Conor J Rogers, Editor
Ideology: Moderate Republican | Writing from: Washington, DC
In public relations, there’s a short-hand for a media strategy that backfires – and it heralds its name from Sen. Michael Dukakis’ equally back-firing Presidential Campaign against then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. The phrase ‘Dukakis in the tank’ refers to Sen. Dukakis’ attempt to embolden his defense credentials…by taking a picture in a tank.
Any public relations Intern should have been able to stop this from happening, but Dukakis went ahead with it and looked like a kid in his dad’s Baseball cap. The photo-op backfired and it’s forever enshrined as one of the worst public relations mishaps.
You can quote me on it now: soon “Hope” and “Change” will be known as the new Dukakis in the tank – except Obama won. It will stand for a great public relations campaign – the very best – but one that failed to follow through on anything.
Almost a year since his inauguration, it’s become clear that Barack Obama is nothing special – the only thing remarkable about his first year in office is that his approval rating, according to both Gallup and Rasmussen Reports, has dropped faster than any President since Eisenhower.
President Obama is not what he seemed to be a year ago. Obama isn’t JFK, he’s no Roosevelt and he’s certainly not Lincoln. There is no change – except that things have gotten worse, our country’s economy is hopeless and Sarah Palin’s approval rating is closing in on the President.
Underscoring the country’s dissatisfaction with President Obama, 44% of Americans polled this week say they’d prefer George W. Bush to Barack Obama. Yep, the same George W. Bush who left office with a 20-something approval rating – he was the worst President ever, right Democrats?
We were supposed to be close Guantanamo by four weeks from now and healthcare was supposed to be passed by May. Unemployment was never supposed to rise above 8% if we passed the stimulus plan (we hit 10.2% last month). Foreclosures were supposed to slow down. Our home budgets and mortgages were supposed to stabilize. Our highways were supposed to erupt with construction, and green jobs were going to bring us back from the brink.
His liberal base is even more betrayed than the American public. In their eyes, national healthcare should have been implemented already, we should have taken stronger, faster action on climate change, gay marriage should have been vehemently supported by the White House, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should be drawing to a close, not escalating, and there was supposed to be transparency, not more secrets from the White House.
How Did This Happen?
As I’ve written before – President Obama is the man who never accomplished anything, but succeeded in convincing the country that he could fix everything – ask any Public Relations guru, and they’ll tell you it’s better to beat your own low expectations than to promise something and not deliver.
Don’t promise the moon and then show up with a picture of it.
This is exactly what campaign Obama did. They promised hope and change, and that’s it. They foolishly allowed the rest of the nation to decide for themselves what their own hopes were, and believe that Barack Obama would enact the exact change that they personally wanted. Some hoped he would legalize gay marriage, while many hoped he would end the wars. To others, change meant healthcare reform; to some it meant protecting the climate. To many, it was just a feel-good vote.
No one’s feeling very good right now, cap-and-trade’s rollout was foolishly timed with the retreat of public option, and the escalation of a war that most Democrats think should be over by now. On top of it all, he’s angered his socially liberal supporters by refusing to back gay marriage as Bart Stupak effectively bans abortion for those on government benefits.
The Obama White House is a complete public relations failure. To those who disagree, let me remind you that this administration, while failing to pass a single one of their left-leaning initiatives, has allowed themselves to be branded ‘socialist.’
Has Barack Obama accomplished any of his goals? Sure, the stimulus package passed, but the only evidence we have that the package was a successful is that the economy hasn’t completely collapsed yet. The economy didn’t totally fall-through under President Bush either, that doesn’t mean he handled it well.
On the ‘badly needed’ public option, Obama waffled over the summer – and without his forceful push, it died in the Senate earlier this week at the hands of Olympia Snowe, Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson. On climate change, Obama barely pushed, and he was pushing for a meager 4% emissions reduction – far below the 30-something Kyoto target.
Yesterday while being interviewed by Oprah, President Obama graded himself “B+” on his first year in office. When I was growing up, B+ was ‘good, but do better next time’ and my parents told me if I ever wanted to be President- I’d need straight A’s.
Well, Mom & Dad, you’re right, a B+ President isn’t looking too good.
Good, do better next time? If President Obama keeps this up, there won’t be a next time.
Rogers,
Funny, on-target & punditry all at the same time.
I hadn’t thought of the legislative failures vs. socialism yet – nice pickup.
Dear Conor: Interesting autopsy of the difference between the package we brought home(elected) and what we found in it when we unpacked it.
But no mention of the press being “in the tank” for his candidacy, and that as a factor in 1) his being misinterpreted by the electorate, and 2) their failure to examine even the vaguest of his claims. Don’t we learn in civics or poly sci somewhere that the PR people need to be kept to heal because the press can only be manipulated, or steadily behind you, for so long and then they’ll turn. They turned, seemingly on Hillary, on a dime, and why is one of the most mysterious subdramas of ’08.
The photo of Dukakis I see as “association-neutral”: that is, it doesn’t look nearly as silly as other pictures of other candidates along the way who weren’t knocked off their pedestal(remember Bush #1 vomiting in the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister at a State dinner?) I remember the press “overplaying” the Dukakis photo as they became obsessed with it, and warbled among themselves about its silliness. Like the Dean meltdown.
I also find it disconcerting that you use as the counterweight to Obama’s fall, Palin’s rise. The role of the press I think is behind that, too. She’s nowhere near as bad as the press would’ve had us believe last year: they got away literally with a PR “murder” in what they did to her. She has a heartbeat!
Old & Dispeptic
You’re becoming the conservative Noah. I think what you meant to say was ‘I wish I had written that”. Conor didn’t mention the press on either side, we would all do best to ignore them thus. I would expect you to enjoy the ommission of the press.
yoda: How can one possibly leave a consideration of the role of the press out of an article about the difference between what was sold, and eventual performance? We have relied on the fourth estate to close that gap since we were a bunch of colonies. Maybe one of the reasons Conor left out the press is because he wants to be one of them? I dunno… I’m just saying.
All of the tendencies were easily visible to people informed about Candidate Obama’s activities and proclivities beforehand. An article about that delta, leaving out a reference, or discussion, of a sympathetic press is, well, incomplete. Written well, but incomplete. Nice picture of Dukakis, though. By the way, I was there. He didn’t lose because of the picture, he lost because in the debate he didn’t say right away he would jail a guy if he were to rape his own wife, and because of the Willie Horton advertisements(great ads), I think.
And what, may I ask, is a conservative Noah, and is it good, or bad?
Dispeptic does not equal Decrepit.
Odd and disfigured
the way i read it, it said “this is who he said he was and this is who we found him to be”. the inclusion of the self righteous media would have cluttered the point. an obama supporter could then have turned the subject to the media and therby protected obama. if one leaves them out it is just the man and his own claims that are the subject. the result is a concise, clean article revealing obama as what he is, a snake oil salesman. i know we agree on that. merry christmas to you and yours. God bless us, everyone!
sorry about the name thing, just goofing around.
You pay too much attention to approval ratings – they have little to do with whether the President is actually doing a good job or not.
You can’t criticize Obama for the failures of Congress. You say that he didn’t push the public option enough, but that’s practically all he’s been doing. He devoted an entire address to a joint session of Congress to it.
He hasn’t been pushing climate change as much because the political climate is near impossible right now because of health reform. And he can’t agree to anything more than 4% in Copenhagen because Republicans in Congress are trying to defeat even that.
Guantanamo is closing soon, and I agree it wasn’t soon enough. But that’s because Republicans are freaking out about where to put the detainees.
Pretty much every economist agrees that the economy would have nearly collapsed without the stimulus. Maybe it was too little too late, but again, that’s because Republicans held it back.
In reality, Obama never promised that he could solve everything in his first year. He constantly repeated that it would take a lot of hard work from everyone, and always emphasized personal responsibility. If the public was naive enough to think that he had a magic wand, that’s their own fault.
Maybe his bad approval ratings should be given to Congressional Republicans.
Ian,
“Pretty much every economist agrees that the economy would have nearly collapsed without the stimulus.”
Not true.
It’s interesting that you blame congressional Republicans for everything that Obama and congressional Democrats have failed to do, especially considering that the Democrats have huge majorities in both houses. The Republicans should be able to be easily defeated. Luckily, there are some Democrats who understand just how bad Obama’s policies are for America and have acted in a bipartisan fashion – working with Republicans to stop Obama.
Alec-
The “massive Democratic majority” card is such a stupid talking point, meant to stir everyone up and make them think that the Democrats are ineffective governors. The Republicans are protected by the filibuster which means that they are by no means ‘easily defeated.’ When abuse of the filibuster is a constant threat, the filibuster effectively bumps the number of votes required to pass anything up to 60. Maybe the Democrats have a ‘huge majority’ in the Senate based purely on the number of senators out of 100–and I wouldn’t even call that ‘huge’– but realistically, they’re just barely at the threshold. Ian is absolutely right to lay much of the blame on Republicans, even though spineless Democrats are equally deserving of blame.
If Democrats in the Senate had their acts together, they wouldn’t have any problems there. And the majority in the House is absolutely overwhelming.
The filibuster is there to stop a supermajority like the one that exists from moving forward on everything without even a debate, and it should be used as often as necessary to force the Democrats to have to debate their ridiculous legislation.
Besides, the filibuster doesn’t stop a bill, it only does so temporarily. The Democrats really only need just 51 votes to pass anything they want as long as they’re willing to wait a little.
And having that kind of margin in the Senate is rare and yes, I’d say it is a huge margin.
All politicians are lying whores, and anyone who doubts that is merely deluding themselves.