Barack Obama

Dems Are Getting Their Asses Kicked On The PR Front

November 17, 2010 By mario piperni

Quick, someone get a copy of Sun Tzu’s book over to the White House.

So there was a big meeting planned for this week between President Obama, Reid, McConnell, Pelosi and Boehner. It was going to deal with tax cuts and explore ways for the two sides to achieve some form of bipartisan agreement. Republicans, claiming they had no time to meet the President this week, asked for a postponement.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for the Mr. McConnell, the Kentucky lawmaker, said in an email that there had never really been a firm date. “We’ll have a meeting so that we can discuss issues that Republicans have long said can be accomplished together,” his message said. “These include reducing spending, growing jobs through increased trade and increasing domestic energy. The Leader is encouraged that the President wants to discuss these areas of agreement.”

DailyKos sees this as another GOP victory.

You see what’s happening here? Republicans — probably correctly — believe Democrats have already caved on tax cuts, so they’re moving the goal posts. Now they are defining bipartisanship as agreeing with them on GOP agenda items like decreasing spending and increased energy production (translation: more deepwater drilling).

Maybe the White House thought that folding their hand before sitting down at the table would make them look reasonable and bipartisan, and maybe they were right, but to the people they need to negotiate with, it just looked weak. And this is the predictable result: Republicans are taking their win, and moving the goalposts to try to accomplish the next item on their agenda.

Here’s another view.

It may be a petty, minor thing, but this is getting to the point where Obama is looking weak in many, many separate situations, and it’s becoming a car wreck for the White House. Having him doing public post-election soul searching; having him give repeated noises in the press about preemptively caving on whatever it is the GOP might be asking for: it’s a messaging/political disaster. He took a stout midterm loss and turned it into his own midterm disaster.

[...]

Long story short, if McConnell or Boehner can’t find time to meet at the president’s convenience, Obama should just call off the meeting and be done with it. When you’re President of the United States you shouldn’t be losing pissant little power plays.

So true. The GOP is doing a number on the President and he’s allowing them to get away with it. I’m hoping the White House has some secret power play they’ve been waiting to unleash – a strategy which justifies their current weak and cowardly stance in standing up to Republicans. If so, it might be time to put the new strategy into play before there’s no longer a war to be won.

Then again, perhaps we’re all wrong and President Obama has read the Art of War…

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. -Sun Tzu

I sure as hell hope so.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama Tagged With: bipartisanship, democrats, Obama, political issues, Republicans

Here’s What Obama Has Done In 21 Months

November 2, 2010 By mario piperni

Are you one of those scratching your heads asking, “What the f**k has Obama done so far?” If so, you haven’t been paying attention…or perhaps you’ve looking for answers from people like Limbaugh and Beck. If so, no worries. A new web site has emerged to deal with that very question. Namely, What The F**k Has Obama Done So Far.

No excuse for coming off as an uninformed dolt ever again, ok?

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Filed Under: Barack Obama Tagged With: Obama, political issues

It’s The Messaging, Stupid

October 24, 2010 By mario piperni

Frank Rich asks what happened to change we can believe in.

The reasons for his failure to reap credit for any economic accomplishments are a catechism by now: the dark cloud cast by undiminished unemployment, the relentless disinformation campaign of his political opponents, and the White House’s surprising ineptitude at selling its own achievements. But the most relentless drag on a chief executive who promised change we can believe in is even more ominous. It’s the country’s fatalistic sense that the stacked economic order that gave us the Great Recession remains not just in place but more entrenched and powerful than ever.

Yes, it is the economy stupid. But as Rich points out, just as stupid is the Democrats failure at putting out the word on their accomplishments. Unfortunately, public opinion often tends to get based not on the merits of an issue but instead on which side screams out loudest. Perception and not facts determines the worthiness of anything these days. And as I’ve noted before, the bigger and more effective megaphone is painted red, not blue.

So while ninety-five percent of Americans have seen a tax cut over the last eighteen months, a Times/CBS News poll indicates that only 8 percent of Americans are aware of this little fact. The health care act, the stimulus bill, the bailouts and Wall Street reform, while not perfect by any measure, have all reaped benefits which Democrats could be heralding in a more effective way. To call them inept in the art of messaging would be an understatement.

In tough economic times, there is no way to prevent the party in power from getting roughed up at election time regardless of blame. It’s just the way it is. What is avoidable though is for the governing power to remain silent on their accomplishments while giving their opposition free rein to mold public opinion. Dumb.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama Tagged With: frank rich, health care, messaging, Obama, political issues

Mythbusting Obama

October 18, 2010 By mario piperni

As you read this, you just know right-wing heads are exploding everywhere.

For a president under siege, maybe this could help.

In an episode of “Mythbusters” on the Discovery Channel to be shown on Dec. 8, President Obama will help determine whether the Greek scientist Archimedes really set fire to an invading Roman fleet using only mirrors and the reflected rays of the sun.

Producers of the television series are not saying exactly how Mr. Obama will help prove — or disprove — that myth. But the first presidential appearance is intended to help spur interest in math and science as part of the White House effort to increase American competitiveness in those subjects.

The right is going to find much to criticize about the President appearing on Mythbusters. ‘Disrespectful to the office’, ‘demeaning’, blah, blah, blah. Let them. The following is from 2006 but I doubt much has changed.

The disappointing performance of U.S. teenagers in math and science on an international exam, in scores released yesterday, has sparked calls for improvement in public schools to help the country keep pace in the global economy.

The scores from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment showed that U.S. 15-year-olds trailed their peers from many industrialized countries. The average science score of U.S. students lagged behind those in 16 of 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that represents the world’s richest countries. The U.S. students were further behind in math, trailing counterparts in 23 countries.

President Obama on Mythbusters? If it helps spark interest in science, then why not.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, education, science Tagged With: education obama, political issues, science, tv

Obama and the Long View

October 15, 2010 By mario piperni

I love posting the above illustration because it pisses off right-wing kooks as much as it does. No other illustration of mine has generated more hate mail than this one. Obama Derangement Syndrome runs deep.

New York Times interview with Barack Obama. A good read.

And so what I feel good about is the fact that even as we were in the midst of crisis, we were still able to keep our eye on some of these bigger long-term problems and have started moving the country in the right direction.

Now, there was a price to pay for that, and that price was primarily political. If I had not had a crisis before me, we wouldn’t have started with a stimulus bill, which was easy to caricature as a big-spending liberal agenda. I certainly would not have had to shore up the banking system in a way that rightly generated a lot of frustration among people who wondered why it was that the very folks who caused the financial crisis seemed to be landing on their feet and getting help from the government.

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Something that I have learned over the last couple of years is that I have to make decisions based on the long view. And I have to suppress my own desire for a short-term fix if I’m going to be able to lead the country effectively over the long term… I will keep on making that case, and I think that to point — to quote my vice president — I believe that voters are going to stop comparing me to the Almighty and compare me to the alternative.

The problem is one of having enough people understand that very point in a time of deep recession – a time when the President faces an opposition more concerned with getting back into power than they are about the welfare of the people they were elected to serve.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama Tagged With: Barack Obama, new york times, political issues