Review of George Lakoff's "The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide..."

[The above video is mostly a reading of the text below, with an occasional aside thrown in for good measure as they strike me as relevant.  I welcome questions, comments, or concerns about the material contained in this video.]

I was drawn to this book mostly because I knew of the author’s reputation as a cognitive scientist and as someone who was known for spelling out how cognitive science overlaps with, and largely explains, many of the phenomena that we recognize as falling along the left-right spectrum of political ideologies. And Lakoff certainly does offer some insights into how thinking occurs, and what in particular is unique about the way we think about political issues.

Lakoff’s main idea, which should be apparent to anyone who watches endless hours of cable hours in rapture as I do, is that whoever controls the narrative frames of a debate controls the issue itself, and therefore always wins. How is this the case? Lakoff says that our view of rationality is largely, and erroneously, informed by the Enlightenment, which assumed it was conscious, universal, disembodied, logical, unemotional, value-neutral, interest-based, and literal. He shows several reasons why almost none of these are actually true. For example, we make decisions, to help others perhaps, that don’t actually maximize our own self-interest, and that are tied up with value and emotional content. 

He claims that Democrats - very often with a grating, whiny tone - remain stuck in this view of rationality. Because of this, they are still in the habit of trying to lasso the facts, build charts and models, and explain why Republicans are simply wrong on many of the issues. Lakoff claims that this just isn’t enough. Evidence, reason, facts, and figures won’t win debates, he claims. But Republicans have learned how human reason really works – that it is in fact couched in tropes, metaphors, emotional phrases and associations – and they use them to their advantage in shaping political issues and talking points. Republicans just couch the issue in the terms that will helps them (their “narrative frames”), and then repeat that frame over and over again until it sticks in the minds of the public. Once stuck, it’s difficult, but not impossible, to dislodge. But doing so would just be a matter of finding the right frame that speaks to your political basis, and saying it repeatedly.

For example, conservatives have controlled the ideological frame regarding the “war on terror” for the last decade, and therefore they control many of the issues that we associate with “homeland security” (another phrase unused unquestioningly, according to Lakoff, that plays into Republican and neoconservative hands). Instead of accepting the frames of questions like “Do you think we should continue to fight the war on terror, or pull out?” or “Should middle class tax cuts be extended, or should they get a tax hike?” the issues need to be reformulated to emphasis what Lakoff thinks are the values of liberals and progressives: fairness, equality, and government accountability. In other words, re-frame the issues in such a way that benefits your own positions. And then repeat that framing. Over and over and over and over again – because, according to him, that’s the only way you’re going to win the debate.

There are a lot of problems with this book, though. With an objective-sounding title like “The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics,” I didn’t really want any of Lakoff’s partisan comments. I knew before opening the book that he’s a committed liberal (many of my own sympathies, too, are very much left of center), but he spends too much time demonizing one political perspective, glorifying another, and too little time providing details and supporting evidence for the claims that he’s making. I feel that this saps the book of almost all of its credibility. In order to have a book be a powerful explanatory tool, instead of a passing as a fat pamphlet for the Obama campaign, it should stick to the facts of the matter accompanied, perhaps, with some reasonable inductions, predictions, and details of methodological practice. Calling President Bush a “traitor” (which he actually does) accomplishes nothing. Furthermore, it made me realize more and more as I read it that this book is simply an example of what he was talking about: a successful example of framing issues in an advantageous way. Of course, he would be the last person to actually bring that to the reader’s attention. 

I think the book may have suffered from being written for too popular an audience, too. It seems that the political potshots were filler for an audience who was more eager to see their opponent trashed than to actually read something about how cognitive science can help us better understand how we think metaphorically about political issues. I came really close to giving this two stars, which I almost never do, but thought there were a couple of insights that salvaged it from being a total loss, so I opted for three stars instead. For someone interested in this topic, I suggest looking elsewhere.