Modeling Journey

At long last Harper has started his campaign for the next election with a series of ads portraying Ignatieff as an absentee Canadian, a carpetbagger returning to the north expecting the plum of the prime ministership to fall into his lap, a man with multiple nationalities, and an out of touch elitist writer and speaker with a deft touch for capturing in words a misguided, Americanized philosophy.

Oh, and even an elitist coffee drinker!

And the predictable reaction of Liberals?

Outrage, concern, fear.

And stupidity.

Why stupid?

Because they have learned nothing over the past five years.

While the Democrats have for close to decade been whipped into shape by the formerly ferocious Karl Rove attack machine, we have sat back, supremely confident that eventually the vast bulk of the voters here will see the error of Stephen Harper's ways, realize that they made a bad mistake in electing a Tory minority government, and flock to the polls to elect our latest Trudeau-clone leader by giving him a blank cheque to form the next government (anybody see any Liberal policy in front of the voters telling them exactly what the party would do if it was governing?).

This, of course, is exactly what Harper wants.

While Ignatieff is touring the country promoting his latest family history, Stephen Harper has been brooding on Parliament hill, thinking of ways to defeat this new threat to his government. He knows that Jack Layton will never be prime minister, nor Duceppe. He knows that he can always somehow buy off the NDP or the Bloc with some trinkets in a budget. And he knows that come the next election (most likely some 18 months time), the threat lies with the Liberals.

And his brooding contemplation of Michael Ignatieff is paying off.

He has measured Michael, and to date has made him dance to Harper's tune, whenever he wanted. He knows that in a month or so, he will once again make Ignatieff dance, by forcing him to back away from the new threats of the Liberal caucus to go to the polls over the employment insurance. He has calculated that he will be able to drive a wedge between the Bloc and NDP positions on changes to EI and the Liberals (probably with the Liberals backing off because those parties want permanent changes while Ignatieff has said the changes should be temporary).

And this means Harper has time to define Ignatieff.

And his little advertisements have shrewdly done exactly what they were designed to do.

Why does the Cat say the Liberal response is predictable and stupid? Because the Cat has read a book a whiles back and understands what Harper is doing to successfully.

Take this for example:

"When I teach the study of framing at Berkeley, in Cognitive Science 101, the first thing I do is I give my students an exercise. The exercise is: Don't think of an elephant! Whatever you do, do not think of an elephant. I've never found a student who is able to do this. Every word, like elephant, evokes a frame, which can be an image or other kinds of knowledge: Elephants are large, have floppy ears and a trunk, are associated with circuses, and so on. The word is defined relative to that frame. When we negate a frame, we evoke the frame.

Richard Nixon found that out the hard way. While under pressure to resign during the Watergate scandal, Nixon addressed the nation on TV. He stood before the nation and said, "I am not a crook." And everybody thought about him as a crook. This gives us a basic principle of framing, for when you are arguing against the other side: Do not use their language. Their language picks out a frame — and it won't be the frame you want."

That is George Lakoff, author of the book every Liberal absolutely must read: Don't Think Of An Elephant.

And that illustrates exactly what Harper is achieving with his ads. He has made the Liberals and the media think of an elephant. And the media and the Liberals are falling right into his trap by talking within Harper's frame about his mean attacks on poor Michael.

We are all talking about the elephant.

And the elephant is the elitist, absentee-Canadian, out of touch Michael Ignatieff.
Round one to Harper.

And a smack on the side of the head of Ignatieff (for also talking about the elephant) and his Liberal advisors (for being to stupid, and for not studying Lakoff and applying Lakoff).