Interesting panel of presidential speech writers on C-Span
yesterday.
A couple of the speech writers, in addition to explaining
the process of putting together
a White House speech, which is a committee project,
commented specifically on BHO's
speeches. Essentially they are great at build-ups but
abysmal on delivering the goods
in terms of specific policy proposals. Many are also
unfocused, a theme in the article
that follows. Too many bases are covered, and few are
covered well. There is also
a basic disconnect between the WH worldview and public
events, as if the admin
simply doesn't care about the issues that concern the
average citizen and is
ideology driven.
In fairness, two of the other speech writers were party
line Democrats who keep
the flame burning for Obama, but even one of them had no
problem, in terms
of analyzing the speeches professionally, in pointing out
that most have
been jumbled messes. The rhetorical style is top rate, all
agreed, but
in terms of message, well, strictly amateur. Hence their
ineffectiveness.
Consensus: Obama, Democrats missed their window
posted at 12:55 pm on September 7, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
Today is more or less the official opening of the midterm
general election, even though a handful of states still have
primaries in the next two weeks. The consensus appears to
be that Democrats are heading to the woodshed, and perhaps
to minority status in both chambers of Congress, thanks to
economic policies that have left the US with high
unemployment, low consumer confidence, and enormous public
debt. Barack Obama spent the weekend promising to pivot his
attention to joblessness, but three analysts say that the
President missed his window.
First, Byron
York:
Two days before Christmas, Politico reported that White
House officials believed it would last until February —
after which Obama would make a “very hard pivot” to the
jobs issue.
But health care dragged on even longer; the bill didn’t
pass until March 21. Even then, with his No. 1 priority
accomplished, Obama did not execute the long-awaited pivot
and go full-tilt on the economy. In fact, at times it was
hard to tell just what he was doing. “So has he already
made the hard pivot to jobs, or are we still waiting for
that to happen?” a reporter asked White House press
secretary Robert Gibbs during that time.
Then came months during which Obama sometimes talked
about the economy and sometimes talked about energy and
sometimes about immigration and sometimes the Middle East
and sometimes about other stuff. Watching the polls,
Democrats squirmed, seeing their hopes for November grow
dimmer and dimmer. Republicans looked on, bewildered.
“I don’t get it,” GOP pollster David Winston told me at
the time. “I don’t understand what he is doing. He’s not
addressing the No. 1 issue that Americans want him to
address.”
Mark
Halperin says that it’s the White House that didn’t
“get it,” and that Democrats had plenty of warning. If
Scott Brown’s election surprise in deep-blue Massachusetts
didn’t wake them up, they have no one to blame but
themselves:
Even with Obama’s announcements this week proposing new
infrastructure policy and business tax credits, the
President’s party has done little since Brown’s victory to
improve its standing on those priorities. House and Senate
Democrats have wasted the year futilely trying to sell
their past accomplishments, and the President has been
distracted by the BP oil spill, the war in Afghanistan and
negotiations on the Middle East. Second, anti-Obama anger
over his record on economic issues will spur Republicans
and unaligned voters to the polls to send a message to the
majority party, while Democrats, including the young and
first-time voters who propelled Barack Obama to the White
House just two years ago, have little enthusiasm for
casting ballots this time around.
So far, at least, Democrats have offered no compelling
case on the economy, either to energize their base or take
the edge off the Republican assertion that voters need to
send a message to Obama and check his big-spending ways.
Polls show that the Republican argument is connecting with
likely voters even more than with citizens overall.
Many months of mostly negative economic news,
particularly on unemployment, have left the Democrats
unable to build a happy-days-are-here-again platform.
Democratic legislative achievements, like health care, are
being used against the President’s party, and few
Democratic candidates are touting their role in these
bittersweet victories. Road tests of a variety of
alternative messages (“It’s George Bush’s fault,”
“Republican control of Congress would make things even
worse,” “Republicans have blocked progress in Washington,”
“Republicans want to take away your Social Security,”
“Republicans are wacky extremists”) have had a very
limited effect so far. In fact, every bit of national and
race-by-race polling data suggests extensive deterioration
of the Democrats’ position as the year has gone on. One
sign of the Democrats weakness on the economic
battlefield: the looming fight over whether to extend the
Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, once seen by
strategists in the White House and on Capitol Hill as a
huge opportunity for their party, is now a face-off
Republicans are hotly anticipating.
Halperin uses the word “tsunami” to describe the coming
midterm prospects for the GOP. So does Politico’s
Mike Allen:
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out Tuesday found
that that the administration’s “Recovery Summer” was a
bust: In May, 40 percent of respondents said the economy
would get better in the next 12 months. Now, that figure
is 26 percent.
Democrats, it’s now clear, could lose bigger than they
did in the Republican revolution of 1994, which produced
House Speaker Newt Gingrich in a 54-seat GOP gain. This
year, Republicans would need a 39-seat pickup to seize
control, and forecasts for their gains run as high as 60
seats. …
In the ABC/Washington Post poll, an astonishing 92
percent of respondents described the state of the nation’s
economy as bad, compared with 8 percent who said it was
good. (The figure was 90 percent in July, and peaked at 94
percent in January.) For the first time in Barack Obama’s
presidency, the poll found that more people disapproved of
his overall handling of his job than approved: 52 percent
disapproved, while 46 percent approved.
And in another first, more people said Obama’s economic
plan was making the economy worse (33 percent) than
thought it was making the economy better (30 percent),
while 36 percent said his programs were having “no real
effect.”
Poll after poll showed that the economy and jobs were the
highest priorities for American voters all throughout 2009.
Instead of focusing on jobs and joblessness and implementing
policies that would actually address both, Democrats instead
focused on a health-care overhaul that voters didn’t want.
After they passed ObamaCare, the White House decided to
focus on a new law in Arizona to enforce the immigration
laws that Obama more or less ignored, until the Gulf spill
took up most of their attention more than a month after it
started. The only focus on the economy came from Joe Biden,
who touted “Recovery Summer” while economic indicators all
went the wrong direction.
Voters have concluded that this administration and its
Democratic colleagues in Congressional leadership either
don’t care about the economy or have no clue how to address
it. They are certainly not impressed with a President who promised
a “hard pivot” in December and took nine months
to begin executing it. Even the Titanic managed to maneuver
a little more quickly than that and didn’t focus on
rearranging deck chairs first. Obama missed his
window, and it’s far too late to miss the iceberg now.
