[Peace-discuss] Obama the propagandist

[C. G. Estabrook]

[From <http://www.tnr.com/book/review/confidence-men-ron-suskind>.]

...The reason [Obama told Ron Suskind] that he and his advisors had  
not been able to agree on a jobs program after unemployment began  
rising in December 2009 was that they didn’t “have a clean story that  
we wanted to tell against which we would measure various actions.” And  
he complained that “what was required to save the economy might not  
always match up with what would make for a good story.” I hadn’t heard  
this kind of language about storytelling for a decade. I first heard  
it from Democratic political consultants and activists in the 1980s.  
Unable to fathom Reagan’s continued popularity, they attributed it to  
his ability as an actor to frame his actions as a story. By telling an  
effective story, a politician could overcome the potential  
unpopularity of his views. He could convince voters to accept the  
discomforts of the present in the hope of a comfortable future.
Obama was using the concept of political storytelling in exactly the  
same way. True to form, he invoked Roosevelt and Reagan’s success.  
Roosevelt was able to remain popular even though “three-quarters of  
the things he did didn’t work,” because “he was able to project … ‘we  
are going to get through this.’” That was his story. Obama, Suskind,  
explained, admired “Reagan’s ability to project optimism when there  
may be no definable reason to be optimistic.” Reagan, Obama said, “was  
very comfortable in playing the role of president. And I think part of  
that really was his actor’s background.” Citing Reagan’s mastery of  
symbols and gestures, Obama remarked that “going forward as president,  
the symbols and gestures—what people are seeing coming out of this  
office—are at least as important as the policies we put forward.”

What can one say about the sheer silliness of this? Stories, symbols,  
and catchwords are important, but they merely dramatize how a  
politician sees the country and what a politician hopes to do. They  
can enliven what he wants to do—but if what he wants to do runs  
contrary to what people want, or what can be done, and if the results  
of his policies do not measure up to what he promises, and what people  
want, then even the most artful prose cannot rescue a president.  
Roosevelt’s “story” was successful because during his first term the  
unemployment rate was cut almost in half. Some of his programs failed,  
but by no means three-fourths of them. That first term saw tough  
banking reforms (which convinced the electorate that FDR was on their  
side rather than the banks), Social Security, the progressive income  
tax, the National Labor Relations Act, and so on. If unemployment had  
remained at 25 percent in 1936, then Roosevelt’s nostrums about “the  
only thing you have to fear is fear itself” would be recalled with the  
same scorn as Hoover’s assurances of prosperity.

Reagan, of course, preached optimism during the height of the  
recession of 1981-82, but he also insisted that by “staying the  
course” and retaining his policies, Americans would get through the  
recession. One can argue about who really deserves credit, Reagan or  
Volcker, for pulling America out of the stagflation from which it had  
suffered during the 1970s, but the fact is that it happened. And when  
Reagan ran in 1984 under the slogan, “It’s morning in America,” it  
wasn’t mindless optimism. America had gotten through a kind of night.  
So these politicians told stories, but the stories bore some relation  
to what they were doing, and what they were doing had the results that  
people wanted.

In fact, Obama had run for president and governed on the basis of a  
story—a story he articulated in his Democratic convention keynote  
address in 2004—of an America that is not red, blue, white, black, or  
brown, but a “United States of America.” This appeal resonated during  
the election, but as early as January 2009, when he was informed that  
Republicans as a bloc would oppose his stimulus program, he should  
have known that it had little basis in reality. He clung to it anyway.  
It governed his attitude toward Wall Street and toward the hard-line  
Republican opposition; and it led him to jeopardize his presidency and  
the country’s future. Yes, there was a failure of communication, but  
it was not because the President didn’t have a story. It was because  
the story was pure fiction...