I have some reservations about the Lakoff craze myself, but they are not the ones Joshua Green and the writer of The Note try to create.
I think Lakoff is absolutely right in that there must be a communicable message that resonates with people's identity and values, and that is inherent in fundamental structures of self-organization, is archetypally coherent, you could say. There is plenty of evidence that the Republicans have done this in a manipulative, calculated way. One only need hear the speeches of DeLay and Frist using the Schiavo case (
http://www.au.org/site/PageServer?pagename=press_delayfristtranscript),
mobilizing the RW fundies to attack judges and pave the way for the nuclear option of eliminating the filibuster, to see that RW theocratic propaganda capabilities are far more studied and advanced than those of the Dems. These two articles try to hide that fact and destroy the Dem's power here in advance.
The criticisms I have of the Lakoff craze are these:
1) It seems to markedly distract much needed Dem attention from the more crucial issue that election theft is now the number one weapon in the Republican arsenal.
2) This distraction happens because the chosen, identified Lakoff frame for the Dems is incomplete and inadequate. He pits the Dems as "nurturant parent" against the Repubs as "strict father." The strict father as Repub frame is all well and good, but by leaving out the darker elements of the pattern--archetypes are never singular, according to archetypal psychologist James Hillman, whom Lakoff would do well to study--we miss the darker, more powerful elements like election theft, which is not really seen in strict father (although strict father indirectly condones it). Likewise, nuturant parent, although it does carry the Dem core values, is not a worthy adversary for strict father. It is simply a polarized aspect of the strict father, and one which can't help but always get creamed. Nurturant parent never wins, but is more likely to be a victim. Like in that movie "Life is Beautiful".
If Lakoff is going to invoke an archetypal strategy, he would do well to draw in a more clever and wily energy which is well acquainted with dirty tricks, yet has a vision which is compatible with the nurturing parent, and who has the capacity to deal with strict father and his thugs. Who might this be? Odysseus, for starters. That figure from Greek mythology who lived in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Hillman wrote back in the 1970's that one of the most dangerous schisms facing our society is that between the puer and the senex (recognizable now as the strict father versus the "liberals".) He said the only way through it was in some kind of figure who had lived both, who had become mature and he identified this as Odysseus. (Read the essay in The Puer Papers, published by Spring.)
We can see this figure operating now only through the most mature men and women of the party...it's not for kids. People like John Conyers and Barbara Boxer, Rep. Lee from Ohio, those figures who, in the words of Hillman, have wounds that have healed over the years. Mervyn Dymally who was the lone Dem to stand up to der Grope yesterday in California. The puers crumble in the face of the vast evil of the RW hatred and certainty. It is only the wily older fighters who have seen it all, Senator Byrd, for instance, who have the sense and the courage to stand up. Age is not the only factor, but it helps. It helps that many in the Senate now, like Reid and Kerry, for instance, may be at the edge of being in the wilderness and beaten down long enough that they may begin to take on some of these qualities. We can only hope.
Having pontificated at length here, I must say I have not read Lakoff, but I heard him speak not long ago. He does have some good vision for the Dems. He advocated coming up with a dramatic proposal like heavily investing in alternative energy, for instance. But this would never succeed just because the nurturtant parent says it would be good. No, it would need to come about in some other way, with other things attached, even with the cooperation of the Repubs, who would have to be tricked into it. Odysseus was a master strategist and trickster, he and the deity Athena came up with the Trojan horse. He outwitted the giant cyclops. He is an everyman who hung out with the troops, not off in his elite tent like Agamemnon. The Dems would be well advised to start listening to us, for starters.
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