Obama’s Missing Moral Narrative: George Lakoff for BuzzFlash

Barack Obama may be one of the best communicators of this generation, but he is not living up to his own talents. In a year of disasters, communication failure doubles the disasters.

If, as he says, the monster spill was his highest priority from Day 1, he needed to communicate that from Day 1 — or at least Day 3 or 4. It took five weeks for him to tell the nation what he and his administration were doing. The result was visible in the press conference today. He was on the defensive. He needed to be on the offensive — from early on. The choice is not doing or communicating. It is doing and communicating.

His narrative: This is a tough, unprecedented situation, but I’m in charge, and I’ve been very busy, in the Situation Room where I belong, not on TV. I’m fully competent. I’m a good policy wonk — ask me any question about details. I’m honest. I admit my few policy mistakes. I think about the details day and night. Don’t think I’m oblivious.

It’s defensive, trying to overcome criticism that should never have been allowed to accumulate. But worse, it’s weak when it needs to be strong.

The president did do the required minimum. He placed a moratorium on offshore drilling and cancelled oil leases in the Gulf and off Virginia. He appointed a commission to make safety recommendations. And he is reorganizing the Mining Management Service. All to the good, but …

Crises are opportunities. He has consistently missed them. Today was a grand opportunity to pull together the threads — BP and the spill, Massey and the mine disaster, Wall Street and the economic disaster, Anthem BlueCross and health care, the Arizona Immigration Law, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — even Afghanistan. The press threw him fastballs straight down the middle, and he hit dribblers every time.

It’s not that he said nothing to tie them together. But there was no home run, no unifying narrative, no patriotic call to the nation on the full gamut of issues. Instead, there were only hints, suggestions, possible implications, notes of concern — as if he had been intimidated by the right-wing message machine.

Continue @ http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3237

WH payroll.

Remember when every other word from the Repukes was 911? At the time we seemed to think it was beneath contempt to use tragedy to start wars, and profile groups of people. So now we're promoting what we claimed to despise at the time, because it's a liberal agenda?

"Yet the right-wing has intimidated Obama into dropping not just the word “empathy,” but the idea. Empathy is a positive deep connection with other people in general and with all living things, the ability to see and feel as they do. The right-wing, which shows little empathy, has confused empathy with a bleeding-heart sympathy for individuals, which they see as a weakness. And though Obama has repeatedly made the distinction clear, he has allowed the right wing to intimidate him into abandoning “the most important thing my mother taught me.”"~Lakoff

See this: Charlie Chaplin's Important Speech (Is this not Democratic Underground's Liberal agenda?) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFFNLaEHGm8

I agree with Lakoff that yesterday's newser was not Obama's finest hour, and that the White House has not communicated well during this crisis.

However, I think he neglects to provide one of the main reasons for this failure, which was Obama's decision announced just weeks before the blowout to allow increased offshore drilling.

Because of this announcement, the White House was seriously compromised when this blowout occurred. They tried to deal with the crisis as quietly as possible, while trying to avoid taking visible ownership of it. As the disaster got worse, this approach became less viable.

I saw yesterday's s newser as an attempt to do a strategic reversal and to take visible ownership of the disaster. I'm not sure how that is going to work, long term.

First, even if they plug the hole today, the damage is catastrophic, and the clean is going to be a long and sad story; Second, Obama said yesterday he will allow drilling to resume only when he can is cure that the regulatory systems are in place to guarantee no future blowouts.

In fact, the industry, the government and anyone with common sense knows that if ultra deepwater excavation is allowed, there will be blowouts, they may be rare, but they will happen, and they will do devastating harm.

The challenge for the industry and the White House is that they are going to have to convince people that turning vast amounts of our oceans and shorelines into a toxic mess is an acceptable outcome, given our need for "energy security."

Unfortunately, that probably is doable.

Also, the drilling announcement would have been less momentous/ominous if it had been made against a backdrop of visible, vigorous commitment to green energy.

If we had a big, bold Manhattan Project of Alternative Energy getting ready to roll, the drilling announcement and the BP disaster would take on a very different context. And, as you noted, Pres. Obama would have had freer rein to speak out.

Unfortunately, unified messaging and coordinated efforts on green energy seem to have faded away since Van Jones was fired by Glenn Beck. :(

... never seem to be out in FRONT of a story. Never seem to be establishing the narrative, but rather responding and reacting.

I know that we like to blame the media. And the media does indeed suck, now that Journalism with a capital J is just about dead and buried.

But the media has been a problem for a long time, time enough to come up with a strategy for effectively communicating in today's media environment.

We live immersed in a "reality" manufactured by the Corporate Elites, now.

Democratic party, and this country!!

I have been touting his philosophy for years...too bad no one in a position to do anything ever pays any attention to him.

Like most things George Lakoff has written.