(Cross-posted at Blue Commonwealth)
When progressives shoot ourselves in the foot, it's important to take a step back and retrace exactly how and why the bullet ended up in our forestep -- so we can learn to avoid the next disaster.
Case in point: "Cap and trade."
Ever since Nixon surrounded himself with White House aides drawn from the advertising industry (like H.R. Haldeman), Republicans have excelled in using the right words and images to frame the debate and market their mindset to the public.
Reagan, the Hollywood actor and former GE pitchman, was even better at it, cementing in the mind of much of the public that the way to promote "freedom and liberty" was to "get government off the backs" of huge multinational corporations and millionaires, while beating up on unions, "welfare mothers," and the environment. Much of the country still uses this twisted language as if it were the highest representation of reality.
Progressives, meanwhile, have been earnestly working to do the right thing with nary a thought to how to gain the public support needed to actually succeed. Take for example the recent debate over health care in which the left rallied behind a proposal with the alluring name of: "the public option."
Small wonder we lost that battle -- can you think of a more bloodless, bureaucratic, aseptic slogan than "the public option"? Sounds like a check box on some dull tax form -- not like an opportunity for Americans to gain a fair, equitable system to keep themselves alive and healthy. But we didn't do a good enough job communicating those ideals and goals -- no, we (and especially Congress) got stuck on the process, and most people just saw a whole big legislative sausage grinder chewing up their hopes and dreams rather than something exciting and useful to them.
Yes, I well understand that the story was a lot more complicated than that, but we still could have won the fight if we had at least tried more skillfully to win more hearts and minds to our side.
Which brings me to "cap and trade". The climate change debate is about issues bigger than most people can even imagine. It's about losing the security of a stable climate, the basis upon which several thousand years of human civilization have been built. It's about a potential apocalypse --floods, hurricanes, droughts, tropical diseases, species disappearing, glaciers melting, islands and coasts being swallowed up.
You would think that with all the good that would come with arresting this global problem, we could find a way to sell this legislation. Call it "Save the Glaciers" or "the Safer Future Act" or...something.
But no -- instead this legislation has become known for the obscure mechanism under which greenhouse gases are capped overall with the right to emit them allowed to be traded to ensure more efficiencies in their reduction. The resulting name sounds weird and even untrustworthy to the general public, like "bait and switch".
Republicans picked up on this right away, and invariably refer to attempts to mitigate climate change using this Washingtonese phrase. The media, meanwhile, with their usual probity and evenhandedness, repeat the Republican phraseology and talking points like lazy sheep -- sometimes even referring to "cap and trade legislation" without even mentioning climate change.
What is most unfortunate is how slow the left has been to recognize the political peril here and change the terms of the debate.
Just imagine if other famous pieces of legislation had taken the same approach, what they might have been named:
The Clean Air Act: Filter and Dispose
The Social Security Act: Tax Workers and Pay Seniors
Civil Rights Act: Integrate and Vote
No Child Left Behind: Test and Punish
Do you sense the lack of poetry, purpose or the power of persuasion in such mechanical monikers? In fact, I can't think of a law that was promoted based on its mechanics rather than its goals and intended purposes. And for good reason.
So why should climate change legislation be any different? Progressives don't have to be techno-geeks -- we can and must find the right ways to communicate our values and the urgency of our solutions to the general public.
We need to immediately cap the illegitimate attacks on climate change legislation, and trade them for a real discussion of the global climate challenge we face and the best way to confront it. So when the media and politicians use "cap and trade" dismissively, ignorantly, or as an epithet, please make sure to call them on it. We cannot win the war for a stable climate until we first win the all-important war of words.