Wednesday, June 09, 2004

Exhausted blogger
To return from one's college reunion tired and hungover to a national week of mourning for (as my mother used to put it) "that man" is too much to be borne.

One close friend quips, "Haven't we been to enough Reagan funerals over the years?"

As Arianna Huffington observes in her most recent column, comparisons between Bush and Reagan are in-apt. Reagan was loved because he painted a bold, optimistic big vision of the future. Bush's only strategy is to prey upon our fears, not hopes.

Kerry, on the other hand, is capable of playing to our hopes. Arianna is pushing Kerry to play big to win big--this a winning strategy.

But it takes more than just big talk, it takes the right words and images to win the American public on the right terms. Maybe Berkeley framing expert George Lakoff's recent tutorial on "Simple Framing" could be used by Kerry to change the lens through which the media see the important issues of today.

1 comment:

Sara S. Nichols said...

This is a brilliant piece--I love your work. Sara