(cross-posted on Gnomanomics)
Yesterday, President Obama gave a public address regarding the debt ceiling negotiations.
The reaction from progressives was that it was a bland address, lacking any fire or punch that is appropriate for this situation.
But what was his target audience? It certainly was not progressives. Progressives are not the ones he has to convince on this issue. It was not Republican diehards, because they cannot be convinced. It was the portion of independents who do not usually pay attention to politics.
That is the population he mainly reaches when he preempts The Bachelorette to give a televised speech.
From that context, what must his speech be tailored to do?
1. It has to teach the basic facts on a very simple level.
2. It has to avoid coming across as political bickering--something that turns the "uninteresteds" off immediately.
3. It has to emphasize what is at stake in simple, but convincing, terms.
4. It has to sound sincere.
5. It has to present a way forward.
6. It has to be short.
Most of these things are outside of the "hearing" (or maybe "enthusiasm") range of a fired up Progressive base.
So that is what we saw. Not a stump speech meant to stir up his base, but a carefully crafted message meant to draw the uninterested into a debate about a fairly technical subject that they otherwise would not understand the stakes of.
He also called on us to contact our representatives. Time will tell if he reached enough of these independents to get a sizable response. I doubt it did.
But I don't think that's the main reason president Obama gave this address.
My suspicion is that the main reason is this. President Obama wants to ensure that as many Americans as possible know to blame Republicans if the country either defaults or stops paying out things like military salaries and medicare bills. By reaching the uninteresteds with a simple explanation of current events, he is putting pressure on Republicans by educating an even larger portion of the country as to who to blame if these events come to pass. This puts negotiation pressure on Republicans by further pinning the looming problems on them, even if pressure doesn't materialize in the form of callers slamming their phone banks.
It also, either through serendipity or design, helped president Obama's case when Rep. Boehner gave his rebuttal, in which he sounded highly partisan and openly stressed the inflexible "take it or leave it" approach that Republicans are taking on this issue.
So, I think the reason Progressives are criticizing this speech as such a bland one is they're misunderstanding what kind of a maneuver it was. It wasn't meant to be a checkmate, but more of a Mysterious Rook Move.
And, to answer Chris Matthews' point of why president Obama would take a prime time tv slot to give such a bland address? Because it was not Prime Time to be melodramatic. It was merely Prime Time to reach uninteresteds who watch tv after work.
Sometimes we political junkies forget that we're the vast minority of the American population. Those of us who pay attention have already made up our minds and become quite polarized about this issue, so president Obama was recruiting new blood.