Last week one of my co-workers asked me if there was a way to use technology to persuade people to vote for a president of the U.S. who would be a good manager. His argument was that what the country needed was some one who could identify problems and then delegate the responsibility of fixing the problem to competent people. I told him to read Wikinomics because it points out the “perfect storm” of the technological revolution that is changing the way business is and will work. This may give him some insight to use the same concepts in Wikinomics to change government.
I then said that the problem with thinking of the President of the U.S. as the manager-in-chief is that the majority of voters don’t vote with their brains, they vote with their emotions. The president is the father-in-chief for many people. Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse.
After reading George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant and Michael Lerner’s The Left Hand of God I started to understand why it seems some people voted against their own self interest. My own self interest is not another person’s self interest. As a liberal I see the world as generally a safe place with few absolute good vs. evil forces. I see the world as complex with only a few absolute answers. Force does not make right and should only be use when absolutely necessary. I don’t need a father/mother figure telling me what is moral and defining my values. Man and nature are deeply connected and what affects one affects the other. Communities work best when we all are responsible for each other through a responsible government.
A conservative sees the world as a dangerous place and we need a strong father to protect us. There are absolute good vs. evil forces and we need to be strong to attack the evil in the world. The father will define what is moral and punish us if we stray. Man was put on earth to control nature. Each family is responsible for its self and the government is only responsible for protecting the country.
As Lakoff points out, the Republicans have been very good over the last 25 years in identifying the fundamental metaphors of politics and exploiting them. The Democrats keep talking about real problems and how to solve them, but people vote for the person who taps into their need for a father to tell them “I know you are scared and confused, so I will take care of you so you don’t have to look to yourself for any difficult answers.”
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