Former President Bill Clinton’s Advice For Barack Obama

Former President Bill Clinton has some advice for President Barack Obama: only, unlike during the campaign, this time it isn’t basically “Go Cheney yourself.”

This time, Clinton, in comments carried widely on the Internet and on news wires, is urging Obama to tone down the doom and gloom and talk more hopeful.

Clinton has a point – but would that really be fitting for today’s situation?

The past few weeks have shown that when Obama lowered his profile and didn’t stress the breadth of the challenge and problem, support for his program declined. He also faced an opposition party that has a well-oiled message-delivery system ready to vote nearly en mass against the approach upon which he campaigned.

Speeches with positive affirmations like this would be unlikely to stop the bad economic news and Rush Limbaugh and other troop-gathering conservative talk show hosts would have a field day. Postive affirmations of self-esteem wouldn’t help, either — and if Al Franken does make it to the Senate and is seated before his 6 year term runs out you can bet money in Vegas that he won’t be doing Stuart Smiley.

Indeed, the parallels with FDR and the administration don’t work either because FDR didn’t have 24 hour news cycles, mega-second Internet updates of news sites and partisan websites that are often counter to what the President a) believes b) sees given the info he has and c) proposes.

Also: if Obama talked about how it isn’t as bad as people say or how it’ll be easier to get out of the situation then many think he would RUN COUNTER TO THIS WEB SEARCH on the economic news stories that anyone can do within seconds. And he would be accused of being a Pollyanna or a 2009 version of LBJ, except this time not talking about the Vietnam War, but soft pedaling the economy. The bottom line: 2009 may be a different year than other years with a President operating within a different polity, worldwide economic situation, and media-opinion-information delivery system than other Presidents. Clinton may have some good points — but he may be oh, so 20th century…

UPDATE: MSNBC’s First Read sees some of what I’ve noted here in a post noting that Obama today hits his one month anniversary:

Republicans have been unimpressed. In an e-mail blasted out (twice) to reporters this morning, they stress this has been a “disappointing month,” one “marked by wasteful spending, failed bipartisanship, and questionable ethics.”

Ask yourself this, what will be more remembered — Nancy Killefer’s taxes, field mice and Bill Lynn’s lobbying? Or that Obama got a more than $700 billion bill through Congress in less than a month — and most importantly, to both Democrats and Republicans, whether it works at all?

The great challenge that this White House is dealing with is the 24/7 nature of the Twittering media that no other president has ever dealt with on the policy front. It’s the natural evolution, considering that campaigns have gotten this kind of coverage for years. Still, this environment of incremental up-down rulings by the punditocracy (most notably business pundits, see yesterday) on Obama’s first month of policy, is quite the message handling challenge for this White House. Right now, it’s chosen to deal with it by flooding the zone; instead of pushing one storyline a week, they go ahead and try and sell multiple messages. Can they keep up the pace?