Brought to You By the White House
Posted on February 15, 2010
I was at the gym yesterday (yes, I know, small miracle), watching the end of Meet The Press, when up on my tv screen popped President Barack Obama.
He was doing an infomercial on the Pay-As-You Go budget rule that he just signed into law. It was a masterful art of political spin, because the President had actually signed a trillion dollar plus increase in the debt limit, giving the Democrats carte blanche to borrow more money from the Chinese to pay for bigger government,
The Pay-Go thing was a promise to close the barn door after all of the cows, and horses, and pigs and chickens had already escaped.
I was amused by one of the lines in the President’s address. It sounded like one of those Cialis ads, which warns of all of the side-effects that may come if you try to cure your erectile dysfunction with a pill.
The President said that his budget would include a three-year freeze, which would include everything except Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Defense, Homeland Security, blah, blah, blah. The sum result would completely negligible, just a nice little talking point that won’t make a dent in the budget.
But it sure sounds nice, and so does Pay-As-You-Go budget rules.
The White House says, in a Washington Post story, that they are going to be more aggressive in spinning stories. Apparently, they feel they haven’t been aggressive enough in getting out in front of stories. So, the new White House strategy is rapidly respond to everything that comes from those dastardly Republicans.
It is a complete joke to think that the Republicans have been out-communicating the Obama message juggernaut. The problem that the President has is not message. It is a lack of substance.
When Mr. Obama came into office, he had the most favorable and fawning media that the world has ever witnessed. That his White House has largely squandered that asset is not because of some Republican conspiracy. The media still, by and large, dislikes Republicans. But most beat reporters have grown tired of the arrogance of a group of spinners who are starting to believe their own spin.
It was rather humorous to see the President pitching his products in a time-slot usually reserved for other pitchmen who are selling salad-spinners and the Ginzu knife.
I am sure that the President was able to sell his product to a small portion of the public. But the rest of us, it was just about as believable as the latest Ronco production.