Obama's Failure to Explain the Market Crash

What story is Obama telling about the Market Crash?

Why, in America, do poor and disenfranchised people stay so loyal to right-wing politics in the face of their ever-decreasing share of the pie?

It seems to me that many of the people who are into the Tea Party would be better served by some kind of equality movement where the goal is to distribute wealth better. What would make sense, be more reasonable would be people working together to improve their lot -- not making it easier for the rich to get richer in the off-chance that, somehow they might stumble on to some money themselves.

Since I've been thinking about narrative/story-mind, American politics makes a lot more sense to me. It's not about reason vs irrationality, ignorance vs knowledge. It's about storytelling. Stories are the true drivers of meaning, motivation and action in our lives -- and in politics. We can't get around it, (or at least that's the hypothesis of this blog). That's the way our minds work, that's what makes meaning. So, it makes sense that you're not going to convince people to do things differently by using 'reason'.

Frontier Stories, Rugged Individualism

Hands-down, for the last few decades the right has told better stories. They've tapped into the American Dream, New World, Rugged Individualist narratives. They've told a story that government is bad. Religious narratives. These are powerful stories. The American Dream is an archetypal success story that is very hard to resist. They are clear stories, well told (and oft-repeated).

And, those narratives have a lot to offer. Even if you're poor. Because it is not really about how big your house is or how new your car is, or if you can afford Organic. Those things are less important than having meaning, having the world and your life make sense. 

If there's a different story -- a different way of seeing the world that works better for everyone -- it would be good to learn how to tell it. Tap into a rich mythology, a tapestry of stories that gives a person a complete vision of what, say, a more equal society would look like. Tell stories that are more internally consistent, that, like a good movie, build excitement about the future and make people want to take action.

I went digging online to see if I could find a more learned person saying the same kind of thing: I found an  article in the New York Times, by Drew Westen, professor of psychology at Emory University and the author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.

The article, "What Happened to Obama's Passion?" muses on the missed opportunity of the market crash, where Obama could have told a great story about greed, corruption, going after the bad guys who ruined the world economy. Instead, he kinda said, well, nothing. Shortly after, that void was filled by Tea Party. Here's the story Westen had wished Obama had told:

“I know you’re scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn’t work out. And it didn’t work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can’t promise that we won’t make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again.”[Read Full Article]

Not a bad story. It's a little thin, and sounds a bit too much like the standard lefty rhetoric. But it's a start. At least it has a bad guy.