photocredit: Infrogmation
When Reverend Wright saturated the airwaves and Youtubeways in early 2008, many thought the Obama campaign was about to derail just as it gained its momentum. It ended up being one of the defining moments of his campaign for the presidency. The quiet, potentially unwieldy, elephant in the room was about to take center stage: Obama was black, and that could have radical implications.
The outcome was something few expected. Candidate Obama not only addressed the inflammatory rhetoric coming from the Rev. that had the potential of ending his until-then meteoric rise, but he raised the discussion beyond the political. He took control of the narrative of his campaign.
The administration has done a fairly good job so far at modulating its own voice. This White House has been one of the most well-behaved in recent memory; there is hardly any damning commentary or rebellious side chatter coming from any of the insiders. But that has hardly resulted in regaining the message control they had during the campaign. Obama’s White House has been prone to put blinders on and convincingly discuss a handful of issues, letting everyone else decide what to make of the rest. In doing so it has lost what made Obama such an appealing intellectual: a clear message.
The NYTimes pointed out today that the administration seems to finally be touting the virtues of the stimulus bill. This comes a year after almost every Republican has torn into it, calling it everything from “socialist” to “a failure” to a waste of government money; a year after the Tea Party movement used it as rabble-rousing fodder; a year of Americans thinking their taxes actually increased under Obama’s term; a year after Obama’s team spent too little time “selling” the stimulus to the American people before selling them a war, a reform, and a Supreme Court justice.
Whether the benefits of the stimulus are enough to reject the criticism is not the point. (Although, numbers supplied by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office suggests its positive impact is substantial). President Obama has been skillful at constructing persuasive messaging for many (but not all) topics, including himself. He is still much more popular than his policies or his party. His brand is still the most sellable in Washington. But his laser focus has left other priorities out in the cold. While he was using his charm under his own terms (Leno, magazine covers, George Lopez Show ads), he let the closure of Guantanamo become “dangerous” to Americans. While he explained how close we were to healthcare reform, he let Congress chop it up into something ineffable.
By letting the storyline for the stimulus, the ambitious first legislation that set the tone for the rest of his presidency, be told by everyone else, he forfeited control over most of his messaging from that point on. As a candidate, Obama zeroed in on an issue (Reverend Wright and race; Hillary Clinton and his inexperience; Bush and the economy; hope; reform) and steer into friendlier waters. As president, Obama has followed the same strategy, but as he himself noted when McCain suspended his campaign in order to save the economy, a president’s view must be multi-focal. A president must not only be everywhere and do everything simultaneously, but he must also set the tone for every conversation.
If Obama wants to retell America’s story of perseverance and resilience to the American people, he must be willing to finish telling it all the way through. Letting political opponents, or the unconverted who straddle loyalties, write out the storyline of any move coming out the White House muddles the narrative at best, changes the plot altogether at worst. Obama’s story–raised by a single mother, working his way up the Ive League and the political ladder–made him exceptional. Losing the message war means his story will have an abrupt, unsatisfying ending.
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