You know things are getting dicey in Obamaland when the highly regarded Politico runs a full page Friday story titled, “Lesson: Communications Is More Than Eloquence — Obama’s campaign messaging skills not translating to office.”
Politico says the problem has many sources. Messages go from gloomy talk to happy talk and back to gloomy in a matter of days. Officials carrying the messages give lackluster sometimes laughable performances. The President has not fully explained the problem to the nation in a nationally televised address. Democrats in Congress have been sounding off on the Administration much more effectively than have Republicans (although, on that last, talk about low hurdles).
Some of this criticism is obvious. Some is unfair. Some misses the point.
The obvious part is the almost manic-depressive swing in White House prognoses about the economy. The President oversold the crisis to sell his stimulus plan. Then he or his aides may have read Hoover Institution John Taylor’s recently published analysis, probably the best single piece yet written on the crisis, Getting Off Track. I reviewed Taylor’s arguments in an earlier post, but his most telling point is that hyperventilating gloom from the White House in 2008 and now has itself played a major role in tanking investment and freezing the capital markets. Whether as a result of reading Taylor or not, the President last week tried to smile up the economic news. But as soon as he did, his vice president blurted out yet another comparison of today with the Great Depression (The Obama White House may soon be copying the Bush White House in more ways than Guantanamo policy, housing its vice president for most of the term in an “undisclosed location”).
The unfair part is the call for a nationally televised presidential address. The Obama people have put their man in a no-win situation here. They have had the President out so much that there’s talk in DC circles now of overexposure. Then, too, a national address is usually best used to move a vote in Congress — not to bore viewers with an economics lesson. Particularly at the start of their presidency, they should work closely to link presidential addresses to presidential victories, so as to build presidential credibility in the Washington power game. Mr. Obama is already paying a price for the growing perception that he and his people are not a force to be reckoned with. That price is the growing volume of dissenting voices coming from his own ranks.
But Politico misses the mark in a key way. The Obama Administration’s biggest problem is not how but what it communicates.
Consider a partial bill of particulars. It puts out a trillion dollar stimulus bill that includes very few dollars that will actually stimulate the economy, signaling that fixing the economy is but one of many priorities, unsettling all markets. It follows with talk of nationalizing banks, spooking the global equity markets in particular. Then comes a budget that projects almost unimaginable deficits. The global debt markets get jittery as the president of our biggest creditor, China, worries out loud about the credit worthiness of the U.S. government. If spooking the global markets during a global market crisis weren’t enough, the President’s budget includes talk (page 9) of using the tax code to penalize those who create and build new businesses and industries, that is, taking direct aim at the sources of virtually all U.S. job growth at a time of frighteningly rising unemployment.
Team Obama should study White House communications in the last year of the Carter Administration. Mr. Carter’s policies were similarly confused and at odds with market realities. The Carter people went through something like five budgets in that year, caught between tanking markets and rebellion from their liberal base at moves designed to deal with the economic turmoil. As a result, communications swung back and forth from one theme to another. In a similar way, communications has become problematic for the Obama administration, because policy has become problematic.
The fix? Focus on stabilizing the economy and only on stabilizing the economy. Don’t fold in other agendas. If that means adopting GOP-associated measure such as not allowing taxes on investment and entrepreneurship to go up, swallow hard and do it. If it means accepting that alarm from the global capital markets at gargantuan U.S. government spending must trump calls from House Speaker Pelois and Senate Leader Reid for even more spending, so be it. Cut spending plans. If the Administration makes economic recovery the only priority and is willing to make hard choices to achieve recovery, communications will follow.
