Framing the Debate: It's All GOP

By George Lakoff

How do Republicans continually frustrate Democrats, keeping them on the

defensive? It's not just their media control (Fox News, Clear Channel, etc.), it's not
just the $2 billion they've put into think tanks over the past 30 years, and it's not just
lies and dirty tricks. It's their skill at "framing."
Take the term "tax relief," for example. The phrase started appearing in White House
press releases on the day President Bush took office, and it has been repeated over
and over ever since. But it's what is behind the words -- the mental structure known
as a "frame" -- that matters as much as the words themselves.
For there to be "relief" there must be an affliction, an afflicted party harmed by the
affliction, and a reliever who takes the affliction away and is therefore a hero. And if
anybody tries to stop the reliever, he's a villain wanting the suffering to go on. Add
"tax" to the mix and you have a metaphorical frame: Taxation as an affliction, the
taxpayer as the afflicted party, the president as the hero, and the Democrats as the
villains.
Every time you hear the term, those subliminal meanings resonate. Once the
campaign repeats the words day after day, they end up in every newspaper and on
every TV and radio station, and the term becomes the way TV commentators and
journalists talk about taxes. And pretty soon the Democrats are forced to talk about
their own brand of "tax relief," for the middle class. But by adopting the Republicans'
language, they have adopted one of the GOP's central ideas. Every time they use
the words, they reinforce the idea.
That's because once phrases become part of everyday language, their frames
become physically fixed in people's brains. When this happens, mere facts don't
matter. If the facts don't fit the frames, the frames stay and the facts are ignored.
Once the Republicans see their frames accepted, they have an overwhelming
advantage in every debate. Their frames become the new common sense, because
frames define what common sense is.
When Democrats are outframed, they tend to go on the defensive, to deny the
frame: "No, the Republicans have only given tax relief to the rich, who don't need it.
We'll give tax relief to the middle class instead." Negating a frame just reinforces it,
as when Richard Nixon said on TV during Watergate, "I am not a crook!" Thereafter,
everybody thought of him as a crook. The Democrats this year, by accepting the
words and frames that go with them, are just helping the Republicans.
Instead, the Democrats need to play offense, not defense, and Kerry needs to frame
himself. Two words -- strong progressive -- would work well. He needs to frame Bush
as weak, and as weakening the country. He needs 10 words that say what he stands
for: a Strong America, Mutual Responsibility, Broad Prosperity, a Better Future, and
Valuing Families.
Kerry also needs to promote an America united, not a divisive culture war, and to call
"compassionate conservatism" what it is: You're-on-your-own radicalism. Specific
values -- freedom, fairness, responsibility, and trust -- must back up every policy
direction: Global leadership, new energy, health care for all, jobs that pay, schools

that matter. America's great challenge is to become one again -- with each other and
with the world.
The Two Americas should be called Strong America that works and Elite
America that doesn't. It is Strong America, which contributes more than it is paid, that
supports Elite America's lifestyle. To unite the country, Elite America must give up its
subsidies and Strong America must be paid what it deserves.
Reframing is essential. Take taxes. Democrats need to find a way of talking about
taxes that reveals the truth hidden by the affliction metaphor. For example, taxes are
investments in both infrastructure and people -- wise investments that only the
government can make. The government has invested taxpayer money wisely in a
huge number of things that make our lives and our businesses possible: Interstate
highways, the Internet, government funded scientific research, and training.
Corporations, businessmen, and investors benefit from taxpayer investments most of
all. Taxpayers have paid for our financial institutions: the Federal Reserve, the
Securities and Exchange Commission, our national banks, and the courts, 90
percent of which are used for corporate law. If you want to start a business, you don't
have to build highways, invent computer science, construct the Internet, train your
scientists, build a banking system, build and maintain a court system. The taxpayers
have done all that for you.
You see, there are no self-made men. If you make a bundle in business, it was made
possible by taxpayer investments. The rich have gotten more dividends; they should
pay for the investments that make their businesses possible. It's only fair.
That's the sort of reframing the Democrats need to do -- and repeat -- over hundreds
of issues, large and small. They are 30 years and $2 billion behind. Playing catch up
won't be easy, but it is necessary.
George Lakoff is a professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley
and a senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute. He is the author of "Moral Politics:
How Liberals and Conservatives Think" and the forthcoming book, "Don't Think of an
Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.

Framing the Problem

Key Concepts
Advocacy to get a problem on the agenda
Analysis to aid decision
Purposeful rhetoric
This reading applies communication and rhetoric principles to the definition of policy problems and
the analysis of policy solutions.
How does public policy making begin? Typically, it starts with perception of a problem. Somebody
perceives a condition in society or the environment to be wrong. Perceptions of a problem differ, so
finding a solution often involves conflict. Or, it might enable cooperation.
Problems come to public attention in various ways. Sometimes the problem chooses you.
Something happens, you are affected by it, and you seek public action to address the problem. The

triggering event might be large-scale, as when the destructive hurricanes Katrina and Rita damaged
American coastal cities and states in 2005. After those storms, families of victims, local
governments, and other collectives sought compensation or other action by federal government. In
contrast, a triggering event might be small-scale, even personal and singular. Following her childs
death owing to a drunk driver, a parent formed the national nonprofit organization Mothers Against
Drunk Driving to influence national law enforcement standards for drunk driving.
Sometimes you choose the problem. Choosers vary. For example, elected and appointed officials in
government have authority to decide what is and is not a problem and which problems will receive
attention. In the budgeting case (Public Policy Process), a governor and state legislative
committees exemplify this kind of chooser. The food safety case (Public Policy Process) shows a
regulatory agency head putting milk labeling on the agenda. Outside government, a chooser might
be an advocacy group or a coalition of groups that brings a problem to legislative attention.
To influence policy making, the perception of a wrong is not enough. If public policy is to be a
solution, the wrong must be defined as one that policy makers can address. For example, you might
perceive that obesity is wrong because it harms individuals, but individual solutions cannot be
legislated. However, if you define obesity as a public health problem, you can relate obesity to
public health standards or to medical research in the causes of disease. Those are problems with
broad societal significance that can be addressed by policy makers.
Problem definition is important. As the logical first move in a policy process, problem definition sets
debate; it also predicts solution. Different definitions lead to different solutions. For example, even
though health authorities define obesity as a health problem, the numbers of overweight and obese
people especially in the United States continue to rise. Why, you wonder, are people fat despite
health warnings? Your question redefines the problem, thereby revealing different potential
solutions. By focusing on the experience of people in everyday life, you expose another set of
conditions relevant to obesity, behavioral issues such as eating habits, physiological issues such as
genetics, cultural issues such as food preferences, economic conditions such as food costs, and
economic interests such as food industry profits. You point to solutions involving consumers,
educators, businesses, and industries rather than healthcare providers.
Problem definition takes differences of perception into account. To a large degree, problem
definition is subjective. One constituencys problem is anothers acceptable status quo. Narrow and
exclusive problem definition freezes possibility and invites competing solutions. Broad and inclusive
definition imagines change and invites solution by a coalition. Purposeful rhetoric (who am I? whom
do I address? how do I define the problem? how do others define it?) brings your assumptions and
values to light, creates awareness of difference, and enables negotiation.
No matter how messy the process becomes, your action in a policy process is directed by your
definition of the problem.

How to define a policy problem

Two purposes for defining a problem are presented in this chapter, getting a problem onto the public
agenda (Purpose A) and aiding policy choice by analysis of solutions (Purpose B). Arguably, the two
do not belong together in a chapter on problem definition. Defining a problem is not solving it. From
the perspective of communication, however, both defining problems and analyzing solutions rely on
persuasion (Stone). And so, they are presented here for instruction in purposeful rhetoric. In
practice, when you are defining a problem, it is crucial to remain aware of your purpose and not to
confuse the two purposes, advocacy and analysis.
Goal: Ability to recognize problematic conditions and to define a policy problem they present. For a
recognized problem, ability to define policy options and offer criteria for decision.
Objective: Problem definition
Scope: Individual or collective; local or broader in impact; well-known or unrecognized; widely
discussed or little considered; past, present, or anticipated
Strategy: Provide information necessary for your purpose

Expect to be flexible in the writing process. Problem definition can be iterative. After completing a
task, you might find that you must revise earlier work. Or, after defining a problem, you might find
that you want to, or you must, redefine it because conditions have changed or you have gained
more knowledge.

Summary and Looking Forward

This reading tells you that problem definition is fundamental in policy work, that problems can be
defined differently, and, so, persuasive argumentation is a valuable skill.

Framing the Debate

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By JEFFREY FELDMAN
Published: April 8, 2007

A routine search for the word "framer" in the American Heritage Dictionary brings
back the following peculiar definition:
Related
'Framing the Debate,' by Jeffrey Feldman: Magic Words (April 8, 2007)

NOUN: 1. One that frames: a picture framer; a framer of new laws. 2. often Framer:
One of the people who wrote the U.S. Constitution.
What an astounding range of possibilities! One the one hand, a "framer" is a person
engaged in the simple act of packaging pictures, while on the other hand a "Framer"with a capital "F"-is a founder, one of the people who thought up and crafted the
principles that shape the entire American system of government. From the mundane to
the profound and back again-the concept of "framing" covers it all.
What we see from the definition, however, is that in the context of American history,
there are few concepts more important and enduring than framing. This country began

with an act of framing, and to this day continues to forge ahead-sometimes for better,
sometimes for worse-through quiet, but powerful framing.
And yet, despite its historic footing, many people often react to the idea of framing
political debate with suspicion, concerned that framers engage in little more than the
cynical packaging of ideas for political gain. "It's the substance that matters, not the
wrapper," they say. In fact, framing the debate is never just about the wrapper. To
make rotten politics smell better by wrapping them in clean paper is the goal of "spin,"
or deception, not of framing. Indeed, we should be opposed to the increasing number
of "spin doctors" who use their skill at mass manipulation to pollute American politics.
Unfortunately, as long as there are scandals in politics, there will be spin doctors to
make the smell seem less offensive. While both framing and spin involve the packaging
of ideas, "framing the debate" is as different from spin as coffee is to whiskey.
What Does "Framing the Debate" Mean?
A basic working definition of "framing" as it pertains to political debate looks
something like this:
The presentation of political ideas and principles so as to encourage one interpretation
over another.
But in a much broader sense, beyond politics, framing has long been in use across a
variety of professions and academic disciplines interested in how people communicate
with each other, experience the world around them, and solve their problems.
In the 1950's, for example, anthropologist Gregory Bateson likened frames to the body,
focusing, through studies of children at play, on how bodily gestures and facial
expressions framed communicative interaction. Similarly, in the 1960s, sociologist
Erving Goffman considered the full range of human behavior as a series of framed
interactions, where one social actor uses words, phrases, or gestures to communicate
what kind of social interaction was appropriate in a given moment. A decade later,
linguists Richard Bandler and John Grinder modeled individual speech habits to help
reframe people's unconscious towards therapeutic ends. In the 1990s, business and
legal scholars in the Harvard Negotiation Project, such as Douglas Stone, considered
how conversations could be approached so as to mitigate blame and lead to productive
outcomes. In each of these fields, "frame" and "framing" had a slightly different

meaning, but always referred to a broad logic or context through which key events
unfolded. And in each case, the scholar would compare a frame to something else to
help explain what exactly was meant by "framing."
Despite the fascinating aspects of each of these other approaches, framing did not
enter progressive politics with full force until cognitive linguist George Lakoff
published his book Don't Think of An Elephant! just prior to the 2004 presidential
election. Different from all other approaches to framing, Lakoff began by considering a
very basic and very grounded question:
Why do Democrats lose elections?
Because Lakoff's book coincided with President George W. Bush's stunning-to
progressives-re-election against the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry, this
initial question quickly morphed into a more chilling and timely inquiry:
Why did Bush win again?
Up to this point, most progressives had assumed that Kerry was a better candidate.
Setting aside all dirty campaigning from the nefarious allies of Bush, Kerry seemed to
present key positions and issues that were more relevant to the problems Americans
faced than those presented by Bush. Kerry was more thoughtful and informed than
Bush. The conventional progressive wisdom was that Kerry should have won the
election.
But with Lakoff's question in mind and a bit of hindsight, most progressives now
realize that something was amiss in our understanding of the 2004 election. Looking
back, we realize that the debates between Kerry and Bush were a key point in the
campaign, albeit for a reason that was unexpected at the time. While Kerry clearly gave
the better performance, he failed to gain what many expected to be a considerable
bounce in the polls. It was a desperate feeling for many idealistic progressives who
believed that Kerry had the right ideas and was so much more articulate than Bush.
Kerry might have seemed a bit stiff, but he certainly was smart, prepared, and
statesman-like. He was even taller. Bush, by contrast, was cocky, he stuttered,
endlessly repeated the same words, and even balked on many answers. He was even
caught wearing a wire that many believed was used to feed him answers by closed
circuit radio!

I remember the questions I asked myself in that week following the debates when I
realized that the polls had not shifted definitively as a result of the two candidates'
debate performances. "Aren't we supposed to win when we present the best ideas in
the clearest way? Aren't we supposed to win when their candidate acts and looks
unprepared and uniformed? Aren't we supposed to win when the majority of the
electorate agrees with what our guy is saying?"
Interestingly, the dynamic my questions identified fit right in with what Lakoff was
talking about. The problem was not the positions and issues the Democratic candidate
presented, but how Democrats approached the entire idea of political debate. My
candidate might have won the debates on the issues, but he lost the larger battle of the
election because the opposition controlled the frame-and therefore framed the debate.
We were talking issues, but they were invoking frames.
From Lakoff's perspective frames are defined as:
mental structures that shape the way we see the world ... You can't see or hear
frames ... When you hear a word, its frame is activated in your brain.
Intellectually, Lakoff's definition put forward the general perspective of a cognitive
linguist who views speech and communication as a product of certain big ideas and
concepts that have been hard-wired into our brains through habit and experience. He
then applied those concepts to the specifics of American politics over the past thirty
years. Even without delving into the technical workings of the brain, this insight
opened a profound discussion of why and how the Republicans won in 2004, and
engendered a new, eye-opening perspective on political debate for progressives.
Whereas progressives had previously understood political debate as a forum for
presenting policy and issues, framing redefined political debate as a stage for invoking
principles and values through keywords, metaphors, and strategic phrases. Winning
the debate-and by extension winning elections-would be the result of driving the
debate towards progressive frames and, most importantly, keeping it there.
While progressive ideas may have been good, we lost elections because the opposition
chose words that invoked powerful sets of unspoken ideas that structured the entire
debate. These ideas described a worldview of how the country should work that
ultimately trumped and undermined every possible statement made by progressive

candidates. While Democrats were obsessing over the best words to use in order to give
people the facts, the Republicans chose words that repackaged the conceptual
framework through which the entire American public saw the world. Those Republican
"magic words" were then repeated and amplified endlessly by the media-not just by
FOX News, but by all media and even by progressive candidates themselves. And so,
the Republicans won because their words drove and held the frame.
When progressives take on the task of framing the debate, election campaigns become
much broader struggles to establish the vision, principles, and worldview of a
candidate. For decades, Republicans have made great strides establishing what they
call a "conservative" worldview which consists of strong, authoritarian perspectives
about the right of government to intervene in the private lives of citizens, the priority of
particular religious values over constitutional principles, divestment from public
ownership and the public good, concentration of private wealth, and preemptive
military aggression. In many ways, President Bush's victories in 2000 and 2004 were
the product of several decades of this relentless framing of the "conservative"
worldview.
In the 2006 midterm elections, Democratic framing efforts finally began to get some
traction. A broad initiative to frame veterans running for election as "Fighting Dems"
helped drive the debate towards a progressive vision of responsible change in the Iraq.
While not all "Fighting Dems" managed to eke out victories at the polls, the frame
helped to dispel the myth of Democrats being weak on defense. In another framing
initiative, the progressive grassroots organization MoveOn.org framed their preelection voter outreach program through the telephone frame by launching the
volunteer initiative "Call For Change." At a technical level, "Call for Change" was not
much different from previous volunteer phone bank operations designed to encourage
Democrats to vote. However, by framing the often unappealing concept of campaign
volunteering through the concrete metaphor of "telephone calls," the MoveOn.org
program had unprecedented success, bringing in far more people and contacting far
more voters. Such an effort demonstrated once and for all that framing helps to define
and extend a progressive worldview in key political moments, which in turn leads to
greater participation and deeper commitment to the work needed for campaigns to
succeed.

But even with these first Progressive framing successes in 2006, many questions
remained. Paramount among them: What is the progressive worldview? Despite the
2006 election success, many progressives still had a lingering sense that they were
struggling against conservative frames at least as much as advancing their own unique
worldview. And that was no accident. For over twenty years, advocates of the
conservative movement had lured progressives into a fight they could not win a fight
that left the words "liberal" and "Democrat" bloodied and hanging on the ropes. The
endless beating-up of these words by conservative think tanks, broadcast media, and
church leaders had convinced many Americans that the Democratic Party was not only
incapable of governing, but was an immoral choice at the polls.
After years of bloody losses against conservative efforts, the sudden interest in framing
by progressives in late 2004 suggested a radical new tactic, and the progressive
successes of 2006 proved that that tactic could work if applied broadly. Rather than try
to win the battle of worldviews inside the ring of ideas and political positions crafted by
conservative strategists, progressives could walk out of the conservative ring into one
of their own. To stop bleeding and start winning, progressives looked beyond
defensive, reactionary approaches to political debate and rebuild the debate on
progressive terms from the ground up.
And yet, as genuine and explosive as the enthusiasm for framing the debate became
amongst progressive leaders, activists and citizens alike, a vexing question appeared on
the road to Damascus:
How can progressives continue to frame the political debate moving forward?
How can framing continue to work in practice? For every book, letter to the editor,
seminar and blog post urging progressives to start framing the debate, there were a
dozen responses that asked that same basic question: "How?" Now that the 2006
elections have proven that framing the debate is crucial for advancing a progressive
vision and winning elections, the question has become: "What do we do next?"
Framing in Five Steps
Becoming a progressive framer begins with changing a set of habits with respect to
how we receive and process information. Framers make a choice to stop being passive
consumers of political debate and to start producing the debate themselves-to seek out

the situations where politics happens and drive the debate. Progressive framers must
be willing to step into the shoes of the traditional media. Gone are the days of reading
one daily newspaper to get information; framers must read dozens of sources each day,
tracking political ideas and issues as they take shape across the broad landscape of
media- driven contemporary politics.
Blogs are the central haunting ground for progressive framers because they offer a
nexus between political organizations, mass media, and the chatter of popular culture.
A remarkable feature of the world we live in today is that most words politicians utter
in public are instantly made available to everyone. Every public word President Bush
says, for example, appears within minutes on the White House website. Progressive
framers must be willing to track down what is broadcast on television, radio and the
internet in order to tease out the frames at work in the broader debate and, whenever
necessary, reframe the debate in progressive terms.
In addition, progressive framers must never be satisfied to frame the debate only for
themselves. Just like the old adage about whether a tree that falls in the woods makes a
sound if nobody is there to hear it, when progressives frame the debate on their own,
but do not communicate that effort to others, does it have an impact? Clearly,
communicating the results of any progressive effort to frame the debate has a wider
impact than keeping that effort hidden from others. And once the choice to
communicate has been made, the work of framing can begin immediately.
In November 2004, I made the choice to become a progressive framer by establishing a
website called Frameshop (www.frameshopisopen.com), a place for communicating
the results of my work throughout the progressive movement. At the outset, I defined
Frameshop as more than a website, more than a blog. It was and continues to be a
"place" for framing the debate.
Frameshop is not just a clearing house for my opinions. It's a "repair shop." It's a noisy,
dirty place. There's grease on our policy coveralls. Broken sound bite pieces are lying
around in open bins. Protective eyewear is required at all times. I begin with the idea
that political debate in this country is a highway filled with language long due for
repairs. During election time, political debate becomes a racetrack. Even the fastest
phrases will crash and burn after a few laps if not properly maintained. In debate, like
in driving: paint looks pretty, but it's what's under the hood that matters.

Frameshop began with this basic metaphor about "driving" and "repairing" the debate.
Yet, over the course of hundreds of "repair jobs"-long and short essays in which I
reframed key aspects of the political debate-a five-step approach to framing the debate
took shape.