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Home » Obama: controlling that all-important narrative

Obama: controlling that all-important narrative

The New Neo Posted on by

This hardly sounds like news:

White House officials are retooling the administration’s communications strategy to produce faster responses to political adversaries, a more disciplined focus on President Obama’s call for “change” in Washington and an increasingly selective use of the president’s time…

“It was clear that too often we didn’t have the ball — Congress had the ball in terms of driving the message,” communications director Dan Pfeiffer said. “In 2010, the president will constantly be doing high-profile things to be the person driving the narrative.”

Senior White House aides described the changes as an aggressive response, aimed at producing fresh momentum for the president’s faltering agenda…

Big yawn; sounds like the same old same old. Do Obama and his advisers really believe this will work when it has not worked before? Do they really think more “aggressiveness” and more blah-blah-blah is likely to hide the twin facts of Obama’s inaction on things the public cares about, and misguided bulldog-like action on things the public doesn’t want?

[NOTE: It may be time to revisit—once again—this reflection on Obama’s devotion to words over substance.]

Comments

Obama: controlling that all-important narrative — 52 Comments

  1. It’s just the usual of this WH: continuous campaign mode. As you posted earlier, with his top four advisors being campaigners first, what else would be expected?

    I can’t ever recall a president who spent less time actually working. BHO is constantly out talking; never behind the Oval Office desk doing the hard stuff. But if his tenure at the Law Review is any indication, he doesn’t really go in for actual work.

  2. “In 2010, the president will constantly be doing high-profile things to be the person driving the narrative.”

    …and here I thought that’s what he was trying to do with all of his appearances LAST year.

  3. Well, there is a logic here, although a little convoluted. The reason is that, just as one who engages in astroturfing does not recognize the real thing when it is front of one’s face(the tea partiers) , one who lives by lying is hard put to respond to truths.

    One criticism I had of Bush was that he never responded to the big lie so that, after time, it became the accepted truth. “Bush lied. People died.” Or, Bush failed miserably with Hurricane Katrina.

    I can see where Obama does not want to be tarred in the same fashion as Bush, after all he was doing a lot of the tarring. So, he wants to respond to the charges. But this is not the campaign anymore. He can take the time to make a thoughtful rejoinder before the big lie sets in. So, it is not necessary to rush out the response. The problem with Bush was and is that he is too much the gentleman and never really responded. (And he had the MSM working very hard against him.) But Obama was a loud a vociferous proponent of the big lie (to the point that he actually seems to believe it). So, Obama wants to defeat the criticism of his administration before it gains any traction.

    So, the response is to send Biden out immediately to deflect the attacks. My view is that this is not a replay of David and Goliath. Rather, it is Linus and Lucy. Cheney seriously tees up the ball and Biden, for all he’s worth, can’t seem to get it in the air. The problem here is that Obama has no one of greater stature to send into this fight (suggestion- Bill Clinton might at least be able to elevate the discussion and score some real points) so he ends up allowing Cheney to reinforce his point with every Biden lie or malapropism.

    Obama would be better served to emulate Bush and refuse to respond to Cheney.

  4. They enjoy campaigns, not governing. yes, more Obama in the media, go for it. This can only help conservatives because the guy is seriously over exposed. This is a danger that happens to celebrities, and he is our celebrity President.

  6. Exactly how long – since he’s already been in office for over a year now – can he keep harping on “change”?

    At what point does the public see this for the shallow exercise in shifting blame that it is?

    Or has the public already figured him out, which is why the democrat version of the congress critters are scurrying for the shadows as fast as they can?

    As for more exposure – I’m all for it! As Julia NYC points out it will only hurt his chances of getting his agenda enacted.

  7. When you do not have a clue about what to do, you better control the narrative to keep the immediate heat from melting your image. In the long run you are just as cooked because only results = respect.

  8. Oh goody! just what I was hoping for; Obama 24/7 in the media.
    At what point does this constitute cruel and unusual punishment?

  9. This is good news. These people actually don’t have a clue that America doesn’t want their change no matter how clear they describe it. By the end of this year an Obama prime time speech will draw less audience than a Madelyn Albright speech on c-span.

  10. Well, the Obami have to say they are doing something and somehow still in charge.

    It’s not like they can get that respect by governing.

  11. Think ahead a few years. If voted out of office in 2012 he will be a 51 year old ex-President, and he will spend the next 20-30 years “controlling the narrative,” refurbishing his reputation, telling the tale of how he was wrongfully and tragically turned out of office after one term, and meddling in American political life, worse than Carter.

  12. Can’t you all see our President is simply doing what Reagan did by going over the heads of congress and taking his message directly to the people? hmm?

    The difference is “the people” WANTED Reagan’s change.

  13. John Stossel http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/02/15/entitled-to-a-five-bedroom-house/?test=latestnews

    The narrative isn’t controlled anymore.

    People with common sense can see the idiocy of the policies that John Stossel talked about.

    New Jersey’s governor just gave a speech that all here should read.

    One thing we’ll have to fight is the risk of losing the PR battle. People will lay into Doug Christie and Meg Whitman harder than Sarah Palin…

  16. Baklava-

    I hope its Carly Fiorina not Meg Whitman the libs are tearing into here in bankrupt Ca.

    (I don’t trust Whitman’s connection to “Senator” Boxer).

  17. Evaluate Meg for her words and actions.

    Same thing I would say for Sarah, Doug, Scott Brown, etc.

    Besides – Meg is running for governor and Carly is running for Senator against the republican Tom Campbell…

    Let’s not do this…. Does Meg have a connection to Jeremiah Wright sitting in the pews for 20 years???

  18. The problem for Obama is that he’s trying to suspend the equivalent of the law of gravity.

    Raising taxes WILL NOT bring forth more money into the Treasury. Nationalizing health care WILL NOT produce lower insurance costs or better medicine.

    Obama is like a two-year old who wants something because he wants it. A big marxist crybaby.

    I live near one of the most successful urban neighborhoods in the United States–the Lincoln Park area. Yesterday I walked north along Clark Street and discovered empty storefront after empty storefront–20 or 30 of them. That can’t be good for the economy.

    BTW, our notorious crooked mayor (and enabler of Obama) blames Bush. Daley recently raised parking fees, property taxes, convention fees, and various business fees–but it’s the War in Iraq that’s the problem. Our public transportation system is crashing to the ground, but he supports a “high-speed rail system” between Chicago and St. Louis. Who the heck would take this train? Probably nobody.

    Lord, what fools (and knaves) these politicians be.

    OK, rant over.

  19. “Can’t you all see our President is simply doing what Reagan did by going over the heads of congress and taking his message directly to the people? hmm?”

    I guess we couldn’t see that adagny. Thanks for explaining it to us…and be sure to jump right in to ‘edicate’ us when we po’ folk ain’t gettin it. 😉

  20. Actually, I liked your rant Promethea.

    Politicians always place the blame elsewhere when times are bad.

    But with store after store closed, how successful can your neighborhood be?

    “Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.

    We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” Winston Churchill

  22. Can’t wait to watch it at home Paul.

    The text is tremendous. I want to see his facial expressions and the stunned legislature.

  23. Yeah, Barry should get out and give some speeches, let the people see him, and remind them of himself at every turn.

    but he supports a “high-speed rail system” between Chicago and St. Louis. Who the heck would take this train?

    What is it with leftists now and high-speed trains? Bankrupt California is now saddled with a $10 BN bond issue to build a high-speed train between LA and SF to “reduce traffic congestion.” Excuse me? Is there a lot of traffic congestion in the Central Valley now? That was all farmland last time I made that drive. Same thing with most of the drive between Chicago and St. Louis.

    So why now all this silliness about high-speed trains? Yeah, I know Europe has them (and Japan), but theirs run mostly through heavily populated areas, not farmland.

  24. Geoffrey Britain . . .

    You asked “how successful could my neighborhood be?”

    Within a few decades my current neighborhood went from elegant to scuzzy to elegant. Now it’s probably on its way down again.

  25. Re the Chicago-St. Louis “high-speed train.”

    It now takes about 5 or 6 hours to go from Chicago to St. Louis by car. Why not have Greyhound buses make regularly scheduled runs between these two cities? Sounds a lot easier than building this stupid train system.

  27. High speed rail is premature. Especially with our present economy and unemployment. Democrat’s fascination is due to it being mass transit, they never let practical issues trump the agenda.

    Also, until we develop practical, magnetically levitated trains, which is not as far off as one might think, they will not attract enough passengers to be economically viable. Then the corridor served must be sufficiently populous or traveled to be viable as well.

    Out here in the west, the only corridor I can foresee as immediately viable is the LA to Las Vegas run. Other shorter runs might eventually be viable such as the San Francisco to San Jose and the LA to Orange County corridors.

    Another big problem for passengers out here is once you reach your destination, how do you get around? In the west, cars are a necessity, its not NYC or Chicago.

  28. Occam’s Beard Says:
    February 16th, 2010 at 6:54 pm

    What is it with leftists now and high-speed trains?

    Simple. It’s “mass” transit. Transportation for the “masses”.

    Eliminate privately-owned automobiles, and force everyone to become dependent on government-controlled transportation.

    The politicians, super-rich, and VIPs will still have their limousines and private jets, of course. Just like in the Third World.

  30. Control the narrative? The only thing that can change that in a jiffy would be for Sarah to say something. They simply CANNOT resist responding (they = MSM and the admin). Between Sarah and Cheney, they will have no control.

  31. The Christie video was dynamite. Thanks Baklava and Paul.

    Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see that playing at tea parties and other large venues throughout the country?

  32. I think we need to respect the propganda power of O’s team, and not relax in calling him out.

    O’s campaign guy (forget name) was just brought back in. Since then the tone has changed and O has taken more initiative – like an offensive. He has the R’s for example, willing to even talk to him at the upcoming ‘summit’, and a few just went with him on the jobs bill, and so on.

    That camapign guy created “Obama”. When he was gone, O just became the inexperienced affirmative action case eh has always been. He will probably try to make him “Obama” again – as a puppeteer makes a puppet come to life.

    They guy was good. The magic may have worn off, but I’d be careful about assuming it has.

  33. It occurs to me that the democrats really believe that old trope that Americans are powerless to marketing and that if the just put a big enough bow on their turd of a message/policies that they can get us to buy just about anything. It just doesn’t seem to occur to them that we’ve heard the “new ideas” and the sales pitch but we just aren’t buying. If you want our attention then try listening to us and adjusting your policies accordingly…. morons.

  34. I had to laugh when I read that “In 2010, the president will constantly be doing high-profile things to be the person driving the narrative.” (and I’m sick of the word “narrative,” but that’s another story..)

    As Jonah Goldberg commented on NRO:

    “So wait, the multiple trips to Copenhagen, the five-Sunday-show-in-one-day-marathon, three joint session addresses to Congress in one year, the prime-time news conferences, the state dinner, the speech in Cairo: These don’t add up to “constantly” doing “high profile things”? What’s he going to do in 2010, wrestle an alligator in the Map Room? Crown himself Holy Roman Emperor? Challenge the pope to a game of Boggle? The gist of all of this is that the White House has concluded it needs to hone precisely the strategy it’s had all along. This is a new streamlined, retooled, cowbell 2.0 strategy. Faster, more efficient and more selective bell-ringing will turn things around for the White House. Moreover, they’re telling us in advance how they’re going to crank this cowbell to eleven.”

    http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGJiNWZkMWI3YTBkNzEzOWU1NDIwNjRjNDMzYzY5YTE=

    This White House has a problem with its facts, not its “narrative.”

    By the way, here’s a link to a long but fascinating interview with someone who knew Obama at Occidental and says he was clearly a committed Marxist.

    Dr. John Drew, the man who related the story, says he was a Marxist himself at the time, but saw eventually saw the light. He sounds very credible…says he tried to get his story out around the time of the election but was unsuccessful.

    http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/02/b-cast-interviews-dr-john-c-drew-was-obama-a-committed-marxist-in-college/

    There are few things more irritating than seeing photos linked here of the college-age Obama a goofy hat. Unless it’s seeing him in the White House, of course.

  41. Yeah, Promethea. Another Chicagoan here. It is a shame to see all the empty storefronts. No one wants to pay the exhorbitant fees to park along the main artieries and it is killing the small businesses. These bums have the franchise for what–99 years? I can’t recall.

    Also, there are fewer people in the grocery stores and fewer products. Everything is full price–the prices have already been lowered across the board and so there are fewer weekly sales. Some of the bargains are amazing, but they’re amazing because people can’t pay the higher price. Every time I see a close-out tag on an item, I realize somebody’s job going up in smoke, or the company is going under. This is really a low level Depression we’re going through. Pray to God it doesn’t get worse.

    There should be some special place in hell for guys like Obama. I hope there is.

  42. Baklava, I don’t know what happened at the 2:10 mark, but Christie looked pissed there for a second.

  43. Pissed ? 🙂

    It looked more like the classic school teacher’s “I’ll wait until you are done goofing off” look.

    Every school teacher had that trick in their bag of tricks when I was growing up. It worked.

  44. Hi Neo,

    This could actually be a big change for Obama, though I doubt it.

    Obama’s tactic for the first year was to let Congress write all the bills, and then pretend that they were his. This meant that Barak’s speeches never really defended the actual laws which were being written, see he didn’t write them. He just spoke in platitudes to support someone else’s legislation. This was designed to protect him to some extent, because he was not directly responsible for the bills which were written. This was somewhat dishonest, in that his staff was directly involved in writing the bills, but that was hidden.

    If the White House staff is going to write new proposed legislation directly, that will be a change. But I doubt it will increase his popularity any. It will probably decrease it.

    James

  45. What America needs is to hear more from Bammy & Co. They haven’t communicated to us rubes enuf–ya know, in the gab we unnerstan’–and we MUST have more.

    Has any president in American history blathered, addressed, interviewed(controlled)and generally filled the air with more words than this one? I think not.

  46. Famous last words of the VP, Marketing at Ford:

    “Maybe if we put a little more chrome on the bumper the Edsel will sell”.

  47. Obama has gone from messiah to pariah in one year. Never again can we say he doesn’t have noteworthy accomplishments.

  48. NeoConScum:

    I’m reminded of Abraham Lincoln, saying about a political opponent (perhaps Stephen Douglas, although I’m not sure):

    “He can compress more words into a smaller idea than any other man I ever met.”

    CV: I agree. President Obama knows he is in trouble, and so he’s falling back on his strength, the technique that’s always helped him in the past: blame other people and talk, talk, talk. (He doesn’t seem to know that this accounts for a lot of the trouble he’s in; he may not even realize that he’s doubling down on a failed strategy.)

    He will no doubt continue to try to control the narrative. But the narrative is beyond his control; we have other sources than him and his trained lapdogs, and we’ve been using them.

    He may yet find the day when he gives a major policy speech, and discovers, to his dismay, that he’s orating to an empty hall.

    respectfully,
    Daniel in Brookline

  49. The John Drew interview on Breitbart linked to above is very illuminating and raises a slew of questions. Drew states that he was a committed communist at Occidental College where he met Obama. At that time Obama was a very, very committed Marxist-Leninist, to an extent that Drew found unusual for one so young. Drew also indicated that such rising stars of the left were most often surrounded by followers. Obama was able to draw on the wealth of a friend while at Occidental to live a rather lavish life but, when the friend graduated, he moved on to Columbia as that life style was coming to an end. Because he knew no one willing to support this high end life style at Columbia he led a very withdrawn existence. Almost no one in his class at Columbia remembers him. However, when he finally got to Chicago, his friends and mentors, such as Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers, were (not surprisingly) also committed Marxists, even though he later lied about the closeness of these relationships. (The ease with which he was able to lie without further inquiry may be one of many reasons he holds us yokels in such contempt.) That is the kind of people who he palled around with and who he felt (and still feels) comfortable being with. And, since these relationships still exist, if not so openly, one can reasonably conclude that Obama is still the Marxist-Leninist he always was.

    So, he gets to Chicago and meets a group of progressives who ultimately support his running for office. (I am skipping stuff here to get to my point.) He is introduced to the people who now make up the Chicago Obami in the White House. But, if he never gave up his childhood radical politics, one has to question whether any one in this White House crew has any influence with him or whether he seeks more radical advice (and, if so, from whom)? (In fact, does he view his Obami as nothing more than “useful idiots”?) Jonah Goldberg had a very funny piece on NRO on the new narrative strategy calling it more cowbell.

    But, something horrible is happening. As Obama loses public support he does not seek competent and helpful advisors form the DNC. Rather, he goes more heavily into campaign mode. Is anyone running the country? Is there ONE ADULT who he can turn to for good advice?

    Obama has still not left NYC off the “terrorist trial hook”. He is still pushing his healthcare bill (and he still does not even have a healthcare bill of his own to push). All the polls are screaming that Obama should now be focusing on jobs and the economy. But he dithers.

    For whatever bad reason, Obama is not doing the politically astute thing to do. This is not how a typical Democrat would deal with this situation. (My view is that Democrats want power because they think they are smarter than Republicans and know how to use it. That is, until they get it.) This dithering (almost a refusal to address the real issues at hand) puts at risk not only the power of the Democrat party to control Congress (and the legislative agenda and federal budget), but his own power as well. If he is throwing the Democrat party to the wolves in order to make a Clinton-like comeback, he does not seem capable of actually governing from the center, as he said he would do in his campaign. Otherwise, he would be doing that now.

    My sense is that he cares no more for the Democrat party than for the Republican. He is still a dedicated Marxist-Leninist at heart and will use any means, democratic or otherwise, to maintain his power. If the Democrats fail, so be it. He can do a lot of damage through the regulatory process and who knows what else he has in mind. So long as Nancy Pelosi (the epitomy of aggressive political stupidity but a genius at manipulating people) remains the Leader of the House, it will not be likely that Congress will pass overriding legislation with veto-proof majorities.

    We may have a rocky year ahead of us.

  51. I was listening to excerpts of The Messiah’s comments today on the 1-Year Adversity of the awful Porkulous Bill. It was nearly a trillion dollars of NOTHING and he claims there was no pork included. Proud he is of that alleged factoid. Anyone remember the $4.5-billion slotted for the honorable stand-up ‘Ho Runners of ACORN,’Yo?

    The man is a smarmy, aloof, lying, neo-Marxist-Alinskyite ponzi schemer(see Steve’s fine post above). A lying liar who lies.

    Any questions?

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