Obama’s “I Am Not a Crook” Moment
WashingtonsBlog.com
September 21, 2013
Obama Says America Is Not a Banana Republic and We Have to Pay Our Bills … What Do Experts Say?
America’s top liberal communications expert is George Lakoff. Professor Lakoff (who we’ve previously interviewed) points out that when a politician says “Not X”, people usually think of X:
I wrote a book called, Don’t Think of an Elephant! The title made a basic point: Negating a frame activates that frame. If you activate the other side’s frame, you just help the other side, as Nixon found out when he said, “I am not a crook,” which made people think of him as a crook.
President Obama just said:
This is the United States of America — we’re not some banana republic, this is not a deadbeat nation, we don’t run out on our tab.
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We can’t just not pay our bills.”
The Rest…HERE
