Author: Jim Eltringham

Political consultant specializing in grassroots mobilization, online media, and public relations.

Obama’s press strategy is nefarious and manipulative – copy it!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Politico greeted night owls and early risers to a fantastic article about the White House press strategy.  The tenets have been the same for every President, controlling the President’s public image through strategic use of information – but no President has had the options that Barack Obama has.

Since great minds steal, anyone seeking to copy the Obama team’s strategy should consider three major points:

1. News outlets are no longer the gatekeepers for mass media exposure.

White House photographers have been commonplace in the past few decades; Politico notes that the current White House has made those photographs ubiquitous on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.  That these channels exist allow the President to go over the media’s head, but without mass media branding they wouldn’t work as well.

Ronald Reagan and his predecessors faced three networks and a handful of national newspapers.  Bill Clinton presided over the rise of cable news networks, as MSNBC and Fox joined CNN to increase scrutiny on the sturm and drang of partisan politics; online media helped increase that during George W. Bush’s administration.

Big News is now the victim of its own success.  There’s now a general awareness of political comings and goings, enough that political topics spill into entertainment shows.  And think about all the channels on your TV dial today.  Quasi-news shows – like The Daily Show, The View, and the Today Show – now allow politicians to maintain visibility without getting asked hard questions.  President Obama will have plenty of eyeballs on him when he fills out his NCAA brackets this year, but ESPN’s Stuart Scott probably won’t ask him any pointed questions about Benghazi or gun control.

(Sidebar: Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Obama did run into a tough line of questioning on ESPN of all places?  “So you like Duke to come out of the South Region.  What did you think was going to come out of the south when you shipped those guns to Mexico?”)

2.  Brand matters

This visibility serves to underscore a certain identity.  Visibility in and of itself is one thing, but carefully selecting the outlet where you’re seen helps create a message.

Obama wants voter to identify with him personally, so sharing his love for sports on ESPN helps.  Brief interviews to network anchors, fluff interviews on The View, and vague calls to action in the State of the Union all serve to underscore that he’s in control, but not so wonkish that he would be unapproachable.

Obama is able to pull this strategy off now because he is the President, has had two national campaigns, and is a known personality to most Americans.  During his 2008 primary campaign, he had to create that interest by launching a campaign that looked and felt different from traditional campaigns – from the Pepsi-ish logo to the embracing of supporter-created materials.  Sarah Palin tried to eschew the “lamestream media” in favor of communication via Facebook post – but her story was already written for her when she abruptly resigned as governor.  Her branding efforts were far more traditionally political, so they predictably flopped when she tried to use non-traditional outlets to reinforce them.

Palin’s attempt to bypass the media is a good example of how a clumsy, ham-fisted attempt to mimic Obama’s White House is doing can backfire.  If you’re running for dog catcher and there’s no demand for media accessibility, some of these won’t work; however if you’re the person everyone wants to interview, you can call some of the shots.

3. Working harder and smarter trumps media bias.

For decades – decades! – Republicans have groused about media bias.  They’ll point to surveys that show reporters tend to vote Democrat, and they’ll moan that no Republican will get the same treatment as Obama.

There will always be folks like Chris Matthews who fall in love with candidates like Obama and worship them with an illogical fervor that gives cult followers a run for their money.   But the creation of good coverage by the Obama Administration is more the result of meticulous work than a happy accident of reporter preference.  The communications team knows where the President needs to be seen and how to make the most out of each channel they use.  Backed with the currency of access to the White House, they put themselves in a position to write the rules of engagement – and aren’t shy about doing so.

Will [INSERT GOP CANDIDATE HERE] be able to create a carbon copy in 2016?  Probably not in terms of outcome.  But in terms of overall attitude, strategies, and tactics, a lot of what the Obama Team does is worth swiping.

Happy Valentine’s Day, unless that offends you…

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

There shall be no perforated cardstock exchanged today at Salemwood Elementary School in Malden, Massachusetts: the school has banned Valentine’s Day in the interest of cultural equality:

David DeRuosi, superintendent of Malden Public Schools, defended the principal’s decision – explaining that with new residents and new mandates “certain traditions we have to modify and adapt.”

Where's My Valentine?If you’re scoring at home, that means they are sending and receiving Valentines anyway.  That’s even more ridiculous than the idea of cancelling Valentine’s Day altogether.  They’re doing all the same stuff, just calling it something else.  It’s a lot of motion but no progress.

There are four really ridiculous points here:

1.  Cultural Equality through NO CULTURE FOR ANYONE

The administration at Salemwood has a tough task, and no doubt they try their best to deal with a diverse student body.  Still, how does one arrive at the conclusion that the best way to be multi-cultural is to be non-cultural?  The best way to include outsiders isn’t to eliminate customs; inclusion means including them.

This is an American cultural holiday, even if it has its roots in a religious celebration.  This is about large corporations influencing buying decisions through heavy media inundation, and there is nothing more American than that.  If you’re new to the nation, this is a good lesson.

In the interest of the good ol’ American melting pot, it’s also a good idea to reach out to parents and ask the ones who may be able to do so to buy an extra pack of Valentine cards in case someone in the class doesn’t have the extra scratch to buy those precious perforated cards.  And of course, such transactions need to be on the down-low.

Also with inclusion in mind, teachers aren’t out of line to send every student home with a full list of his or her classmates, so that he or she can sit there the night before and write out all their names on those cards.  This mode of torture will ensure that every child gets a card, and that every child practices their penmanship.

2. Valentine’s Day cancelled.  EDUCATION CRISIS SOLVED!

The whole episode conjures the mental image of a principal or any other educational official, struck with insomnia  staring at the ceiling of his or her bedroom.  Nationally, our school are struggling, math and science scores are through the floor, and any improvement will have to come on a shoestring budget.

Which problem to address first?  Apparently, holidays are the major impediment to learning, and must be restrained.  The answer to why our students aren’t keeping up?  They must feel uncomfortable in the classroom.

(By the way, who is more uncomfortable at school than the nerds?  And they get awesome grades.)

Truthfully, these folks may sit around for six days out of the week thinking of brilliant new ways to get kids to suck less at math, and we’d never hear about it because the national media wouldn’t cover it.  (And if they did cover it, no one would  retweet it.)  With that grain of salt taken, this is one of the ideas from a brainstorming session that ought to be swiped off the white board as quickly as possible.

And note that Valentine’s Day is not being eliminated so that the students can spend more time doing multiplication tables.  Actually, if you talk to the principal, it isn’t being eliminated at all…

3.  Wait, they aren’t using this extra time to learn more?

How is Salemwood using all the time saved by passing out Valentine’s Cards?

[Principal Carol] Keenan said they were not cancelling Valentine’s Day. Instead, the elementary school is going to celebrate a modified version.

“Every student is making a friendship card for another student,” she said. “I wanted to make sure that every single student is given the opportunity to get a card and to also give a card. I didn’t want some students feeling left out.”

So it’s just a rebranding deal?  It sounds like Salemwood is in cahoots with Carlton Cards, trying to cut into a Hallmark Holiday.

It isn’t clear how much though, effort, and study went into trading out Valentines for Friendship Cards, but it was too much.  Cancellation of classroom celebrations in favor of more time doing multiplication tables might sound less fun, but at least there would be a clear rationale.

4. Watch your language!

The most disturbing aspect of Salemwood’s reasoning?

Keenan also addressed the language barrier – noting there are 400 students in the school who don’t speak English.

She feared they “wouldn’t understand the concept of having to bring a card or get a card.”

Read that again: There are 400 kids in the school who don’t speak English.  That’s not just a big hurdle to communicating with their peers, it’s a potentially huge impediment to finding a well-paying job and establishing a successful life in this country.

Cancelling or rebranding the concept of Valentine’s Day doesn’t help these students, but devoting some time to teach them English probably would.

Not just what it says, but where

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Michael Turk had a great post on the center-right’s tech/data gap yesterday – but the best part was where he wrote it, in the American Spectator.

Spoiler alert: Turk warned that investing in new technology is not enough, that Republicans need smart people thinking about human behavior and voting patterns as well.  Good call: It’s not enough to figure out how people are interacting with a campaign, since most people in their right mind run away from political communication.  There’s an academic component in figuring out how to reach these people and keep them from running.  (Unless you use glue traps, of course, but there’s some questionable legality there.)

Ok, the right needs thinkers.  Where do they come from?  Political parties are good for resources, but not always innovation.  Remember that while much of the Obama infrastructure has been bequeathed unto the Democrat National Committee, it was the Obama campaign that built all the new toys.  Plus, if the eggheads don’t show immediate dividends, Republican candidates will wonder why the national party money that could be helping them win air wars is being spent to pay Lewis Skolnick.

The best spot for a bunch of data nerds is somewhere in the non-profit universe – whether it’s with an educational foundation like Heritage, an activist group like Americans for Prosperity or FreedomWorks, or a super PAC like American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS/Conservative Victory/Crossroads: The Next Generation.  With no donation limits, these groups can make a much better case to the big-ticket donors they’ll need to get the ball rolling.  Since the checks can be bigger, it’ll take fewer of them.

Conservative movement non-profits could be better positioned to start the process.  That makes The American Spectator a pretty good place to raise the issue.

Storming the Hall

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Major League Baseball linked to this article from its Twitter feed today.  It’s an impassioned case for Fernando Valenzuela to make the Hall of Fame.

What a joke, right?  No rational fan who looks at the stats could possibly think that, right?

Luckily, the author talks more about Fernandomania, and what he meant to the LA Dodgers of the 1980s.  “I won’t write about all of his statistics,” says Sarah Morris, “because they don’t tell the story.”

A few weeks ago, Major League Baseball announced a null class for 2013 induction.  Jack Morris and his splitter sat on the outside.  Advanced stats show that Morris didn’t have the best statistical career of any pitcher, and others in his era outperformed him over the long haul.  Morris’s candidacy comes down to pitching his team to a couple of titles and a 10-inning, 1-0 shutout in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.

What is the Hall of Fame, though?

If it’s just about stats, there’s no need for voting.  A computer could crunch the numbers and, five years after a player’s career is over, either place him in or out based on statistics measured against his peers and those already in the Hall.  Heck, if it was all about stats, you wouldn’t even have to play the games, would you?  You could have a computer pick the champion.  Hey, it works for college football.

Halls of Fame are supposed to be museums to their respective sports, and baseball’s hall is the most revered.  All-time players are shut out if they carry the stench of cheating or gambling.  Players enshrined in a Hall of Fame should be excellent, but even more importantly they should be significant.

Bernie Williams was, by most statistical measures, a more prolific player than Don Mattingly, but was named on fewer ballots.  Most likely, the voters recognized Mattingly for being the face of the New York Yankees through a lean decade.  Williams, always a class act, was tempermentally similar to Mattingly in many ways, played a tougher position, and exceeded his production – but was never the rock the franchise was built around.   That counts for something, and it should.

As former Yankees broadcaster Jim Kaat said, “It’s a Hall of Fame, not a Hall of Achievement.”  Reggie Jackson hit 563 home runs, but there are only three that fans think of instantly when they see his spot on the wall.  Three thousand hits is nice and everything, but the hushed reverence you hear around Roberto Clemente’s plaque recalls his selfless end.

There are simply no sabermetrics for fame; the Hall is subjective, as it should be.  Remember, this isn’t anything serious.  It’s literally just a game.

Should Mattingly be a Hall of Famer?  That answer probably depends on how old you were when he was in his prime, and what team you rooted for – and its the same way with Morris’s take on Fernando Valenzuela.

Except Morris is completely wrong because the Dodgers suck.

You Say You Want A Revolution?

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This week, Revolution came up on my iPod on the way home from work one night this week.  Years ago, when I worked at the Leadership Institute, many of my colleagues enjoyed this song.  Travelling to campus after campus helping students build conservative organizations in overwhelmingly left-wing environments, we were at the forefront of the conservative revolution.

Listening to the lyrics again this week, the cautionary tune for the radical left of the 1960s and 1970s sounded like an appropriate warning for today’s political would-be warriors.

Monday night just hours after Chris Cillizza posted what read like an obituary for Sarah Palin.  Listen to the lyrics, and The coverage of her break with Fox News framed Palin as the poster child for soundbite-driven Republican party that was short on ideas.

Palin was hardly the only center-right figure to fall into this trap, so you can’t blame here for being the driving force behind the anti-intellectual discourse of the past four years.  It’s just as wrong to claim vapidity is the exclusive property of the right.  Remember that Palin’s 2008 ticket lost to a campaign that was paper thin behind the glowing ideas of “hope,” “change,” and “Yes We Can!”

There’s a lesson in that loss, and it’s summed up in the oft-quoted line, “But if you carrying pictures of chairman Mao / You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.”  Conservatives like to point to this and say even the hippy-dippy Beatles understood that communism sucks.  Possibly, but that’s not really the point.

Anyone who carries their politics on their sleeve is someone who gets avoided pretty frequently.  They are the people you defriend on Facebook because of their long screeds against corporate America and because they call you a fascist for liking McDonald’s french fries.  They are the people that can’t hold a conversation without talking about the encroachment of the Federal government on our collective rights.

These folks may have a point (except the french fry guy because McDonald’s is awesome). The problem is they bend over backwards to make it.  They’re trying too hard.

President Obama in one of the most overtly liberal Presidents of the past century.  That’s fine, he didn’t get elected because of his beliefs.  No President does.  Heck, no politician does, really.  That’s why it’s laughable to hear any analysis of a Republican primary where one candidate is deemed “too conservative” to win.  There’s no such thing as too conservative to win.

There is such a thing as too crazy to win.

Anyone who really wants a revolution (on either side) needs to remember that to avoid falling into the trap that Palin and other Republicans have for the past decade.

After all, we all want to change the world.

Picking a New President

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It’s not the main one, though, just the comically costumed mascots who run around Nats Park once per game.  The nightly race among Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt is getting a fifth contestant, to be announced tomorrow.

Any addition has to be the perfect President.

Naturally, DC-centric media outlets have been running polls since the hint was dropped last fall.  So who do you pick to join the Rushmores?  George, Abe, Tom, and Teddy represent historically significant figures who are also outside of mainstream controversy, so you have to balance fame and significance.

We can eliminate most Presidents for being too boring.  Sure, people like Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley had the same office as Washington and Linclon – just like Bubba Crosby had the same job as Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio.  (Martin Van Buren goes in this group, too – even if it means a harsh visit from the Van Buren Boys.)  James Madison, James Monroe, Ulysses Grant, and Harry Truman were more significant historically, but in a history class kind of way.  They’re on the Dwight Evans/Dale Murphy level of Presidents – if you watched them play they were pretty good, but today’s ten-year-old baseball fans probably don’t know them yet.  There are the incompetent one-termers, like Carter and Hoover, and corrupt cesspool dwellers like Nixon and Harding (who suffers from guilt by association here).

For historically significant, household-name Presidents, there’s Reagan, JFK, FDR, and Jackson.  Given the pro-government-expansion zeitgeist of modern Washington, Reagan would be an out-of-place choice; in a few years when Republicans control everything that may resonate more.  FDR’s confinement to a wheelchair would make for an interesting cameo but probably disqualify him long-term.

JFK has made a previous appearance, so he is probably the favorite.  It’s a good pick: there are elements of the JFK presidency that appeal to both conservatives and liberals, and he was a larger-than-life celebrity President.  The main strike against him is that a giant, foam rubber caricature might diminish the grimness of his Presidency’s end, but it hasn’t seemed to be the case for Lincoln.

Now that we’ve selected the next President to join the race, here’s an even better idea: How about a rotating “Guest President”?  FDR could win a race in his wheelchair one night against the Phillies; the next night the Diamondbacks might see a rotund Taft bouncing past the finish line ahead of Teddy.  Nixon could unfurl the “finish line” from a reel off an old-style tape recorder.  Ford could fall down.  Grant could fall down drunk.  James Buchanan could hit on a guy in the front row.  These jokes practically write themselves.

On the other hand, since the Nats are actually good now, maybe all this is an exercise in overthink – after all, in Milwaukee, they just have sausages.

40 Years of Bench Law

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The 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, like several others before, marks an annual clash between those who support abortions and those who do not.  Issues of life are very important, and the abortion issue very literally is a matter of life and death – the whole debate should center on the origin point of life and what rights are extended to whom and when.  In moments of calm, good people on both sides should be able to rationally debate those points.  (Those moments of calm tend to be fleeting.)

Here’s another point, separate from the abortion debate: from a legal perspective, the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade is a really bad decision.

A couple years back, the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney memorialized the Roe anniversary with a litany of quotes from pro-choice legal scholars who recognized Justice’s Blackmun’s opinion as, in the words of Michael Kinsley, “constitutional origami… a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching.”

Read the opinion, and really think about it.  Blackmun – not a doctor, by the way – reasons that dividing pregnancy into trimesters is the best way to handle the issue of conflicting rights.  One man wrote that opinion, even if he fielded input from others, and that opinion is now the legal definition of when life starts.

Let’s just think about that idea of a judge, sitting in his office in Washington, D.C., deciding that whatever is in his head will be the law of the land.  The absolutism of it recalls that Twilight Zone episode where “The State” deems Rocky’s trainer obsolete (and sentences him to death) for being a librarian.

It’s not the only example of an absolutely ridiculous Supreme Court decision, but it’s the only one whose anniversary is marked every year.

Green World

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Phelim McAleer made the rounds in DC this week to promote his documentary FrackNation – which airs next Tuesday on AXS television.  The North Ireland native noted several times that what was intended to be a documentary showing the truth about natural gas extraction methods ended up being as much a commentary on the media.

An exchange during one of McAleer’s presentations especially stood out.  A conservative blogger noted that the New York Times closed its green desk, and asked if that counted as a victory against media bias.  “Did we win this debate?”  McAleer countered that what can best be termed environmentalist ideology permeates reporting.

“Everything is green,”  he said.  “Why do you need a green desk?”

Strong point.  Just as getting labeled “the conservative version of _____” (or “the liberal version of _____”) promises failure, having a desk specifically designated for covering a certain issue or movement sequesters that coverage.  Given the Times’s political leanings, having a green desk was probably a waste of a desk in the first place.

And while documentaries tend to be dry, the teasers suggest that if you’re into this type of thing, it might be fun to watch.  When talking about political documentaries, this is usually the point where I play the wet blanket and say that explicitly fictional stories can be more effective long term in shaping opinions.  But since that hasn’t worked so well for the other side of the fracking debate, perhaps I ought to shut up…

What does Manti Te’o owe you?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

NBC News has “9 baffling questions about the Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax.”  They forgot #10: Why so serious?

ESPN Radio’s Mike Greenberg has been incredulous that Notre Dame is standing behind its star.  Sports Illustrated’s front page this morning dissects Te’o’s interviews about his now-fake girlfriend.

Morning drive time radio shows joking about it?  That makes sense.  Ditto for the Te’oing internet meme.  It’s a bizarre story, and the jokes practically write themselves, and it’s funny to talk about.  It’s also interesting to follow, as each revelation makes the story that much weirder.  But getting to the bottom of what Te’o knew and when shouldn’t win anyone a Pulitzer; it’s definitely not worth a crusade.

It doesn’t matter whether he knew or not.  It doesn’t matter when he knew.  If Notre Dame has some egg on their face for supporting their player, it will not lead to a lack of enrollment.  (It may drive away recruits who fear that, even playing for a national college football powerhouse, they can’t do better than an imaginary girlfriend – but that’s another story.)

Te’o owes no one an explanation, other than the NFL teams which are his prospective future employers assuming he enters the draft as planned.  They will be reasonably and rightfully curious about his integrity and mental state.  That’s part of the usual pre-draft evaluation, though NFL draft history tells us that the bars for both qualities are not always very high.

On the other hand, a sports reporter who had written some glowing human interest puff piece on the tragedies in Te’o’s life might feel duped when it turned out to be a fake.  It made for great copy at the time – surely, ESPN and others enjoyed the ratings/pageviews bump for tugging at the viewers’ heartstrings.  If your job was to research, write, and present true stories, wouldn’t you bristle when it was revealed that you didn’t check the facts and you didn’t question conventional wisdom when it sounded a little too perfect?

Despite all the “unanswered questions,” at least we know where the sanctimony comes from.

(Sidebar: For competitive purposes, the NCAA may want to think about the way it crowns its champion.  In the week and a half since the nominal championship game, there’s been more talk about the players’ girlfriends than the actual blowout.  Good thing there’s a playoff system on the horizon.)

 

Matt Bryant’s second chance

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With a sports media that just loves story lines, the redemption story in Atlanta tops the list from the past weekend.  Matt Schaub and Mike Smith finally won a playoff game, and it was the best playoff game of the weekend.  Overlooked, for now, is the second chance their kicker got.

Giants fans remember Matt Bryant.

Big Blue signed Bryant from a life of pawn shops and personal training back in 2002, in a year when the special teams unit was a decided weak link of the team.  In a playoff game against San Francisco, the Giants held a big lead late in the second half before the 49ers came storming back to take the lead.  A furious rally brought the Giants within range for a game winning field goal.

You could have forgiven Bryant yesterday if he felt like he was watching a NFL Network replay.

In 2002, Bryant never got to show that he could make the 40 yard field goal that would have  sent the Giants onward in the playoffs.

In what was a running theme that year, the snap for the field goal attempt was off.  Long snapper Trey Junkin, aside from having the coolest name in football at the time, had been signed off the street that week due to injury – and was playing in what would be the last game of a long NFL career.  An officiating error prevented Bryant from a second chance at playing the hero.

A decade later, Bryant is an established NFL kicker (or at least as established as a kicker can be) and has kicked a 62-yard field goal (a yard shy of the record).  His bad luck in San Fran didn’t send him back to the pawnshop.

Yesterday, after Seattle tried to ice him, Bryant finally got a clean snap and a shot at the ball with everything on the line.  Atlanta plays next week – thanks to Bryant’s decade-overdue kick.