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Politico...
President
Obama struggles with
economic message
By Carrie Budoff Brown
6/24/11
President
Barack Obama isn’t just
grasping for ways to jolt the flailing economy.
He’s
struggling simply to find the
right words to talk about it.
A
growing number of Democratic
strategists — including Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod —
said the
party needs to let go of George W. Bush and the past once and for all.
Democrats now “own” the economy, says party chief Debbie Wasserman
Schultz.
With
the past out of bounds, the
present gloomy and the White House’s “winning the future” mantra judged
by some
as a bit too distant, Obama risks running out of time — and tenses — to
craft a
strategy that will woo back disaffected voters. It all adds up to a
messaging
minefield for Obama as it becomes increasingly likely that he could be
the
first president in more than six decades to seek reelection with an
unemployment rate above 8 percent.
“My
sense is they might be
recalibrating” on the president’s economic pitch, said Democratic
strategist
James Carville, who has criticized the White House’s messaging
operation. “A
lot of people are just trying to win tomorrow.”
The
biggest challenge for Obama might
be this: There’s a very good chance he’ll never be able to state with
certainty
that the economy has truly recovered before voters go to the polls in
2012. If
he can’t declare victory — only patchwork progress — that’s a lot less
inspiring rallying cry in an election almost sure to turn on pocketbook
issues.
He
also has to navigate the stubborn
gulf between the data and voter perceptions. The facts show the economy
has
added jobs for 15 straight months — not a bad streak. But compared with
high
gas prices, record-low housing values and the occasional uptick in the
unemployment rate, it’s no wonder voters tell pollsters they’re sour on
the
economy — with four in five saying in a recent AP-GfK Poll that the
economy is
in poor shape.
Democratic
officials argue that as
long as the economy is troubled, the president’s message will be viewed
through
the same prism — and no amount of poll-tested phrases will change that
reality.
So Obama is sticking by his layered approach: Remind voters that he
inherited a
crisis and took some unpopular steps to stop the free-fall, argue that
the
recovery is under way but acknowledge the job isn’t done and detail a
vision
for the future.
The
White House would not comment on
the record for this story.
Read
the rest of the story at Politico
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