Quick, in a sentence or less, what's President Obama about?
Two years into his presidency, what's his brand?
The two I came up with -- Pragmatism (the President Who Gets Things Done) and New Thinking (the President Who Moves Us Past the Tired Old Debates Between Right and Left) -- don't exactly thrill. The second one is probably better, but that's basically Third Wayism, which was Clinton's back when it was fresh-seeming (and when the tech-boom economy was creating 400,000 jobs a month.) In any case, it doesn't seem to suit Obama -- I'm talking marketing -- because the Right has successfully labeled him a liberal.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that Obama's big problem is marketing. Rather, his marketing failure -- his lack of a brand -- grows out of conceptual confusion and a lack of conviction.
Obama's marketing during his campaign was extraordinary. His brand was so crisp and clear. Barack Obama = Change. He wasn't just advocating change, or representing Change. He was Change. Then came the task of governing, and either because of choice or necessity (no need to take on that debate here), he ceased to be an agent of Change. He needed a new brand.
My sense is that Obama intended to be the president Who Did Big Things. And by tackling health care and Wall Street reform, he could reasonably lay claim to the title. President Obama = Boldness. That was the idea, but the White House never committed to it, perhaps because they worried about charges of liberal "overreach." In any case, his caution and penchant for compromise cut against the image. President Boldness didn't seem bold at all. At some point, the White House stopped trying to define him altogether.
It's obvious to most progressives that Obama needs to become the champion of the non-rich, someone who eagerly battles powerful interests on their behalf. President Man of the People. I'd argue that this is always the best message for Democrats -- if they don't stand for this, what do they stand for? -- and now, at this populist, Wall Street-hating moment, there shouldn't even be a question.
But Obama is clearly reluctant toinhabit this identity, and even if wanted to, it would be a tough sell due in large part to his consistent softness on the Big Banks. And the ostensibly pro-people health care bill strengthened corporate interests, and he dealt away what would've been its most populist plank. The Wall Street Reform Bill was somewhat populist (or at least popular), but Obama helped to kill the two most progressive elements: the strongest derivatives measure and the effort to break up the Big Banks. Had Obama decided to go after Wall Street, scarcely any branding would've been necessary.
How lame thinking begets bad branding is the subject of this Mark Thoma post, (also discussed by bobswern), which delivers the news that after the midterms, President Obama convened a meeting to debate whether unemployment was stuctural or cyclical. As Krugmanpoints out, every progressive economist believes unemployment is largely cyclical, but Obama, at this late date, is still trying to figure out what he thinks, and this confusion led to marketing mediocrity in the run-up to the elections. Thoma:
The administration needed to be out there pushing for employment policies, doing everything it could to signal to people that it was on their side, not the side of corporations and big banks. That requires that you figure out that you have a cyclical unemployment problem before the election is all but over, and that you begin pushing for solutions in public forums. That push needs to start at the very top with Obama, and it needs to be reinforced every single day by other administration officials. One mention by Obama in a Saturday address to the nation doesn't get the job done.
My point is not there's no distinction between Obama and the GOP (of course there is); it's that the distinctions aren't sufficiently clear to form the basis of a brand. The president Who Is Somewhat Less Corporate than the GOP isn't going to set anyone's heart aflutter.
Obama's brandlessness would seem at first blush to be a colossal marketing failure. Obama -- smart, eloquent, appealing, distinct -- is certainly a good product. But because of the contradictions and murkiness of both his policy and his actions, no message suggests itself. So I can't fault the communications team for failing to find a compelling way to package Obama. This is the Presidency about Nothing.