Politico...
President Obama short
on campaign surrogates
By Glenn Thrush
5/16/11
Candidate Barack Obama had no better buddy on the 2008 primary trail
than Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who was feared — and a little
hated — by Hillary Clinton’s campaign for being Obama’s most effective
female surrogate.
McCaskill still likes Obama, but like many other former high-profile
Obama surrogates from 2008, she’s not expected to reprise her starring
proxy role in 2012.
McCaskill has publicly parted ways with Obama on several major issues,
including entitlement reform, and needs to tend to her own challenging
reelection campaign, made all the tougher by controversy about
reimbursements for flights on her family’s private plane.
“She’s basically out of the picture for us this time around,” said an
Obama ally who considers McCaskill’s absence — and the difficulty of
replacing high-impact supporters like her — a potential problem.
“We need more defenders,” the ally said. Obama “is spending too much
time communicating about himself for himself. ... I think we’ve only
had a couple of people out there speaking for us over the last two
years, and clearly, that has to change.”
Obama’s team is confident it will eventually line up plenty of support,
especially when GOP front-runners emerge, creating a clearer contrast
to frame his campaign. But it won’t be easy.
Kick-starting a campaign after two years in the White House means old
friends tend to become less friendly after compromises and
disappointments — and finding validators who haven’t drawn an
administration paycheck becomes more difficult.
And the role of surrogates in 2012 will be fundamentally different than
last time — less about introducing Obama to the public and more about
explaining health care reform, the stimulus, two-and-half wars and the
flagging economy to anxious voters.
But the surrogate hunt is especially hard for Obama, who has relied on
an unusually small stable of trusted representatives and demands tight
control over his message and image. The insular modus operandi has
frequently ticked off outside-the-bubble Democrats, never the easiest
group to herd, even in the most tranquil times.
“Obama isn’t the insurgent anymore, and neither are surrogates like
McCaskill or [South Carolina Democratic Rep. Jim] Clyburn, so there’s a
tension there as they all deal with their own politics,” said George
Atherton, a professor at The George Washington University’s Graduate
School of Political Management and a veteran Democratic consultant.
“It’s not difficult for Obama to mobilize the people who work for him
like the Cabinet, but it will be interesting to see if he can get real
value out of outside people like he did in 2008,” he added.
One veteran Democrat and reliable cable-news show advocate for Obama
faults the White House’s handling of messaging.
“A lot of this had to do with the arrogance the Obama people had
initially,” the Democrat said. “No one was really in charge of
coordinating what we did. ... No one really communicated with us on a
consistent basis. It’s gotten better over the last year, but they still
have a way to go.”
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