Americans Get Big Dose of Obama

(The Politico)  This story was written by Carol E. Lee

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He's been in office only six months, but already there's a strong sense of déjà vu around the way Americans are seeing and hearing from President Barack Obama.

The president keeps returning to the same communications tactics over and over, and all the pages of his PR playbook have one thing in common: a big dose of Obama.

His prime-time news conference Wednesday night, one of the standbys, brings his total to four. That's the same number that George W. Bush did - in eight years as president.

But as Obama's once-lofty approval ratings dip - and voters express skepticism over his plans for health care and the economy - the longevity of the White House's go-to techniques is being put to the test. One challenge for Obama's team in coming weeks: not overusing the president.

"They have to be careful about that," said former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry. "There are diminishing returns if you see the president too much. ... Part of this is just because he's fascinating and popular right now. Inevitably, they're going to hit some potholes, and they're going to have to adjust their strategy."

One troubling sign for the White House: TV networks were slow to sign on to Wednesday's prime-time news conference. And Obama's latest polls offer a strong reminder for the new White House that a president's popularity is perishable - and time is ticking.

"They've got their eye on the expiration date, and they're going to tap that well until it expires," said former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer. "And if they're successful, the well gets replenished. And success means that cap and trade and health care reform get signed into law."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed the idea of Obama overload. "It's important that the president continues to remind the American people what's at stake," Gibbs said Tuesday, when asked about Obama's nine health care speeches in nine days. "I don't think he can probably say that enough."

Here's a peek inside the playbook and the reasons why the White House keeps rinsing and repeating the same tactics:

The town-hall-style meeting

Call it Obama unplugged.

This has been one of Obama's favorite ways to get his message out. Since taking office, he has held more than a dozen town halls in eight states, as well as one streaming live online from the White House and one in Strasbourg, France.

For the White House, the events play to Obama's strengths. The crowds are adoring. He can give a speech laying out his message, unfiltered. And he can play Washington outsider for a few hours while demonstrating how popular he still is.

There's always the risk of a curveball question - but a small risk indeed, compared with the much greater chance for a funny, touching or downright lump-in-the-throat moment, like when Obama hugged a homeless woman in Florida and promised to help.

But the White House seemed to stack the deck a bit at Obama's last town hall in Virginia - where the White House picked the questions for Obama from those that were submitted online and through its social-networking sites.

And it scrapped a planned town hall in Michigan recently - changing it at the last minute to a speech rolling out a higher education initiative. But Obama will hold one Thursday in Ohio.

The major address

This brings out Obama's inner professor - as he explains in sometimes painstaking detail his views on a particular topic.

When the president is pitching a big initiative, he gives many smaller speeches on the topic. The ideas in those remarks are then collectively brought to a crescendo in a "major address" - a soup-to-nuts explanation of his views.

Obama has done this on the econom, detainees and torture policy, Iraq and U.S. relations with the Muslim world, but not yet on health care - so stay tuned.

"He tests out his message before he does the big speech and then after they do their big speeches, they don't let it drop because people's attention span is very short," said Gerald Rafshoon, former White House communications director for former President Jimmy Carter. "They follow through and cover all the bases."

The major address gets plenty of media coverage in the days beforehand, and the White House believes the "closing argument" approach is a powerful way to put Obama's message into political conversation. These lengthy speeches are heavy on detail, and their effectiveness is debatable. It's unclear how much the public takes in, as most of these addresses are nearly an hour long and have been delivered in the middle of the day.

The solo prime-time news conference

For Obama, the prime-time news conference is just another version of the town hall. Except reporters are the ones in the audience asking the questions, and because of the prime-time slot, it offers him an unfiltered hourlong slot. His message goes directly to viewers at home.

"It's not like going to doing something during the day, and it gets edited for the evening news," Rafshoon said. "He is getting through the filter. ... He can give it as long an answer as he wants, and they don't cut away from it. They don't edit it."

Like the town hall, Obama gets to deliver an opening statement laying out his message. The topics of questions are usually predictable. It's generally a cordial atmosphere, so even if the questions are tough, reporters only push so far and Obama gets to monopolize the time.

But, also like the town hall, the White House recently received criticism after an Obama news conference for suggesting ahead of time to a Huffington Post reporter that he would possibly get to ask the president a question about Iran.

Interviews, interviews, interviews

Obama has given more interviews than any recent president at this point in his term, according to a tally kept by veteran White House historian Martha Joynt Kumar.

Obama does the obvious: doling out different types of exclusives to the three networks and bringing cable into the fold, as he did in Africa with a one-on-one with CNN's Anderson Cooper.

But he also regularly sits for round-table interviews with regional reporters. He often speaks to foreign news outlets before arriving abroad to set the tone, and he courts specialty media, such as the Hispanic and black press.

The interview-palooza works because Obama is the star and he does not go off message. Plus, regional and foreign news media tend to be softer interviews and give better play than members of the White House press corps.

"It's more of a softball," said Greg Jenkins, the Bush White House's director of advance. "For anybody who doesn't get a crack at the president every day of the week, you're like, 'Oh, wow, OK. I'll ask my question and listen to what he says and move on.' ... You tend to get more traction out of those interviews."

The personal note

Part of Obama's broad appeal is his youth and perceived coolness. As president, he tries to maintain his street cred as a regular guy, husband and dad.

Obama usually infuses some type of pop culture element into his communications smorgasbord. The White House has leaned heavily on a variety of websites - streaming video of the Foo Fighters show on the South Lawn on whitehouse.gov and popping up websites for the recovery act, health reform and other specific initiatives.

During the stimulus debate, Obama paused to chat with ESPN and often peppers his interviews with tidbits about family life in the White House - both prompted and nprompted. He routinely ignores shouted questions when in earshot of his press corps but has responded to weigh in on the NBA finals and make a quip about the first dog, Bo.

Obama has also twice written intimate pieces for Parade magazine - no Professor Obama here, pitching policy prescriptions. The first was a letter to his daughters just before his Inauguration, and the second an essay for Father's Day.
By Carol E. Lee

[Michelle48188]

Obama in the British Media

Here is an interesting editorial from someone outside our country as to what is going on!


If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.

Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.

That is why he opened Pandora's Box by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions on waterboarding and other hardline interrogation techniques. He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to rush to Langley, Virginia to try to reassure a demoralised CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda..

"Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks," he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding? Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them - or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.

So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers...

President Pantywaist's recent world tour, cozying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America's enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners.

His only enemies are fellow Americans.

Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?

[Awake-Alive]

I am delighted to get a big dose of an intelligent, well-spoken president who is willing to tackle the many big challenges that have been ignored for so long. At long last, a commitment to providing quality health care while addressing the control of our health system by companies motivated only by profit. It has been a long time since any President was willing to appeal directly to the American people with regards to issues that deeply and personally impact us. I am grateful.

[Crupley]

People-we need to focus on the fact that President Obama is wasting our nation's money on old 'piece of garbage' plants(i.e. GM) where nobody wants to work anyway, instead of spending our nation's money wisely on exploration(NASA and deep sea). I'm personally flabbergasted that his administration has so severely cut NASA spending-what makes me even more irate is the fact that the Mars mission is basically being nixed. This is, of course, nothing new, but we need to know that we elected a man who is denying us the right to be human. To deny exploration, in any way, could, in essence cause a Marxist revolution if he continues down the path of the Bourgeoisie.

[topflite19]

Don't get in your felling's because you were left out of the big $$$$$$$$$$cs4466, You can help pay for what everyone else gets how does that sound........LOL.....sorry you didn't get any nut's......

[topflite19]

You see, he is paying everyone and every group he was affiliated with who got him the Pres. ACORN for example just got 52 MILLION $$$$$ OF THE STEM. PACKAGE DID YOU KNOW THAT....................HOW MUCH DID YOU GET?????????????????????? I DIDN'T GET A DIME............THOUGHT SO......YOU DIDN'T GET ANYTHING EITHER............

[cs4466]

Well you pretty much confirm my theory that any blogger that mentions the word "acorn" is a nut. 8-)

[topflite19]

The last eight years we were keeping the terriost out of your back yard roth5101. catch up you me go to work, who is going to pay for all of this tax and spend agenda. He is a smoth talker but that is all he is, he doen't even know about all of what is in the Bill he is trying to pass. He was asked a question and could not answer it. I guess because Gibbs didn't give him the answer. It is a shame we are about to go so far into debt that we are not going to be able to recover from this IDIOTS bills............

[cs4466]

After the tragedy which was the Bush administration I think a little more Obama is called for. More Obama please. Thank you.

[beaumuff]

If I see much more of Obama on TV I think I will get sick. When will he learn the party is over, his celebrity status is dropping like a rock and people are getting sick of it. If he wants to do something useful go tend the garden so we don't have to pay for that also.

[cs4466]

beaumutt: You have 7.5 years to go so get used to it hon. Try not to be bitter!

[roth5101]

I WELCOME THE SO CALLED BIG DOSE OF OBAMA. HE'S DOING WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE DURING THE LAST EIGHT YEARS WHEN THINGS WEREN'T BEING DONE. NOW IT'S TIME TO CATCH UP.
I WISH HIM LUCK IN EVERYTHING HE'S TRYING TO DO FOR US.

[johngarvey]

The time is now for medical care for all. Canada provides insurance for all. Yes, it is socialized medecine, but is making life an enjoyable experience, a venture that should be profited from ?

[beaumuff]

I agree, life should be enjoyable if not at the expense of somebodyelse as Obama wants. You get what you work for, not what Obama can steal.

[Joe_NY_15]

I think I've had just about enough of the S'whistler