican business community off from the hard right , especially the Tea Party. Most business leaders want real economics not ideological economics. And it is hard to pin the “socialist” label on a business-oriented president. He may succeed
Lakoff goes on to say that, as he is working it now, the President’s “competitiveness” frame doesn’t give much to progressives. Don’t worry George… we are used to it.