Selling Sanity

by digby

Chuck Todd says:

Obama’s 24-hour media blitz to get control of the salesmanship of his economic plan has been an impressive P.R. campaign. But it does raise this question: Would Republicans (beyond the triumvirate of Collins, Snowe, and Specter) have been more receptive to the plan had Obama started this intense pitch a week ago? It seems as if he's making a pitch for something that's, well, already sold.


I guess somebody forgot to tell Todd about the conference and the fact that Specter and Collins say that they won't vote for the plan if it differs in any way from the Senate plan they knocked out. It ain't over yet.

I also think Todd doesn't realize that this has to be an ongoing effort because you have people like JimVandehei on television telling the country that the plan probably won't work and so it's politically risky for Obama blame Republicans for the mess he inherited:

Norah O'Donnell: Let's talk aboutthe politics of all this because President Obama was pretty tough on the Republicans. He got just 3 in this vote today and last night he essentially said, "Listen, it's hard for me to take a bunch of criticism from folks about this package when they're the ones that presided over doubling the naitonal debt. I'm not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility." Does that kind of pointing the finger back at the Republicans work for him?

Vandehei: I don't know if it works for him, but it's certainly true. As you well know, under Bush Republicans spent a hell of a lot of money, especially in the defense area and cut a lot of taxes, leaving a big deficit for Obama. So when you talk about that it is all accurate and he did inherit this economic mess.

However, now putting together this stimulus bill and the bailout that was unveiled today, this is all Obama. he is taking ownership of a 1.3 billion dollar solution. because he can't get any Republicans on board, he is going to have ownership of this for sometime. And I do think it's risky politically because most economists, despite what Obama said last night when he dismissed whether Biden said there's a thirty percent chance that this thing might not work, most economists will tell you that that is true, that here's a high percentage chance that it won't work.


Yeah. Obama's going to have to be on the road during his entire term with that kind of commentary going out on television.

First of all, I questioned this emphasis on Obama inheriting a deficit. People are sympathetic, I'm sure, but if that's the main problem then they expect him to fix it, not complain about it. By emphasizing the deficit and the national debt as being a huge problem, he is just setting the table for the fiscal scolds to seize the agenda --- and that is the last thing we need.

The problem isn't that Bush doubled the national debt, although nobody's happy about it. It's that he doubled the national debt by starting an unnecessaary war and refusing to tax his rich friends to pay for it. Government debt is morally neutral. It can happen out of necessity, as in an emergency or for long term investment, and it can happen out of profligacy and ineptitude as with the trillion dollar Iraq war. It's important that Obama make distinctions between those things or he risks making the debt the reason for the meltdown, which it isn't. In fact, raising the debt is the solution to the meltdown.

(If he wants to attack the Republicans for the meltdown, I'd go after their deregulation of the banking industry and their insistence on making this country a nation that depends upon finacial legerdemain for growth instead of actually making things people want to buy. But that's just me.)

But Vandehei is also being incredibly misleading when he says that most economists say the stimulus plan won't work and so Obama is taking a big political risk. It might be helpful to point out that the reason many economists are pessimistic is because the plan's not big enough, not because it's raising the debt --- and the reason that Obama "can't get any Republicans on board" is because a)they are political sociopaths and b) they are saying it is far too big and should be all tax cuts. The only economists who think that will work are unreconstructed wingnuts. That Vandehei thinks Republicans will benefit if the plan fails, even though their own plans are galactically wrongheaded, shows how the villagers help push the country right.

So that's why Obama has to go directly to the people. Walter Shapiro and Bill O'Reilly may find his answers dull and longwinded, but I would guess that the average citizen wants to hear their president explain what's going on in a thoughtful and rational manner. Perhaps if these beltway types weren't so boored with all this icky talk of numbers, they could better explain it when they go on television than Vandehei does above.

If they did their jobs, Obama wouldn't have to do it for them.


Update: Media Matters has a good rundown of the media helping the Republicans spin their victory.
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