7 Reasons Why Obama's Speeches Are So Powerful

By George Lakoff, AlterNet. Posted February 24, 2009.

The logic is simple: Empathy is why we have the values of freedom, fairness and equality -- for everyone, not just for certain individuals. If we put ourselves in the shoes of others, we will want them to be free and treated fairly. Empathy with all leads to equality -- no one should be treated worse than anyone else. Empathy leads us to democracy -- to avoid being subject indefinitely to the whims of an oppressive and unfair ruler, we need to be able to choose who governs us and we need a government of laws.

Obama has consistently maintained that what I in my writings have called "progressive" values are fundamental American values. From his perspective, he is not a progressive, he is just an American. That is a crucial intellectual move.

Those empathy-based moral values are the opposite of the conservative focus on individual responsibility without social responsibility. They make it intolerable to tolerate a president who is the Decider -- who gets to decide without caring about or listening to anybody. Empathy-based values are opposed to the pure self-interest of a laissez-faire "free market," which assumes that greed is good and that seeking self-interest will magically maximize everyone's interests. They oppose a purely self-interested view of America in foreign policy. Obama's foreign policy is empathy-based, concerned with people as well as states -- with poverty, education, disease, water, the rights of women and children, ethnic cleansing, and so on around the world.

How are such values expressed? Take a look at the inaugural speech:

• Empathy: "The kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job, the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child."
• Responsibility to ourselves and others: "We have duties to ourselves, the nation and the world."
• The ethic of excellence: "There is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of character, than giving our all to a difficult task."
• They define our democracy: "This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed."
• The same values apply to foreign policy: "To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and make clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds."
• And to religion as well: By quoting language like "our brother's keeper," he is communicating that mere individual responsibility will not get you into heaven, that social responsibility and making the world better is required.

3. Bi-Conceptualism and the New Bipartisanship

The third crucial idea behind the Obama Code is bi-conceptualism, the knowledge that a great many people who identify themselves ideologically as conservatives, or politically as Republicans or independents, share those fundamental American values -- at least on certain issues.

Most "conservatives" are not thoroughgoing movement conservatives, but are what I have called "partial progressives" sharing Obama's American values on many issues. Where such folks agree with him on values, Obama tries, and will continue to try, to work with them on those issues, if not others. And, he assumes, that the more they come to think in terms of those American values, the less they will think in terms of opposing conservative values.

Bi-conceptualism lay behind his invitation to Pastor Rick Warren to speak at the inauguration. Warren is a bi-conceptual, like many younger evangelicals. He shares Obama's views of the environment, poverty, health and social responsibility, although he is otherwise a conservative.

Bi-conceptualism is behind Obama's "courting" of Republican members of Congress. The idea is not to accept conservative moral views, but to find those issues where individual Republicans already share what he sees as fundamentally American values. He has "reached across the aisle" to Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., on nuclear proliferation but not on economics.

Bi-conceptualism is central to Obama's attempts to achieve unity -- a unity based on his understanding of American values. The current economic failure gives him an opening to speak about the economy in terms of those ideals: caring about all, prosperity for all, responsibility for all by all and good jobs for all who want to work.

I think Obama is correct about bi-conceptualism of this sort -- at least where the overwhelming proportion of Americans is concerned. When the president spoke at the Lincoln Day dinner recently about sensible Midwestern Republicans, he meant bi-conceptual Republicans who are progressive and/or pragmatic on many issues.

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George Lakoff is the author of Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (Chelsea Green). He is professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley and a senior fellow of the Rockridge Institute.

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