It's popular these days to talk about the "narrative" in politics. And, in that vein, it seems also popular to say that Obama has "lost control" of the narrative, and is thus suffering for it.
In my other life, that of a brand strategist, I believe in the use of the narrative concept (shameless plug for my other blog, www.AdvertiseOrGoUnder.com). It's quite useful for explaining how a brand rises or falls, gains value or loses it, maintains relevance or does not. But I would be quick to add that narrative thinking is only a reflection of something larger. It's a small piece of the total puzzle.
Let's call that something larger the "real story," or, if you want to use the fancy language of semiotics, the "meta-narrative." You might think of this as the story behind the story, or the higher story, or the hidden story.
Critics on both the left and the right call Obama out for not explaining himself well enough through this long and tortured debate. Those on the right wouldn't buy anything he said, but those on the left are mistaken for believing that winning passage of major social legislation is only about one-dimensional sales pitching.
If Intrade is right....
It looks like Obama's reform package is going to become law. Intrade has it as 59% probable as of this morning and unless Pelosi is blowing smoke her whip team has done its job.
This is where the real story comes in. I can't say Obama has done everything right in this battle, but if he wins this, he will be in the unique position of having accomplished something that no other president has accomplished. Suddenly, what to some has looked like a lack of interest or distance from the issue turns into shrewd political maneuvering. His decision to let Congress fight out the details gets interpreted as a clever way to keep himself out of hot water and let the fire disperse elsewhere. (Remember, his approval rating still hangs around 50%, right in the zone he needs to win re-election. Imagine where it will go if he scores a big political win and the job market improves.)
Obama didn't spend much time in the Senate, but his limited tenure there may have helped him in this sense: he wasn't there long enough to numb himself to the ugliness of lawmaking. I believe Obama knows exactly how ugly making laws is, and he knows this process is exacerbated by YouTube culture. So he bit the bullet, let it play out, kept his distance, and kept his eye on the prize. He never doubted he had the votes.
If Obama were a baseball manager he would be the antithesis of Tony LaRussa, who manages every detail imaginable. That works well in baseball, but not usually politics (especially if you're trying to manage Democrats--Republicans just do what their told).
Laws have a lot more force than bills
And even more important, once this battle is won, reform is no longer a battle but the law. The difference is not just notable, it's enormous. The battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was monumental. Opponents charged many things, such as "you can't legislate morality." There was genuine belief that the law would do nothing.
That proved incorrect. Yes, there was some white backlash to the law. But it never faced a serious challenge, and it changed the country forever.
Now, can you imagine if we had had the media culture in 1964 that we have today? Think of the sort of things Glen Beck and Sarah Palin would have said, and what prairie fires their incendiary rhetoric would cause. The commentary class would have been dismembering Lyndon Johnson, denouncing him as ineffective and unfocused in the run-up to passage. The right would have hammered away at the various procedural tricks that were played to "jam the bill down the throats of the American people."
But in the end, the outcome would have been the same.
The reason for that is simple. Sometimes laws pass because their time has come, and no matter what, they are not going to be stopped. And very often those laws create profound transformation.
Health care isn't over the line just yet. It might fail yet again. But it doesn't look like it. If and when it passes, no one will be talking how Obama lost control of the narrative between the time of the summer 2009 tea party uprising through the Scott Brown debacle. They'll be talking about the stronger tides of history, and how through shrewdness, grit, and determination, an entire liberal movement (not just a president) prevailed.
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Posted by: hair loss | 06/22/2010 at 12:53 AM