Who's getting framed?

Reason goes to the sidelines in American politics | Janie B. Cheaney

Lakoff: Ben Margot/AP • Frank: Handout

In the dark days of 2004, Democratic strategists were desperately seeking the magic pill that would explain their sickness and point the way to a cure. The last two elections had been disastrous for them: Please, Doctor—what went wrong?

Democratic leaders seemed to find their answer in George Lakoff, Berkeley professor and author of Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Conveniently reissued in 2002, Moral Politics posited the ambitious theory that policy can shape public consciousness. A linguist by profession, Lakoff's studies in the neurological roots of language led him to the conclusion that reason is not an abstract quantity but rather an organic product of the motor-sensory system. That is, there's no real distinction between mind and body, and reason is whatever conventional wisdom makes of it.