somehow move from governmental control to private ownership, which wasnât at all what Bush was proposing. At a time when massive corporate fraud was being exposed at Enron and other major corporations, and the stock market had taken a huge dive, âprivatizingâ even part of oneâs retirement nest egg was a frightening idea; it implied taking the retirement program out of the hands of the government and turning it over to Wall Street speculators. In 2002, CNN correspondent John King asked the president about âyour plan to partially privatize Social Security,â and Bush protested: âWe call them personal savings accounts, John.â
Bush, of course, was trying to frame the issue his way; calling the accounts âpersonal savingsâ made it sound as though the owners would control their retirement money themselves, as they would a checking account. In fact, the accounts Bush eventually proposed allowed only a handful of investment choices, with little or no choice in how money could be paid out at retirement. Both sides used misleading words in the debate, but Bushâs nomenclature didnât catch on. When he made a strong push for passage in 2005, opponents kept calling the plan âprivatization,â and the idea was quietly dropped for lack of support. The issue had not been framed as Bush wished, as one of potential gain for younger workers. It had been framed as one of potential loss for Social Security beneficiaries generally.
George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of CaliforniaâBerkeley, has argued in a best-selling book,
Donât Think of an Elephant,
that conservatives have been far better than liberals at framing issues in this way. He says that President Bush successfully framed the tax debate by talking about âtax relief,â as though taxes were an affliction, rather than âyour membership dues in America,â as Lakoff would prefer. He also cites Bushâs use of terms such as âcompassionate conservatismâ and âNo Child Left Behindâ to make Republican policies more palatable to swing voters. âThis is the use of Orwellian languageâlanguage that means the opposite of what it saysâto appease people in the middle,â he argues.
Lakoffâs solution, however, is more such languageâfrom the left. His Rockridge Institute is working on a âHandbook for Progressivesâ to assist his side. Even that title is instructive: note that the term âprogressiveâ sets us up to think of people in favor of âprogress,â advancing toward a bright future. Had he called it a âHandbook for Liberalsâ he would have used a more neutral termâbut one that has lost popularity.
For the ordinary citizen or voter, the important thing is to recognize that both sides try to use words that weâll automatically accept or reject without thinking too much. Indeed, sometimes just choosing a word means choosing sides. When discussing abortion, which word do you choose, âfetusâ or âbabyâ? Are you âpro-choiceâ or âpro-lifeâ? But thereâs generally much more to any issue than a name or a slogan can tell us. Judging an issue or a product by its name is as foolish as judging a book by its cover. Better to say to yourself, âOkay, thatâs what they want me to think. Now whatâs the rest of the story?â
TRICK #3:
Weasel Words
A NYONE WHO HAS GONE TO A SALE AT A RETAIL STORE IS FAMILIAR with the principle of âweasel words.â Weasel words suck the meaning out of a phrase or sentence, the way that weasels supposedly suck the contents out of an egg, leaving only a hollow shell. In âUp to 50 percent off,â the empty shell of a phrase is â50 percent off,â the weasel words are âup to.â âFifty percent offâ means half price, period. Having added the words âUp to,â the store can
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