Obama peformed a nice little move last night, for anybody who had ears to notice: He started out describing a list of tax cuts and projects funded, of results and positive impacts, and then finally, after this going through these litanies of success, he finally told Americans what he was talking about:
The Stimulus Bill.
Rather than defend the stimulus bill on the defensive, trying to defeat Republican arguments on their own rhetorical ground, the President made what I think was a fairly successful appeal to Americans about the policy in question, by giving people the bits and pieces of what it did, and what it succeeded at, and then reconstructing on the other side, a blessing in disguise revealed in its true character.
Like I said yesterday, or the day before, the experience is the story, and the story is the experience. Which means, more or less, that people will judge details from the overall narrative they already have. It's harder to defend something on the merits if people are already turned against it.
Obama's neat trick was to play on the other side of the principle. As a person's previous experience or inclinations can color a story despite its details, a fresh argument can re-orient people's attitudes, change their experience of a particular idea.
All too often, we either think of things too rigidly, or allow ourselves to be captured by what the other side is saying. We rebut another's view point, rather than offer our own, with the strength of our own convictions behind it.
Time and time again throughout the speech, Obama took different fights that were being made, and redefined them in a larger, or different context. Rather than simply but heads with his critics, he deflected their criticism, and revised their often erroneous account of matters.
We need to realize here that we're communicating something more than just points or opinions. We're communicating viewpoints as well, or trying to. Too often, we rest on the laurels of a particular philosophy, all echoing the same point of view. Too often, we simply take up a standard liberal, progressive, or Democratic Party line.
But I would say that the commanding heights of a debate belong to those who have a command of the facts, or seem to have it. I would also say the stronger of those two alternatives are those who have a reall command of the facts.
We are stronger when we're not predictable, when we set up compelling cases that are fresh and novel, and which define the simplistic formulation that often gets boiled down in the news coverage and the political sites.
We are strongest when we give people a new or better experience of our ideas, when we take the time and have the care to build our arguments up from first principles and basic facts, without doing too much telegraphing of our points.
If we want to win the struggle for America's political imagination, it would be a good start to begin with using that imagination, rather than dulling people's willingness to listen with our standard argumentation.