“I know words, I have the best words.” Then-candidate Donald Trump, December 30, 2015, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

2017 ended with a plethora of news programs about our first year with Donald Trump as our President. One such program looked back to May 4^th and a piece by conservative columnist George F. Will, who had written, “It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about President Trump’s inability to do either.” In a later interview, Will said of Trump:

           “The question is whether or not the way he talks and the judgments he makes about matters of fact, history for example, suggests that he really is not capable of sequential thought, which is rather alarming in a president…but there comes a point at which this manages to be ludicrous without being at all funny when you have a president who …finds it impossible to put into simple, declarative sentences what he’s talking about.”

In that same interview, Will was asked to listen to and comment on an assessment of Trump made by Dr. Lance Dodes, a former professor of psychiatry at Harvard University’s medical school. According to Dodes, “Lying in the way that [Trump] does it, repeated, dangerous lying…is a sign of serious mental disturbance.” Declaring himself unqualified to validate Dodes’s diagnosis, Will declined. He had developed a disdain for what he described as a “gross abuse of psychiatry” when Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican nominee for the presidency, was being diagnosed from afar. Instead, Will said he is “just going by the evidence that the President continues to put in front of us in torrential amounts.”

The still-debated question is how did Trump become the President, a man who never had run for office, a New York real estate magnate and reality television star with a penchant for crudeness, lewdness, and disinformation and with no history of government service as either a civilian or a member of the military. There have been numerous attempts to ascribe his success to any number of factors (misogyny, racism, economic anxiety, simply having a hated Hillary Clinton as an opponent). Any number of those factors may very well have contributed. Still, if observers like Will and Dodes are right, how could it have happened? 2018 should be a time for those still pondering that question to consider the possibility that what they believe about Trump’s win and year-long tenure may be wrong, or that they may not have things quite right. For those who say Trump is crazy, there are those who say, “Crazy like a fox.” And, for those who say he is stupid, there are those who say he is far from that.

A bold prediction made in an article (“Understanding Trump”) months before the 2016 election by a man named George Lakoff comes to mind. Lakoff said Trump would become President with 47% of the popular vote; Trump won with 46.4%. This feat of prognostication would be no less impressive even if accomplished by a professional pollster, pundit, or political operative, but imagine it being pulled off by Lakoff, a cognitive linguist with a focus on conceptual metaphor. That Lakoff could see what the political experts could not should give those others pause – for a moment, at least – then galvanize them to discover what obstructed their view.

For nearly four decades now, Lakoff, Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, has studied and attempted to alert others to the prevalence and significance of conceptual metaphors in everyday life. Conceptual metaphors are defined as ideas that are linked to others for a greater understanding of something. For example, such sayings as “Let me put in my two cents’ worth,” “He’s rich in ideas,” “That book is a treasure trove of ideas,” and “He has a wealth of ideas,” are commonly used phrases based on the conceptual metaphor (or abstraction) that ideas are money. Metaphors permeate and shape “…our everyday way of thinking, speaking and acting.” Lakoff looked at Trump’s use of this system of discourse and predicted the percentage of Trump’s win.

In a book (Thinking Points, A Progressive’s Handbook) written a decade before the article he wrote in 2016, Lakoff warned about the rise of authoritarianism in this country, noting that conservatives were in control of the terms of political debate. With Donald Trump now occupying the White House, and with his cabinet and judicial picks potentially touching nearly every aspect of people’s lives, looking at how he used language and conceptual metaphors is not only important, it is an imperative, particularly if there is any hope of making the problem of his election an aberration never to be repeated. Not only should the political class take another, closer look at Trump’s use of language, but also the ways in which his use was not matched by his opponents; in the case of Clinton, her campaign was warned about her deficiencies directly by Lakoff.

Given that some political observers have said they expect a record number of women to run for office in 2018, it is worth noting – as does Kathleen Ahrens in her book, Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors – that research suggests conversation rituals are used differently; women aim to engage, men aim to win. The book notes further that gendered metaphors were used as a cudgel against Hillary Clinton when she ran for the Democratic nomination in 2008. The man who won the nomination that year, Barack Obama, had his own use of metaphor and skill at persuasion examined by Jonathan Charteris-Black in his book, Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. An important feature of that book is the author’s reminder that, in non-authoritarian societies, we are fortunate to be governed by words – which we can accept or reject – and not by whips.

We are faced with what should be an impossible situation. A man many believe to be too inarticulate and crazy ever to become President now occupies the Oval Office. How can this dichotomy exist? How can George Will and Dr. Dodes be right about Trump and, yet, he is President? Perhaps we should look for answers beyond those provided by the common consensus. Perhaps Lakoff and others in his field are on to something, that additional answers are to be found in the nexus of linguistics, cognitive science, and politics. Lakoff believes this might help a society avoid falling victim to demagoguery.

A thorough look at how conceptual metaphor was used – and not used – during the 2016 presidential campaign would aid progressives of all genders who seek political office avoid the mistakes made by those who have failed. As for that seeming master of the game now in the White House, we may have to consider the possibility that his sensational success may not be evidence of genuine genius; he may be an idiot savant.