Obama's Use of Framing

An interesting analysis from George Lakoff, the noted political linguist. I don't agree with all his conclusions--he seems a bit blindly pro-Obama--but he's definitely right that Obama has been trying to evoke values with his policies. Rather than devising new policies, though, Obama has tended to repackage traditional liberal programs in rhetoric that makes them more acceptable to conservatives (note all his talk in the speech tonight about "responsibility" and "accountability"). So far, he seems to have been successful in bringing the middle on board, though less so with hardcore conservatives.