Maybe it’s true that we’re at fault and that Obama hasn’t changed while the public has. But he hasn’t adjusted. And I think he needs to. Trust in government is at an all-time low at a time when Obama is trying to get government to do really big things. He’s needs to incorporate messaging that suits 2010, not 2008. I think the answer is more of a populist touch.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I agree with you, and I’m not a populist. As a matter of fact, I dislike populism with a passion. However, I think he needs to adopt a message of populist sorts in order to get the public behind the things he wants to do.
populist or not, its mainly a matter of putting together a message that is 1) understood and 2) accepted by the people you want to reach.
If that’s “populist”, then so be it—and I’m cool with that. As for me, I see this more an issue of ‘salesmanship’ than ‘populism’…..but that may be my background seeping through….
What would such messaging entail, Booman?
there has to be bad guys…people who have been screwing you.
And you have to take them on.
I actually prefer Obama’s style and aspirations, but the public isn’t buying the nice-guy approach.
So do I. In a sane world and country, his style would be my ideal politician.
Actually, I think that Booman’s rendition of the populist message above is spot-on accurate. That’s why it would resonate with the people if Obama talked the talk and walked the walk.
All that’s changed is the current winner of the eternal PR war. Obama won during his campaign and through his inauguration. Republicans and the right have won ever since. The entire left needs to change strategies, not just the White House.
Obama is better than anyone else we have at explaining policy to the public, but his explanations don’t get into actual news coverage, and he doesn’t make them often enough. In his health care town halls, I know of only one time, in North Carolina, that he actually went into policy details. At other times he said, why don’t you wait and see if you like it? In a highly distrustful nation, that’s a huge mistake. He needs to walk through and explain the actual reforms over and over again. He needs to make the explanation the message.
If populism is a tool that will work to get the explanation covered, great. In the past he’s used pointed mockery of the other side, and that works too. Whatever works, fine, but get the explanation out there.
The White House cannot do this alone. I think Dems and the left need to work out a better media strategy across the board. We can’t afford to give power back to the Republican Party, it’s sink or swim time, and we need to be explaining and selling what we’ve done as well as effectively going on offense against the right. I don’t see either one happening yet.
Obama can sound pretty populist when he’s talking about Wall Street, etc. Problem is, there seems to be a disconnect between what he sees and what he thinks he can do about it. The problem will persist as long as he tries to hold onto the contrary goals of bringing change and unifying the country. I think he’s demonstrated so far that the change has to come first and the unifying after that.
Nobody really cares about all the crap that the right keeps spewing. They just use it as a cover for the racism, nativism, and childish Aynality that underlies what passes for American conservatism today. Obama has largely failed so far to present an alternative to that view that encompasses both strong rhetoric and equally strong policy. I still cling to some hope that the issue lies more in a sense of timing than inherent confusion or timidity.
I don’t think moderates care about the right, but they do care about the sense of doubt that the right has seeded in regard to the entire Obama agenda. The administration and Democrats need to find a way to restore trust that they are going in the right direction.
This would be easier if Democrats weren’t so beholden to big business and the reforms weren’t so compromised, but we’re still going in the right direction and doing better than Republicans would be. That message is too subtle, so someone better than I am needs to find one that will work.
I think it’s really less about what Obama does or says, and more about what we do (or, what we don’t bother to do). Seems like we’ve fallen into this idea that it’s only Obama that has to make the case while we sit in the peanut gallery and lob constant critiques. Believe me, I have my fair share of dissatisfaction and constructive criticism, but it’s our call to make it right. If people seriously believe that staying home and not voting is going to produce a better result, please think again.
This is pretty far ranging but the last couple minutes have to do with messaging:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/36756404#36695788
“I think the answer is more of a populist touch”.
No it isn’t. There’s no populism to draw on, just resentissment, becaue there is no class solidarity left in America. There never was much — even the small amount that a recession 3 times worse than the present one could generate didn’t create a social democracy here — too many Theodore Bilbos then, too many snowbilly grifters now.
The salient fact in American politics is that there are enough people to swing an election who would volunteer to live with their family in a cardboard box under a railroad bridge, and toast sparrows on an old curtain rod over an open fire, so long as you guarantee them that the people in the next box over — black, gay, foreign, liberal, different — don’t even get the sparrow.
In America, populism is a dead end until the Civil War finally ends. A mere hundred and fifty years is waaaaay too soon for that.
That is so true, and well said!
I agree with other posters that Obama can’t do this alone. The simple fact is there is a tidal wave of disinformation and lies that make coherent messaging on any topic nearly impossible. For gawd’s sake, people don’t believe they received a tax cut even though nearly everyone did. I’m responding by writing letters and posting ads in my small town paper. Here’s a blog version of a print ad that will appear next week: http://privcorr.blogspot.com/2010/04/open-letter-to-certain-half-term-ex.html
However, at the end of the day, A.L. nailed the problem with his Army of Trumans post, his first blog since last November:
“…I had high hopes after the thumping the Republicans took in 2006 and 2008 that we had finally turned a corner, that the cracks were beginning to show in Bubble World and the empirical world was slowly re-exerting its influence. I got the feeling that more and more people who had been stuck in the bubble were beginning to sense that something just wasn’t right.
But I was wrong. Freed from the burden of any actual governing responsibility, the GOP has been free to devote all of its efforts to reconstructing their Bubble World. And they’ve been largely successful. An entire movement has formed that is based, almost entirely, on confusion and mis-directed anger, a movement that sees the world only through the lens of Fox News and other right wing outlets. The Tea Party is an army of Trumans, a movement of people who have whole-heartedly embraced the false reality with which they’ve been presented.
The central dilemma for those us left in the empirical world is how to puncture the bubble. What can we do to make facts once again relevant? What can be done to dis-incentivize the kind of lying and reality denial that has become the hallmark of the modern conservative movement? I can’t say that I have answers to these questions, but I’m pretty confident that these are THE questions that we should be asking. Policy debates are great, but only when they take place in the empirical world. If a majority of Americans aren’t living in that world, then such debates risk becoming purely academic exercises.”
http://www.anonymousliberal.com/2010/04/army-of-trumans.html