53408863.

doc
Page 1 of 6

OPEN LEFT
Mon Mar 24, 2008 at 18:00

Much More Than Race: What Makes a

Great Speech Great
by George Lakoff

The first of a series by George Lakoff on The New Politics.

Barack Obama's March 18, 2008 speech was about much more than race. It outlined
a new politics that many Americans-candidates at all levels, activists, and ordinary
citizens-have been speaking and writing about, and yearning for, for years. It is a
politics that goes beyond the electoral horserace to the deepest questions about
what America is as a nation and who we Americans are as people.
We are on the cusp of a new politics in America. It should be dated from March 18,
2008, the date of Barack Obama's landmark speech, A More Perfect Union. The usual
pundits have looked mainly at the speech's surface theme: race. They weren't
wrong. It was indeed the most important statement about race in recent history.
But it was much more. It was a general call to a new politics and an outline for what it
needs to be. Just as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was about much more than the war
dead on that battlefield, so Obama's speech-widely hailed as in the same ballpark as
Lincoln's-went beyond race to the nature of America, its ideals, and its future.
To get an appreciation for the greatness of Obama's speech, we have to start with its
context: What were the problems Obama faced in writing it, and what were the
constraints on him?
He was under severe political attack, both from Republican conservatives and from
the Clinton wing of his own party. Here's what he was facing:
• Racial divisions and identity politics had been injected into the campaign by his
opponents and the media. The effect was to position him, as an African-American, as
opposed to the interests of whites and Hispanics.
• An attack on his and his wife's patriotism.
• A claim that he was really a Muslim.
• A repeatedly shown film clip of his long-time pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who had
married him and his wife and baptized his daughters, making embarrassing remarks
taken as Anti-American and anti-Semitic.
• One of the hallmarks of his campaign has been good judgment on foreign policy;
his opponents claimed that his connection to Wright had shown bad judgment.
• Another hallmark of his campaign has been authenticity, telling the truth. Two of
his advisors had made remarks-one on NAFTA and one on Iraq-that opponents had
twisted to make it seem that he was lying. He had to establish himself as truthful.
• Another hallmark of his campaign has been values. His opponents had claimed that
his values were unknown and that the public didn't know who he was.
• His opponents had claimed that he could not stand up to strong opposition.
53408863.doc
Page 2 of 6

• He was in the center of an intensely divisive campaign while pressing unity as a

major theme.
• His opponents had claimed that his eloquence was all talk and no action.
In addition, Senator Obama faced certain constraints on what he could say:
• He understands that people vote primarily on the basis of character and how he
would govern: on values, authenticity, trust, and identity, and only secondarily on
fine policy details (See Thinking Points). He could not ignore the problems and hope
they would go away. They wouldn't. Since he was being attacked on all of these
character and governance issues, he had to confront them all.
•He had been putting forth a vision of bipartisanship opposite that of Senator Clinton
In her bipartisanship, she moved to the right giving up on fundamental values. In his
bipartisanship, he understands that "conservatives" and "independents" often share
fundamental American values with him. Instead of giving up on his values, he finds
those outside his party who share them. His speech had to have such an appeal.
• The honesty and openness of his declared new politics required him to be
consistent with his previous statements.
• He could not explicitly go negative and still continue to campaign on civility and
unity. He could only go positive and evoke implicit negatives.
• He could neither accept his opponents framing of him, nor argue explicitly against
that framing. If he did either, he would just strengthen their frames. He had to
impose his own framing, while being true to his values and his campaign themes.
• He could not go on the defensive; that would just encourage his detractors. He had
to show leadership.
• Though he might have felt frustrated or even angry, leadership demanded that he
be his usual calm self, embracing not attacking even those who opposed him. He had
to be what he was talking about.
Try to imagine being in this position and having to write a speech overnight. And yet
he wrote not a speech, but the speech-one of the greatest ever.
As a linguist, I am tempted to describe the surface features: the intonation, the
meter, the grammatical parallelisms, the choice of words. These contribute to
eloquence. I'm sure the linguistics community will jump in and do that analysis.
Instead, I want to talk about the structure of ideas.
Any framing study begins with communicative framing, the context. Contextual
frames carry ideas. Senator Obama is patriotic, and had to communicate not only the
fact of his patriotism, but also the content of it. And he had to do it in a way that fit
unquestionable and shared American values. Where did he give his speech kicking
off his Pennsylvania campaign? Not in Scranton or Pittsburgh or Hershey, but in
Philadelphia, home of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and at
once home of one of America's largest African American communities. What building
was it in? Constitution Hall. How did he appear onstage? Surrounded by flags. He is
tall and thin, as were the flagstaffs, which were about the same height. He was
visually one with the flag, one with America. No picture of him could be taken without
a flag shaped like him, without an identification of man and country.
How did he start the speech? With the first line of the Constitution: "We the people, in
order to form a more perfect union..." He called the speech "A More Perfect Union."
And that's what it was about. Union: About inclusiveness not divisiveness; about
responsibility for each other not just oneself; about seeing the country and world in
terms of cooperation, not competition or isolation. More Perfect: Admitting the
53408863.doc
Page 3 of 6

imperfections of being human and making a commitment to do better; distinguishing

the ideals on parchment from the reality that our actions must forge. A More Perfect
Union: Looking to a better future that it is up to us to make and that can only be done
by transcending divisiveness and coming together around the ideals of our
Constitution.
That is what he has meant by "hope" and "change." It is the general message. And
race, though a special case, is one the hardest issues to address. And though his
opponents will continue to promote and exploit racial divisiveness, race is an area
where huge progress has been made and needs to be made visible. If there is to be a
test of character and leadership-a test of honesty, openness, strength, and integrity
on his part, and good will and American values on the part of American citizens, race
is as tough a test case as any. Not a test of Obama, but a test of America. A test of
whether Americans will live American ideals. No pussyfooting. No sweeping it under
the rug. This election sets a direction for the country. Will we face our problems and
follow our ideals or not? Obama can hold the mirror up to us, and he can endeavor to
lead the march. What he asks is whether we are ready to continue the march, "a
march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring, and more prosperous
America."
Most of the adjectives are familiar in political speeches: just, equal, free, and
prosperous. What is the crucial addition, right in the middle, is "caring." A day later,
Anderson Cooper asked him on CNN what he meant by patriotism. His response
began with "caring about one another." The choice of words is careful. In his Martin
Luther King Day speech this year, Obama spoke repeatedly of the "empathy deficit,"
the need to be "more caring."
Empathy, as I showed in my book Moral Politics, is at the heart of progressive politics
in America. And as UCLA historian Lynn Hunt has shown in her book, Inventing
Human Rights: A History, the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness became self-evident by 1776 through the development of empathy.
Democracy is based on empathy, on the bonds of care and responsibility that link us
together and make us a nation.
It is the mark of a great speech not just to mention its themes, but to exemplify those
themes. Empathy, union, and common responsibility are the ideas behind the
speech, as well as the ideas behind the New Politics; and as the speech shows, they
are behind the idea of America itself. The speech works via empathy, via the
emotional structure built into the speech and into our national ideals. The speech
works because, almost line by line, it evokes those foundational ideals-the ideals we
have and feel, but that have been far too long hidden behind political cynicism,
political fear, and the concern for advantage. And it is the mark of political courage to
confront those monsters head on at the most critical point in a campaign for the
presidency, when one could play it safe and just count delegates, but chooses the
right but difficult path.
At this point, the symbolic structure of the speech becomes easier to see.
He begins by discussing the achievement of the Declaration of Independence in
uniting the states, while seeing its flaw-the country's "original sin of slavery," part of
the deal to get South Carolina to join the union. The nation is great, and still flawed-
and loved for its greatness despite its flaws.
The same is true of Reverend Wright. Reverend Wright's history symbolizes the
history of his generation of African-Americans-a bitter history of oppression by whites
in an America in denial: segregation, legalized discrimination, lynchings, a brutal fight
for basic civil rights. His bitterness and that of his generation is real and
understandable. We can empathize with him. And we empathize even more when we
learn of his positive accomplishments: Service in the Marine Corps. Speaking to
53408863.doc
Page 4 of 6

Obama "about our obligations to love one another, to care for the sick and lift up the
poor. And he lived what he preached: "housing the homeless, ministering to the
needy, providing day care services and prison ministries, and reaching out to those
suffering from HIV/AIDS." He preached empathy, he lived empathy, and we
empathize with him for that.
And yet Reverend Wright's statements as shown in the TV clips were wrong. Not just
incorrect, but morally wrong: divisive and harmful, raising what is wrong with
America above all that is right with America. Obama condemns those statements. But
he won't fall into the same mistake, raising what is wrong with the man above all that
is right with the man. Obama loves and is loyal to his flawed country, just as he loves
and is loyal to this flawed but fundamentally good man. Just as he loves his wonderful
white grandmother who is flawed by occasional racial stereotypes. His relationship
with Reverend Wright shows in Obama a positive character: love and loyalty while
acknowledging the reality of flaws and not being taken in by them. It is good
judgment, not bad judgment-about Wright and about America.
But Obama is not just black; he is half white. His wife has in her veins the blood of
both slaves and slave owners. Obama's empathy is not just for black America but
equally for white America. He speaks of the real troubles of poor white Americans,
and their real and legitimate feelings of anger and resentment. But both black anger
and white resentment are counterproductive. They create divisiveness when unity is
needed to overcome "the real culprits of the middle class squeeze-a corporate
culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term
greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies
that favor the few over the many." The poor-black and white and brown-are all
victims of the real culprits, whose weapon is fear and divisiveness. Race gets in the
way. It is a distraction from dealing with corporate greed.
Another culprit that stands in the way is the media, which uses race for its own ends-
as spectacle (the OJ trial), tragedy (Katrina), and "fodder for the nightly news."
Obama is courageous here. He is taking on a media that has been especially
underhanded with him, helping the Right spread guilt by association by showing the
Reverend Wright tape snippets over and over. For a candidate to talk straight to the
media about what it is doing to harm the country is courageous, to say the least.
A bit of courage for a candidate who seeks the votes of Republicans is to point out
that a serious flaw of Reverend Wright's is also a central flaw of conservatism: "the
notion of self-help, or what conservatives call individual responsibility. It is central to
conservative Christianity as well: whether you go to heaven or hell is a matter of
individual responsibility. It is a mistake in both religion and politics.
What is called for is nothing less than what all the world's great religions demand-
that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's
keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common
stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect our spirit as well.
American politics and religion come together on these moral grounds: empathy and
responsibility both for oneself and others.
And with all the Christian references in the speech, it is hard to imagine him as a
Muslim.
Obama begins the close of his speech with a riff on how talk is action: "This time we
want to talk about..." followed by the plights of Americans, plights that arouse our
empathy-or should. Speech, Obama tells us, is action. Collective speech changes
brains and minds, and when the minds of voters change, material change is possible.
And if ever a speech was an act, this speech is it.
53408863.doc
Page 5 of 6

The closing portion is pure empathy- the story of Ashley and the old black man.
Ashley, a white girl, out of empathy for her struggling mother, ate mustard and relish
on bread for year to save on food money. She became a community organizer out of
empathy for those in her community who were struggling. At an event she organized,
she asked everyone to say why they were there. She told her story, others told
theirs, and when they came to the old black man he said simply, "I'm here because of
Ashley." The empathy of an old black man for a young white woman. A moral for us
all.
The true power of the speech is that it does what it says. It not only talks about
empathy, it creates it.
The speech achieves its power not just through the literal and the obvious. Family
metaphors abound: the nation is a family; the nation's future is its children; it's
flawed past is its older citizens, scarred by past flaws. "The children of America are
not those kids, they are our kids ..." The nation is a family, and we have to care for
our kids.
It is a common metaphor that an institution is seen as a person, with the special case
that a nation is understood in terms of its leader. In this speech, Obama becomes
contemporary America: as America is of mixed race, he is of mixed race; as
Americans have benefited from advances over past flaws, so he has benefited. His
story is an "only in America story," an American dream story. His candidacy is only
possible in America. Indeed his genes are only possible in America. How could he be
anything but patriotic when he is America? And how can we, identifying with him, be
anything but patriotic when we are America?
No, this is not, as the NY Times says on its website, "a speech on race." It is a speech
on what America is about, on what American values are, on what patriotism is, on
who the real culprits are, and on the kind of new politics needed if we are to make
progress in transcending those flaws that are still very much with us.
Finally it is a speech about policy and how he would govern. When he says "This time
we want to talk about,..." he is listing a policy agenda: education, health care,
overcoming special interests, creating good jobs, saving homes, fighting corporate
greed that works against the common good, creating unity, bringing the troops home
from Iraq, and taking care of our veterans. As a list, this looks like Senator Clinton's
list. But there is a crucial difference.
Senator Clinton speaks constantly of "interests." In doing so, she is doing what many
other Democrats have done before her, engaging in interest group politics, where
policy means finding some demographic group that has been ill-served by the market
or government and then proposing a governmental redress: a tax break here, a
subsidy there, a new regulation. Obama does not speak of interests and seeks to
transcend interest groups and interest group politics. That is at the heart of this
speech. When we transcend interest groups, we transcend interest group politics.
And when he says, "I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of
every race and every hue, scattered across three continents..." he is making a
foreign policy statement, that foreign policy is not just about states and national
interests, but about people and the world's family.
What makes this great speech great is that it transcends its immediate occasion and
addresses in its form as well as its words the most vital of issues: what America is
about: who are, and are to be, as Americans; and what politics should be
fundamentally about.
The media has missed this. But we must not.
53408863.doc
Page 6 of 6

The media has gone back to the horserace, reporting counts of delegates and super-
delegates, campaign attacks, who endorses who, and this week's polls. Hardly
irrelevant, but not the main event.
The main event is the new politics, what has excited Americans about this election,
what has brought young people out to political speeches, and what has led voters to
wait for hours in the cold just to catch a glimpse of a candidate for president who has
been saying what they have been waiting to hear. It is this:
The essence of America was there in its founding documents, carried out imperfectly
and up to us to keep alive and work toward as best we can.
At the heart of our democracy is empathy-made-real, a political arrangement
through which we care for one another, protect one another, create joint prosperity
and help one another lead fulfilling lives.
America is a family and its future is our children-to be nurtured and attuned to
nature; fed and housed well; educated to their capacities; kept healthy and helped to
prosper; made whole through music and the arts; and provided with institutions that
bring them together in these ongoing responsibilities.
The strength of America is in its ideals and how we act them out.
Americans have come here from around the globe, with family, ethnic and cultural
ties to virtually every country and with human ties to people everywhere. Our actions
in the world must reflect this.
All of this is politics. Politics is essentially ethical, it is about what is right. And the
nuts and bolts of determining legitimate political authority-the fund-raising, the on-
the-ground organization, the speeches, the campaign ads, the voter registration, and
the counting of ballots-should reflect these values as well.
That is the politics Americans have yearned for, and though we don't have it yet and
it won't be here tomorrow, it is what so many of us are working for and that we have
glimpsed through this speech.
No matter who wins the Democratic nomination and the presidential election in 2008,
these ideals are not going to be fully realized right away. No candidate is perfect on
this score, nor could be. But this is the vision. It sets the goals that I believe most
Americans seek. We can make progress toward it in hundreds of ways. But in its
vision it will always be the New Politics we seek as Americans, in 2012, 2016, 2020,
and beyond.

George Lakoff is Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science Linguistics at

the University of California, Berkeley, Senior Fellow at the Rockridge Institute Author
of the forthcoming The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st Century
Politics with an 18th Century Brain,, available June 2, 2008, Viking/Penguin.