May 28th, 2010 at 4:36 pm

‘Crises are opportunities. He has consistently missed them.’

When it comes to the messaging battle over BP, Wall Street, and the rest, says George Lakoff, Obama’s problem isn’t swinging and missing–it’s that he isn’t swinging at all.

Crises are opportunities. He has consistently missed them. This 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.

And yet, Obama of all political leaders, could have done it, because he did before in his campaign.

The central idea is Empathy. Democracy is based on empathy, on people caring about one another and acting to the very best of their ability on that care, for their families, their communities, their nation, and the world. Government must also care and act on that care. Government’s job is to protect and empower its citizens.

That idea is what draws together all the threads. The bottom line for corporations (whether BP, Massey, Anthem or Goldman Sachs) is money, not empathy. The bottom line for those who hate (whether homophobes, the Arizona Legislature, or al Qaeda) is domination and oppression, not empathy.

Empathy, and acting on it effectively, is the main business of government. And Obama knows it in his heart.

Normally I’d come to the President’s defense on a messaging issue like this–Lakoff and other progressives often want the party to force a super left-wing stand on something that would rip apart the caucus, and for a mid-term year that’s particularly undesirable.

But the host of issues Lakoff highlights here is different: everybody’s mad about them.  And the empathetic stand is one with which most Americans identify.  Most Republicans are frustrated about the problems at Massey and with Deepwater–but with party’s ideological homogeneity, nearly none that are running for office, incumbent or not, can claim that they support policies that would muzzle corner-cutting that will prevent future iterations of it.  Democrats, conservative and progressive, can–and many do.  Again, so does the public.   We just need the President to lead*.

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*You’ll notice that the Gallup poll linked has the President ten points in the hole on his handling of the issue.  It’s hard to see where he might risk his approval on the issue by getting in front of the cameras and letting loose on BP more often.

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