Politics and Message | ModeShift

Why Give Barack a Pass on Energy?

by Keith SchneiderMarch 27, 20072

It’s understandable that many Democrats are enthused about Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He’s young, hip, smart, and charismatic. He’s an African American in a race that also features a woman and a Hispanic man. And he talks a good line about energy, the environment, the economy, national security and global climate change that intelligent progressives have accepted uncritically, including those at ThinkProgress.com. But from this vantage his candidacy feels like it’s wrapped too …

Flip: Seizing The Message and Messenger

by Keith SchneiderMarch 22, 2007March 27, 20070

I can see already that one of the principal activitiesÂ of Mode Shift is to make a difference in the 2008 presidential campaign, not by convincing readers to vote for a particular candidate but by helping to make the case for public priorities that deserve to be treated seriously.Â Resource conservation, public transportation, metropolitan patterns of development, global climate change, healthy food, and land conservationÂ merit attention.Â And it’s our responsiblity as writersÂ to frame the issues in a way …

What Is Al Gore Up To?

by Keith SchneiderMarch 21, 2007March 22, 20072

In case you missed it, Al Gore spoke to both houses of Congress today about global climate change, calling it a “planetary emergency.”Â As aÂ reputation boosting, global elevating, and upcoming book promoting exercise, Gore’s confident stroll through the various hearing rooms that he once occupied as a sitting memberÂ was terrific theater. But having been a Gore watcher since the 1980s, when he was a young congressman and I was a young correspondent, I just have this …

George Lakoff and the Mode Shift

by Keith SchneiderMarch 5, 2007March 5, 20072

A couple of months beforeÂ it became clear in 2004 that John Kerry didn’t have a clue about how to frame his election bid — “Lt. Kerry reporting for duty,” is the memorably stupid way heÂ started his nomination address –Â a University of California at BerkeleyÂ linguistics professor named George Lakoff (see pix) burst onto the national political scene to remind progressives that the message was everything in public policy and politics.Â His 2004 book, “Don’t Think of an …