Optimism, Cynicism and Expectation Management

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo once said beautifully that politicians: 'campaign in poetry but govern in prose'

And so it begins. 'We as a people will get there' has morphed seamlessly in to 'it will get worse before it gets better' without so much as a wry smile or a knowing wink from our next president. We saw a glimpse of this linguistic retrenchment on election night: 'we may not get there in one year' the president elect declared confidently... 'we may not even get there in one term...' wait, what? Did you just launch your reelection campaign before your innauguration? You bet he did.

- PE Obama is about as astute and strategic a communicator as you are likely to find. He knows how closely his words are watched and he does not choose them lightly. So why this speech at this time?
- Well first of course he is playing down expectations so as to lessen the inevitable bump that will be felt by liberals, Europeans and everyone under 25 when he fails to walk across the Reflecting Pool of the Washington monument on January 20th - but there's more.
- Politically he has nothing to lose and everything to gain from a further (short term) deterioration in the economy.
- He has an ambitious wish list - including his multibillion infrastructure reconstruction which has been on his agenda since long before this crisis - and a desperate congress will be more likely to acquiesce to grand government intervention as it did in 1933 with the New Deal.
- A second, related strength this pervasive sense of panic gives PE Obama is the ability to - in the immediate term at least - sidestep the tricky deficit issue. The Budget Deficit stands at $438billion, nearly twice the deficit inherited by Bill Clinton in 1993 ($290billion). Clinton also inherited a severely weakened economy but its relative strength compared to the current climate meant that his first 100 days were spent, largely unsuccessfully, walking the tightrope between stimulus cheerleaders on the one side and deficit hawks on the other. Today's more pronounced crisis gives PE Obama the opportunity to shelve a potentially bedevilling issue and focus all his attentions on his favorite stimulus programs.
- Finally, and cynically, a rapid worsening under president bush's watch - yes, that's right, I'm afraid he is STILL President - is just that much more of a rebound once the economy is brought or finds itself back on track.

The Communicator Speaks

On election night this commentator suggested that Obama's true strength lay in his potential for combining action with oratory. So far he appears to be fulfilling this potential.

In addition to some well received picks for Treasury (Geithner) and NEC (Summers) which have had the media swooning and the markets reaching for the smelling salts, Obama has established an Economic Recovery Advisory Board (modeled on Pres. Eisenhower's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) and appointed former Fed Chairman and fabled inflation slayer, Paul Volcker to head it. 

All decisive action. But being in PR 

what has really caught this writer's attention is the series of three, well-choreographed press conferences that he held in the days running up to Thanksgiving. While most President Elects would be keeping a low profile at this point, PE Obama has judged correctly that what is needed now is not just smart action but lashings and lashings of communication. He has, of course, left himself lots of wiggle room: on day one announcing a huge stimulus package without outlining how huge or where the money was coming from; on day two promising budget cuts without telling us who exactly was going to suffer. But frankly none of that is as important as just being out there, ahead of the story. Where for three months politicians have been reacting to the story as it unfolds, for three days PE Obama decided to be the story and let the world react to him. And by drip feeding positive news across a series of conferences while leaving us hungry for more details that is exactly what he has been able to achieve.  

By the way, on the subject this - from the Economist - is very useful:

Finally, A True Communicator In Chief

It's 3:00am in the East Village and the streets are still buzzing with the sounds of car horns, guitars and homemade percussion. This party promises to go all night.

Forget for a moment the magnitude of tonight's outcome. Forget America's inexhaustible capacity for reinvention or the sweeping policy changes which tonight's victory will usher in. Forget slavery and segregation; the injustices of the past or the supreme court justices that will almost certainly be appointed under an Obama presidency. Others will comment on such matters.

What interests me above all is that America finally, and once again, has a true 'Communicator in Chief'. With his ability to use language, discourse, tone and even humor to such dramatic effect, Barack Obama has the potential to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the Presidency's greatest archetypes. Leaders like Lincoln, FDR, and JFK had not only the courage to act but, crucially also, the power to persuade - and in coupling the two were able to bring around substantial change at a time when the country and the world needed it the most.