Heather Hurlburt is senior advisor to the U.S. In The World Initiative and consults as a speechwriter, policy and message advisor. Read her blog and contact her through DemocracyArsenal.org.
Underlying much of the intra-progressive warfare in recent years has been a steady debate on just how angry and alarmed to sound. Many “fight ‘em to the right” moderates and “the cure is worse than the disease” leftists have united to complain that progressives have not been loud and insistent enough in telling the American people that they are less safe than they were before George W. Bush became president.
Of course, we’re surrounded by evidence that we are, in fact, less safe in our lives at home and less secure in our status abroad—the Third Way’s recent report, The Neo Con , provides a comprehensive compendium.
Trouble is, we’ve also been surrounded by evidence that the “we’re less safe” line of attack doesn’t lead voters to reject Republicans. Nor has it worked particularly well attracting voters to progressive positions or leaders. Why? Perhaps the starkest statement of the problem comes from the eminent pollsters Democracy Corps. In their most recent memo summarizing recent polling they counsel candidates: “A positive agenda is crucial to winning over swing voters.” In other words, just telling people they’re less safe doesn’t cut it.
In reaction, a small cottage industry of consultants and advisors—among which, full disclosure, the author has sometimes found herself—has sprung up to urge advocates to “lead with hope, not fear.” The debate over whether to lead with fear or hope has split coalitions, hamstrung progressive partnerships, and been much mocked by the media. In just the past few weeks, though, there’s a suggestion that the rift is quietly healing, and that a new and effective line of attack is gaining traction among “fear” and “hope” progressives alike. Just in time, too, as the Bush administration returns to its own “fear” playbook.
But to understand how and why progressives might just get our act together in time, it helps to step back and look more closely at the “hope” critique. After all, it’s so clear that administration actions, and inaction, have made the world more dangerous—why not say so?
Let’s start with a bit of pop psychology: You’re reading this site, so chances are you think of yourself as a progressive. You’re probably more likely than your right-of-center counterparts to be keenly aware of times that America has often not been at its best in the world, and pretty easily convinced that the administration’s screw-ups have made us less safe. You’re not happy about it, but it’s an idea you’ve lived with before. You also believe it’s possible for us to do better.
Folks who find themselves more in the center—or are just plain tuned-out when it comes to politics—haven’t tread that mental pathway. The idea that we might be less safe is newly upsetting, even disturbing. What’s more, because many Americans don’t follow foreign policy debates, they aren’t confident that better alternatives to current policies exist. Researchers who study opinion formation tell us these folks are quite likely to respond by rejecting the unwelcome information, rejecting its messenger or looking around for someone familiar to keep them safe.
Think this sounds unlikely? Two years ago, national security pollster Stephen Kull published a groundbreaking survey of likely George W. Bush voters shortly before the 2004 election. His findings were hard to explain: More than half of likely Bush voters thought that the Kyoto anti-global warming treaty and the International Criminal Court were good ideas, and they believed that Bush supported them. Why? For this group of voters, Kull hypothesized, the importance of their president doing what it takes to address global threats was so strong that they assumed away any dissonant information.
And what party has positioned itself as the party that will act tough when baaad stuff happens? (George Lakoff calls this way of coping with challenges the “strict father…” approach.)
So perversely, when an activist group tells its members to write a letter to the editor with the central message that we are “less safe now than we were six years ago,” readers may find themselves on a mental pathway that travels from “less safe” to “Ronald Reagan” to “maybe I oughta vote for my lousy Congressman one more time anyway… that new person is untested and won’t keep me safe.” (Check out www.usintheworld.org for a less shorthand explanation of the research behind this idea; www.frameworksinstitute.org is another place to read the technical details of one version.)
If you doubt this, ask yourself why President Bush picked this month to tell us that we are “safer but not yet safe.” Surely not because he needed to get the thought off his chest; probably because internal polling suggested that evoking that fear frame would bring at least some errant supporters home to GOP candidates. And that strategy seems to be working, at least with Bush supporters.
But experts think it’s not working with swing voters, suburban moms, NASCAR dads and other blocs that polls suggest may now be up for grabs. And here’s where the good news comes in: what is working with them is contextualizing the “we’re less safe” message in a bigger picture. Now that Americans seem to have concluded on their own that the Bush administration’s policies are not working, the key lies in a blended message: Remind voters why they feel less safe—because of incompetent and misguided and administration policies—and offer alternative policies that address the perceived threats without seeming to downgrade or dismiss them.
Since we’re progressives, this message comes in something close to 50 different flavors: The White House Project, which focuses on women’s political leadership, proposes messages that focus on the need for partnership with other nations; or call for “a plan for long-term national security.”
Democracy Corps urges a focus on—in just about this order—stronger national security policies, administration missteps in Iraq that have worsened our ability to fight terrorism and a new vision that changes course in Iraq, promotes accountability for administration officials and deals with other top crises like energy, homeland security and our crumbling alliances.
This line of attack finally lets progressives talk about all the failures that have been driving us crazy for years. But it does require that we give up two things that are also dear to us: the secret desire to condemn the whole anti-terrorism project and the deeply held need to start negative and go down from there.
Ronald Reagan was right about one thing: It is always morning in America. And this cycle, progressives need to be the ones who are bringing back both the strong light of accountability and the softer light of hope.
