Obama Losing The Stimulus Message War

Politico: President's Team Struggles To Regain Upper Hand As GOP Paints Stimulus As Pork

(The Politico)  This story was written by Jeanne Cummings.

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At this crucial juncture in the push to pass an economic recovery package, President Obama finds himself in the most unlikely of places: He is losing the message war. 

Despite Obama’s sky high personal approval ratings, polls show support has declined for his stimulus bill since Republicans and their conservative talk-radio allies began railing against what they labeled as pork barrel spending within it. 

The sheer size of it - hovering at about $900 billion - has prompted more protests that are now causing some moderate and conservative Democrats to flinch and, worse, hesitate. 

The anxiety over lost momentum seemed almost palpable this week as the president in television interviews voiced frustration with his White House’s progress and the way his recovery program was being demonized as a Democratic spending frenzy. 

In Obama’s own words in an NBC interview, it’s his job to “get this thing back on track.” 

Already, he’s trying - rolling out Michelle Obama to talk stimulus Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday (at a train station, no less) and sitting down with key senators one-on-one. 

But this is unfamiliar turf for a team that achieved near epic status for its communication skills during the presidential campaign. They’ve rarely ever had to play catch-up. 

With the president’s gifted oratory and a technologically savvy team, the Obama camp was able to seize control of the national conversation as early as April and never fully relinquish it right through his Inaugural Address two weeks ago. 

To be sure, some of Obama’s headaches stem from the normal dysfunction that occurs when a White House is in transition. Phones don’t work, chains of command are fuzzy, and there are formalities that need tending to. 

But the Obama team also made its own mistakes. The president’s troubled cabinet nominees added to the cacophony that at times drowned out the White House economic messages in the past two weeks.

And it seems more apparent each day that the nascent Obama Administration isn’t fully prepared for the task at hand. 

The president’s decision to push through a massive stimulus bill, while perhaps unavoidable, is forcing the much-vaunted Chicago crowd to adapt at lightning speed to its more skillful adversaries on Capitol Hill, while at the same time taking a crash course on harnessing the full power of bully pulpit. If he doesn’t figure it out soon, Obama is likely to find out that his stimulus package looks very different than he had in mind indeed. 

The Jetsons versus the Flinstones

Obama’s campaign was lauded for its visionary use of modern tools for old-fashioned politics. Through the Internet, it recruited supporters, collected dollars, rallied supporters and organized get-out-the vote operations. 

But when these modern heroes arrived at the White House, it was like the lights all went out. Their contact with their millions-fold supporters was cut off, literally, as e-mail systems broke down and ‘The List’ of political supporters was blocked at the iron gate. 

To meet government ethics rules, the campaign operation and its grassroots army were forced to de-camp to the Democratic National Committee, robbing the president of one of his most potent political weapons just as the stimulus bill was under consideration in the House. 

But while the White House team struggled to adapt, it was business as usual on Capitol Hill for Republicans. 

They could practically sleep-walk through their attack plan once House Democrats began to fill in Obama’s broad outlines for a stimulus with a few pet projects of their own. 

It required two simple steps: Scream pork, call Rush Limbaugh. 

They even could have even used a rotary phone. The result: Every House Republican saw a free pas and voted against the first version of the bill.The outcome is not surprising. Obama had roughly 90 people working at his headquarters on Internet outreach and new technology projects, observes Joe Trippi, a Democratic operative who broke new ground on modern campaigning during Howard Dean’s 2004 Democratic primary bid.

Even with closet-sized spaces, the White House can only accommodate about 200 or so people for jobs ranging from national security to health care reform to Internet guru.

The Obama team “built this incredible campaign and now they have these ridiculously primitive tools. The communication tools they mastered don’t exist in the White House. It’s like they are in a cave,” said Trippi. 

“Then there are the masters of the Stone Age and they are doing a good job,” he added.

Learning to play well with others

During the campaign, Obama had complete control over his message. Now, he doesn’t and that’s not an easy adjustment for any president.

Obama must suddenly yield turf to both Capitol Hill and outside interest groups who are trying to help. The results in both cases can be messy.

Obama’s decision to provide broad guidelines for the stimulus -- “targeted, timely and temporary” -- rather than issuing specific legislation, was done in deference to Hill lawmakers, especially the Democratic leaders that lord over the legislative branch. 

But it’s hardly a secret that the president found unhelpful the House Democrats’ decision to slip funding for special groups into its version of his stimulus bill. 

Funding to allow Medicaid programs to provide contraceptives as part of its family planning services to low income recipients was the Republicans’ first easy mark for attacking the legislation. 

“How you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives -- how does that stimulate the economy?” House Minority Leader John Boehner asked. 

With a phone call from the White House, Obama had that provision stripped from the legislation but the damage was done and Republicans soon moved to the next so-called pork project to launch a new attack. 

Senate Democrats have vowed to strip those measures from the bill. But now moderate senators, including some Democrats, uneasy with the size of the package are considering trimming one of Obama’s top priorities: providing seed money for doctors and hospitals to begin computerizing patient records, a first step in broader reforms he plans to offer on health care. 

Similar disconnects are evident in the public campaign for the legislation. 

A host of unions and liberal advocacy groups have stepped up to try to help Obama move the legislation through Congress. Their intentions are all good, but it’s an untested alliance given the Obama’s decision to shun such independent support in the campaign. The effort also lacks the dramatic punch -- and deep pockets -- that became the signature of his campaign. 

According to Evan Tracey, president of Campaign Media Analysis Group, about $65,000 has been spent on pro-stimulus ads in a handful of states. 

In the last week of the presidential campaign, Obama was spending an average of $250,000 a day on commercials in the Philadelphia market, alone. 

The pro-stimulus television ads aired by the outside coalitions echo Obama’s message about helping working families survive the worst economic conditions since World War II.

But the legally required lack of coordination between the White House and it’s newest allies has led to other inefficiencies. 

Among the targets of the television ad campaign was New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg. Just days later, Obama nominated Gregg to become his new Commerce Secretary. 

More discordant, however, was the impact of a radio ad by Americans United for Change. 

"Are you with Rush or with Obama?” the commentator asked. 

The commercial ran in only three states, but it wound up capturing national headlines, elevating a mere radio talk show host to presidential status and sending the White House efforts to recruit moderate Republican support wildly off message. 

Owning the bully pulpit 

During the presidential campaign, Obama’s team used big events to elevate the candidate’s big ideas or respond to emerging, divisive issues. Remember Philadelphia and the big speech on race relations?

That’s not so easy to do in the White House, which thrives on its own rhythms and traditions. 

Obama has certainly tried to exploit those opportunities, offering radio addresses and using what seem to be such routine administration events as announcing a new cabinet pick to pitch the recovery package. 

In addition, he has fallen back on the time honored White House photo-op/meet-and-greet to drive the news of the day. 

But the Obama team hasn’t mastered the less-is-more formula that isolates a presidential appearance for maximum impact. 

Simply put, the way to exploit a White House moment is not to compete with it. 

That kind of PR self control can drive the coverage from the relentless and omnipresent cable outlets back -- again and again -- to that singular event. 

But the new White House sometimes runs over its own, central economic message. 

For instance, Obama hosted at the White House nearly a dozen corporate executives who support his recovery package on the same day the House passed its version of the legislation on a party line vote. 

As a consequence, the support for the legislation from a host of cutting edge technology CEOs was buried amid coverage of the lack of a single House Republican vote in favor of it. 

On Monday the White House tried again. 

Obama had sought to illustrate the support he has among governors for the stimulus package by inviting Republican Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas for remarks. 

But that news was quickly overtaken by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s swearing in ceremony. 

Indeed, the Obama team has yet to fully exploit the open and enthusiastic support it has received from such higher profile Republican governors as Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California for his stimulus program. 

Eric Eikenberg, Crist’s chief of staff, said in an interview this week that his boss is hoping federal aid can help the Sunshine State avoid significant layoffs and that the governor is burning the phone lines to turn Republican opposition on Capitol Hill into support. 

“This can help Florida,” Eikenberg said. 

But when White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs had a chance to highlight that support on Wednesday, he referred reporters to television interviews of Crist on cable networks rather than an Oval Office moment. 

To make matter worse, the White House’s failure to space out events took another toll on its economic public relations campaign. 

Just hours after Obama issued new rules on corporate compensation aimed at renewing public support for his recovery package, he signed a major bill expanding health care for children. 

“To me, each one of those is a stand alone event,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic political consultant. “There is a risk of overwhelming things.”

[liv549]

ah yes. The conservative Politico says he is losing the message war and so it must be so.

I don''t know about that. Where I work everyone was listening to the President last night and they were cheering over what he had to say about tired old Republican answers to everything. Of course we are real people no spin doctors. We all know others losing their jobs and get that things are really bad. We also get that "let them eat tax cuts" is not going to help us out.

[liv549]

ah yes. The conservative Politico says he is losing the message war and so it must be so.

I don''t know about that. Where I work everyone was listening to the President last night and they were cheering over what he had to say about tired old Republican answers to everything. Of course we are real people no spin doctors. We all know others losing their jobs and get that things are really bad. We also get that "let them eat tax cuts" is not going to help us out.

[wvu74621]

There are americans that still think Obamas policies will change the economic situation. Fortunately as so many posters have shown and I don''t have to repost, Obama is only covering a sucking chest wound with a band-aid. The Obama lemmings are about to wake up from their kool-aid induced feeling of promise.

[andie52]

Neither party seems to able to agree on what is pork and what isn''t but it''s interesting to see them at least trying ot work together.

[libra217]

Half the country opposes it.

Posted by rhs648 at 01:27 AM : Feb 06, 2009

Not true. CBSnews says only 39% oppose the stimulus bill.

[libra217]

Why? Half the country opposes it.

Posted by rhs648 at 01:27 AM : Feb 06, 2009

Why? Because the process HAS been bipartisan and is 1/3 tax cuts to make the Repubs happy, that''s why.

[rhs648]

It is dishonest for the Republicans to say that this process has not been bipartisan and that they have been "shut out". A large component of the stimulus package consists of the tax cuts demanded by the Republicans. They need to stop playing their political games and help to finalize the bill and GET IT PASSED. Sooner rather than later. Tomorrow if not tonight.


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Posted by libra217

Why? Half the country opposes it.

[libra217]

It is dishonest for the Republicans to say that this process has not been bipartisan and that they have been "shut out". A large component of the stimulus package consists of the tax cuts demanded by the Republicans. They need to stop playing their political games and help to finalize the bill and GET IT PASSED. Sooner rather than later. Tomorrow if not tonight.

[midlifevoter]

Republicans want the citizens of this nation to lay down and bleed. They want to see elderly people and children starving, homeless, and dying in the streets. They want to see the middle class heavily oppressed and retrained into conformance for a lower living standard, without whining, or diverse lifestyle expression.

Republicans want to see the citizens of the USA living like the citizens of the defuncy USSR....always hungry for propaganda and beliefs about their superiority over the rest of the world.

Republicans don''t get it. The Cold War is over. The old patterns don''t serve in a global economy. There is no unified command and control to oppose. There is no single nation to compete against economically. Political ideologies of the past are obsolete.

Intolerence for political and economic diversity is a sure ticket into the bottom of the pit. There is a sign down there that reads "Arrogance thrives here..take your number and suffer the long wait.."

When will the Republicans get it? Economic stimulus covers all facets of the diamond...those you like and see, those you don''t like and don''t see...it takes all kinds to move the economy. We all have to pull the cart!! Not just with your friends...everyone!!!

[tmittelstaed]

It''s a shame that Obama didn''t concentrate more on getting his cabinet seated first, stimulus bill second. But, putting pork into spending bills is standard on Capitol Hill. What matters is if the pork represents a significant percentage.

Obama can always veto it, and propose a new one.

[downsteamjm]

In his entire life, Obama has never had to deal with the real world. I hope he wakes up in time.

[cg37102006]

This is not the time for the normal DC back and forth about pork, tax cuts, liberals out of control, repubs wanting no one to pay tax cuts, blah blah. People, this country is closer to collapse than you think. I am not one for hype, but, seriously, things are bad. Businesses are closing left and right. Jobs are being slashed at an alarming rate. We need to do something quickly. Govt spending will create jobs, as do tax cuts. This bill has both, so let us get on with it. If nothing is done, and then GM, Chrysler, Ford , Citi and Bank of America all collapse this spring, this country will revisit Great Depression 2. We have to put aside politics as usual, come together and get something done now.

[citizenusa-2009]

That had the majority and had the ability to block anything that bush tried to put through and force him to compromise but they did not have the spine to stand up to bush.

Posted by endurorob at 02:52 PM : Feb 05, 2009

Like I said rob, do your homework. I don''t have time to explain it to you.

[citizenusa-2009]

The Iraq War was pork of the highest order. It was a giant steaming fatty mass of unnecessary pork fed to the us through lies and half-truths. Listening to Republicans talk about fiscal responsibility after supporting Iraq with no questions or competent oversight should make serious people queasy.

Posted by Smirk22 at 05:23 PM : Feb 05, 2009

You are ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!

[smirk22-2009]

If tax cuts and Republican policies worked, there would be plenty of jobs out there right now and we''d still have a surplus.

[smirk22-2009]

The Iraq War was pork of the highest order. It was a giant steaming fatty mass of unnecessary pork fed to the us through lies and half-truths. Listening to Republicans talk about fiscal responsibility after supporting Iraq with no questions or competent oversight should make serious people queasy.

[inketolstoy]

"since Republicans and their conservative talk-radio allies began railing against what they labeled as pork barrel spending within it."

It doesn''t take a Republican or a conservative to look at this plan (650 mill for converter boxes, 1 billion for solar powered hot water in Puerto Rico, 80 mill for honeybees, etc.) and think that this probably isn''t going to create many jobs or put food on the table. You idjets keep yelling that its repubs. vs. dems, but most poeple are figuring out that its Democrats scooping their share of pork after the Republicans poured billions down a hole a few months ago. I don''t care if the guy holding me up is riding a donkey or an elephant, I''m still getting robbed.

[biggcheese1]

$900-billion? HA! Drop in the bucket. It''s going to take 7 to 9 trillion just to mop up the corporate collapse that''s coming when the companies that guaranteed other companies losses start to melt like butter against a blow torch. Understand this, folks, the entire world economic system with but a few exceptions, like Russia, has been built like an Amway pyramid scheme out of products that have no inherent value. You bundle up some mortgages that were inflated to start with, then sell them to China for ten times their value and call them derivatives; financial contracts the value of which is derived from the value of something else. Company A, worth, say, a million smackers, guarantees a billion dollars worth of loans to Company B for Company C''s big premiums. Company A doesn''t for a moment think that Company C will default on it''s payments to Company B so Company A should be very comfortable indeed raking in all those premium profits year in and year out. But, all of a sudden, WHAT??? Company C DOES default. OMG!!! Sure Company A has been getting ginormous premiums for a few years but it has no where near the money needed to pay off the loans to Company B that it guaranteed Company C it would if it defaulted... which it did. THAT scenario is just starting to unravel. Hang on to your hats because it involves thousands of corporations worldwide. It''''s going to be a bumpy ride, folks.

[babooph]

Both parties came together so well to lose the two "pre-emptve wars"-WITH ENDLESS WASTED FUNDING!!!!!

[likeitis5050]

They went off acting exactly like what we are seeing today and....

By the end of 1994 you couldn''''t get a DumbwitCrap elected dog catcher!!

ROTFLMBAO!!!!


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Posted by I_H_Libturds

And so it goes...buy them books and buy them books and they still just want to eat the covers. Politicians, for being so smart, are some of the dumbest people on the planet. Too smart for their own good. You would think they would learn from history...or at the very least recent experiences...but no. Pelosi and Reid are going to over reach their power...they are going to take tax payers for idiots...why? Because at this point they are too drunk on power to have the common sense to stop themselves. It will happen...and then the next party in power will do likewise. The cycle never ends and it never fails to turn people against people trying to point fingers and lay blame. Face it people...it''s a job 99.999% of normal people will not take...that should tell you something about the kind of people lining up to be ''the politician''.