Every man a derrida: a nation on the verge of self-deconstructing.

• Author: Cavanaugh, Tim

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ARE THE GREAT American habits of directness, foursquare honesty, and a hearty handshake being undermined by fancy-pants French critical theory? You betcha! From the Obama-McCain struggle to find the proper meta-analysis of the word celebrity to the deconstruction of the mainstream media's treatment of John Edwards, from the "framing" and "repackaghag" of political constructs to the rise of identity politics for white people, the trend is clear: We are all postmodernists now.

The mainstreaming of pomo thinking has been largely a stealth project, something Americans do without committing overt acts of academia. We thought we were trying to clear away the cobwebs of shoddy analysis and elite hypocrisy, but all along we were bringing the tools of critical thinking to the masses. Go into any bar in the country, and you'll find somebody unpacking the assumptions in someone else's text.

Yet the mainstreaming of critical theory hasn't necessarily been good for its original practitioners. Just as the old media were left cold as their once difficult and rarefied functions were ceded to any slob in his pajamas, so the bards of meta-analysis are struggling to survive in a world of front-porch semioticians. The brilliant Berkeley linguist George Lakoff's most recent book, The Political Mind, purports to give new critical (but not New Critical!) tools to Democrats. Lakoff invented the popular "framing" concept, in which repellant concepts can be made attractive, and vice versa, depending on how you describe them. (We don't call them "taxes," we call them "investments.")

Yet Lakoff's star has dimmed since the first half of this decade, when hapless Democrats found him a welcome answer to Frank Luntz, the pollster who does pretty much the same shtick for the Republicans. An excellent August 15 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education revealed how Lakoff's principles have been falling out of favor--not so much because of any failings by Lakoff but because the Democrats are back to winning elections. "After a heady few years when he seemed the person Democratic policy makers wanted on the other end of the telephone, Lakoff is finding that what they're asking for--and are willing to put money behind--is not always what he can provide," Evan Goldstein wrote. "Lakoff's foray into politics is a story marked by intellectual breakthroughs, the allure of influence, and a fail from great heights."

The problem may not be that Lakoff, or...