Our political Quote of the Day comes from Dick Polman, who notes that President Barack Obama was appealing directly to independent voters in his talk to House Republicans on Friday. Polman wonders if Obama is following a strategy from a popular TV show:
If you’re similarly hunkered, go ahead and decide for yourself whether Obama or the House Republicans “won” the faceoff. Or you can step back – as I am – and simply take a look at the president’s communication strategy.
In part, he was trying to channel Aaron Sorkin.
Sorkin, of course, is the wonky, wordy scriptwriter best known for his TV show, The West Wing. I’ll return to him momentarily.
What struck me most about Obama’s performance is that while he was obviously trying to engage with the House Republicans, pointing out common ground while also dismissing some of their arguments as “boilerplate” and “talking points,” he was really using the forum to talk over their heads to the broader audience – most notably, to the burgeoning number of independents in the electorate.
Independents are particularly upset about the incessant partisan strife that gridlocks Washington. Time and again over a span of 80 minutes, Obama returned to that theme as he stepped back from the process in order to critique it. It was all very meta.
He then gives some extensive samples from Obama’s talk (go to the link to read them). And then he writes:
I was listening to all these appeals to the independent voter’s sensibility when it dawned on me that a previous president had spoken in a similar fashion, declaring himself fed up with the ideological politics as usual. It took a few moments to recall his name – but there it was: Andrew Shepherd. This was in the 1995 film, The American President…starring Michael Douglas, and scripted by Aaron Sorkin.
Shepherd, weary of being ideologically assailed by an opposition senator named Bob Rumson, decided at the film’s climax to talk straight to the American people about the polarized process:
“This is a country made up of people with hard jobs that they’re terrified of losing. The roots of freedom are of little or no interest to them at the moment. We are a nation afraid to go out at night. We’re a society that has assigned low priority to education and has looked the other way while our public schools have been decimated. We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a (focus) group of middle-caged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character…and you scream about patriotism…If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I’ll show up. This is a time for serious men, Bob, and your 15 minutes are up. My name’s Andrew Shepherd, and I am the president.”
Cue upswell of music…Granted, that was a classic Hollywood ending, and Shepherd was feistier than Obama (although the real president did have an exquisite line about Republican opposition to the stimulus bill: “A lot of you guys have gone to appear at ribbon cuttings for the same projects that you voted against”). And life rarely imitates art anyway. But, all told, Obama made good use of the GOP forum to speak the independents’ language – and to underscore the fact that when he has the microphone, he dominates. The strategy Friday was to win back those independents, to demonstrate that he is on their side. At the very least, he maximized his opportunity.
And here’s a question for his most implacable critics: Did you happen to notice that he talked politics and policy with off-the-cuff eloquence for an hour of Q-and-A without the benefit of a teleprompter (or even notes)? If conservatives give up their silly teleprompter meme, that could at least be a start down the long road to common ground.
But the meme won’t be abandoned by some. American politics now in some ways truly resembles schoolyard teasing. It”s seen in who insist on calling Democrats “the Democrat party” because they know Democrats don’t like it. Truly passionate debate over issues has given way in many cases to spitefulness hiding under a political mask.
And, yes, Obama turned what could have been political lemon into political lemonade. But his problem will be this: how can he replicate this type of setting? He came into office seeming to want to set a record for the number of press conferences, but pulled back when the political waters got rough. Perhaps Obama and his handlers will review the Friday video and conclude that he is at his best when he is confronting criticism (from the press or politicos)and showing that there is a logic and virtue in nuance on some issues His critics would then probably liken him to a college lecturer — but lecturers do teach and many of them hold their jobs for a long time.
And the segment of the population most open to nuance? Independent voters.
The big, fat hitch:
Everything depends on some success on the jobs front. With jobless numbers stubbornly not budging, all the verbal skills and forums that could be positive oould be meaningless.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.