Former Obama Car Czar: 'It's Very Hard' to Explain President's Record 'In a Positive' Way
With unemployment, gas prices, and the budget deficit stubbornly high, President Obama's fans in the media are having a hard time explaining to people why the current White House resident's job performance is worthy of the reelection they're all working for.
Take former Obama car czar turned Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Rattner who said on MSNBC Tuesday, "I think in a quiet room I could convince you his record is good, but out in the sound bite world of the campaign, it's very hard to explain that record in a positive, clear, persuasive way" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JOHN HEILEMANN, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: It’s a very tricky balance that they have to strike for sure, and that, his likability, the personal attributes he - apart from who can fix the economy - on every personal attribute from strength, shares your values, likable, he's ahead of Romney on all those things, and they are precious assets.
And so the question is, you know, if you run, if you are really just running a 95 percent negative campaign from now until Election Day, what does that do to the eight percent of voters in nine states who are going to decide the election who aren't pro-Obama and who aren’t pro-Romney and are just trying to figure it out? What does that do to their perception of this guy many of whom, many of those voters who voted for him believing he was not like every other politician. What does that do? I don't know the answer.
As NewsBusters reported Monday, Heilemann has a cover-story at New York magazine hyping the Obama campaign's mission in the next five-plus months is to scare the public into thinking things would be far worse if Mitt Romney were elected.
As Rattner unintentionally exposed, that's really their only option:
STEVE RATTNER, FORMER OBAMA CAR CZAR: But how do you run a hope and change campaign when you’ve been in office for three years? You should be running on your record. I think in, I think in a quiet room I could convince you his record is good, but out in the sound bite world of the campaign, it's very hard to explain that record in a positive, clear, persuasive way.
So Obama's former car czar, who's now an economic analyst for Morning Joe, thinks "in a quite room" he could convince people Obama's record is good, but that it's going to be tough to do in a campaign.
Then exactly how good can that record be?
HEILEMANN: Beyond we saved the auto industry and we killed Osama bin Laden, the rest of it’s pretty complicated.
RATTNER: That’s the point.
So with such a "complicated" record, how do you campaign for reelection?
HEILEMANN: And they’ve done a $25 million ad buy that’s on his record, and I, my guess is that’s the last, those are the last dollars we’re going to see spent promoting President Obama’s record. We’re going to see almost every other dollar spent attacking Romney as an unacceptable, disqualified alternative.
Expectations are that Obama and his Super PAC will end up spending upwards of $1 billion this year. If Heilemann's correct - and given the amount of access he was allotted for that piece he just published, it's likely he is! - only 2.5 percent of that is going to be spent promoting the President's record.
Imagine for a moment that president was a Republican. Can you envision the field day media members across the fruited plain would be having tearing him or her to shreds for avoiding his or her record? It would be an hourly occurrence.
But because the current White House resident without a record to run on is a beloved Democrat, his media minions are not only not attacking his campaign strategy, they're aiding and abetting it.
And it's only May.
- Noel Sheppard's blog
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Comments
think in a quiet room I could convince you
Submitted by CarlosS on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 5:29pm.
Ah, yes, the Chicago Way, a quiet room, a sock full of marbles...,
A quiet room
Submitted by Arlen Cooper on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 5:32pm.
Such as a rubber room, where you share your machination with your other insane room mate.
From Hope and Change to this?
Submitted by MidAmerica on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 5:37pm.
Yeah I'm bad but this Romney guy is even worse.
That is your typical leftie.
Submitted by NeoKong on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 5:50pm.
They always think they have to explain it all to us.
We do not know who Obama is and what his record is unless they interpret the facts to us.
Yeah...he got Osama and "saved" the auto industry. But he also rammed Obamacare down our throats and spent $5 trillion in borrowed money.
How quiet does the room need to be to overlook that...?
To be technical
Submitted by Radical1979 on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 7:35pm.
George Bush bailed out the auto industry. So it's back to killing Bin Laden.
its called the old blame and
Submitted by hoosherdaddy137 on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 11:54am.
its called the old blame and claim. its W's fault spending went WAAAY up because he bailed out the auto industry. speaking of the auto industry, thank god prez obama saved them, we could have been in some real trouble there.
Liberalspeak
Submitted by bobsmom on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 5:50pm.
"very hard"=Conservativespeak "impossible". Good thing I'm bilingual.
Here's an idea
Submitted by CO2Maker on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 5:55pm.
"It's very hard to explain that record in a positive, clear, persuasive way."
Try lying.
The suck-up media is already focus-group-testing the hidden racism angle, the conservatives-opposing-Obama-to-ruin-his-chances angle, and the flat-line-budget-growth angle.
And Ed Washerman Schultz has been working on his outrageous presentations, which are rhetorically proximate to lying, for years.
reinventing obama
Submitted by MidAmerica on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 5:56pm.
"And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.
Appearances are deceptive.
Submitted by Hog_Flambe on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 6:33pm.
A Wolf found great difficulty in getting at the sheep owing to the vigilance of the shepherd and his dogs. But one day it found the skin of a sheep that had been flayed and thrown aside, so it put it on over its own pelt and strolled down among the sheep. The Lamb that belonged to the sheep, whose skin the Wolf was wearing, began to follow the Wolf in the Sheep's clothing; so, leading the Lamb a little apart, he soon made a meal off her, and for some time he succeeded in deceiving the sheep, and enjoying hearty meals.
Aesop
:0)
Aesop smart
Submitted by Dianne93101 on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 7:43pm.
Another Aesop fable that applies is The Toad and The Scorpion. The toad is the media and Obama is the scorpion. The pond that we all will drown in is the One World Gov sponsored by the United Nations.
"It's the economy, stupid!" -- James Carville, 1992
Submitted by Galvanic on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 6:03pm.
Rattner can't convince anyone in a quiet room or anywhere else. The bad economy is the proverbial elephant in the living room, and MSMers like Matthews want to keep the conversation focused on the view from the bathroom.
"Very hard to explain"? It's
Submitted by celator on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 6:06pm.
"Very hard to explain"?
It's easier to explain Singularity Theory to a Labrador Retriever with a crazed parrot screaming in your ear while you're scaling up Mt Everest naked in a blizzard.
A few martinis would help
Submitted by needle on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 7:17pm.
"I think in a quiet room I could convince you [Obama's] record is good, but out in the sound bite world of the campaign, it's very hard to explain that record in a positive, clear, persuasive way"
A few martinis would help; and actually a lot of martinis would really help.
- Looking forward to the self-annihilation of the Manipulated Stories Machine.
Translation
Submitted by Radical1979 on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 7:37pm.
I need to use a lot of words and try to confuse you to make you think something good happened under Obama.
Psst-we know it's sucked.
Flies
Submitted by xraynova on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 7:42pm.
The auto industry would have saved itself, without the socialist takeover, and without the unions usurping positions on the board of directors, probably in a much shorter time.
Rattner: "I think in a quiet room I could convince you his record is good,..."
Place Rattner in a quiet room with either Art Laffer or Charles Krauthammer, and a fly on the wall would have a ball taking notes as Rattner tried to pull a hundred flies out of the ointment.
Positive
Submitted by Lamdog on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 9:36pm.
No its not, he will be forever made an example of what Jimmy Carter was like for those unfortunate or fortunate not to have witness the foolish that is a liberal democrat adminstration. He has pretty much united the Republican Party to an ABO stance. ABO= Anybody But Obama. I count that pretty successful. Not to mention the contortion libs must achieve to explain that which is Obama.
Positive
Submitted by Lamdog on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 9:36pm.
No its not, he will be forever made an example of what Jimmy Carter was like for those unfortunate or fortunate not to have witness the foolish that is a liberal democrat adminstration. He has pretty much united the Republican Party to an ABO stance. ABO= Anybody But Obama. I count that pretty successful. Not to mention the contortion libs must achieve to explain that which is Obama.
Ratner Up To His Kneecaps In Sewage
Submitted by stratman on Tue, 05/29/2012 - 9:55pm.
Ratner, a true 1%'er the Left should despise, paid out $6.2 Million for "kickbacks" to a Charles Schumer buddy named Hank Morris while managing the New York Pension Fund while working for investment group Quadrangle. He admitted no guilt. New York Attorney General Cuomo, then squeezed another $10 Million from Ratner "in restitution but no fines or penalties".
Besides all the boards and positions Ranter has served under, and his investment in Al Gore's Current TV station,his wife Maureen White served for "...five years as finance chair for the Democratic National Committee and is now the Senior Advisor on Humanitarian Issues to the Special Representative-Afghanistan and Pakistan for the U.S. Department of State" That's a lot of juice between the two of them and gives pause as to how he has so much teflon from criminal convictions. Over $16 Million dollars "restitution" but no grand jury investigation or criminal trial.
Nice to be a Democrat where moral absolutes are for suckers and the oligarchy can get away with anything, including murder. Just ask the Kennedy's.
Gramp's Wake-up Call on Obamanomics
Submitted by berlet98 on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 1:50am.
Gramp's Wake-up Call on Obamanomics
Originally received as a email, the following is a slightly-edited re-print of an article posted here long before President Barack Hussein Obama began implementing his socialistic schemes to, as he said during the 2008 campaign, “spread the wealth.” After three years of his “spreading,” of bailing, of stimulating, of obamacaring, of indebting us and our children and grandchildren for the rest our lives, the article is more pertinent today than it ever was.
If the reader has read this before, read it again and forward it to anyone still contemplating voting for the man dedicated to bankrupting and destroying the nation we love. With the presidential election just five months down the road, it makes sense to know thine enemy.
(John is 63 years old and owns his own business. He is a life-long Republican and sees his dream of retiring next year is now all but gone. With the stock market crashing and all the new taxes coming his way, John knows he will be working for a good number more years. John has a granddaughter. Ashley is a recent college grad. She drives a late model car, wears all the latest fashions, and also likes going out and eating out a lot.
Ashley campaigned hard for Obama and, after he won the election, she made sure her grandfather (and all other Republican family members) received more than an earful on how the world is going to be a much better place now.
Ashley recently found herself short of cash and cannot pay her bills, again. As she has done many other times in the past, she emailed her grandfather asking for some financial help.)
Gramp’s reply:
Letter from a Granddad
Sweetheart, I am replying to your request for more money. Ashley, you know I love you dearly and am sympathetic to your financial plight. Unfortunately, times have changed. With the election of President Obama, your Grandmother and I have had to set forth a bold new economic plan of our own, the ‘Ashley Economic Plan’.
Let me explain. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=24802.)
Wow. That is really boring.
Submitted by The Vet on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 4:09am.
Why don't you post it a half dozen times all over this site and make sure you really spread the misery around.