In his column a couple of days ago, E.J. Dionne wrote that Obama’s February 24 speech to a joint session of Congress “will be another effort to make clear that he understands how bad the situation is while also conveying hope and assurance that prosperity lies at the other end of his policies.” I agree, above all else, executing that “complicated two-step”, as Dionne called it, was the President’s primary task as he took the podium last night in the House chamber. So the question to day, the morning after is: how’d he do?
My own assessment is that Obama masterfully navigated that narrow line between alarming and reassuring. He did not, as we have seen in the previous Administration, try to repaint a bleak reality as bright. He couldn’t; the American public sees what’s going on, at least at an on-the-ground level. But he struck a tone that we will get through this as a country, perhaps even stronger than we were before the mess. The President’s real trick will be to deliver on at least most of what he hopes his bold initiatives will achieve.
The most reassuring part of his speech was that there was hardly anything in it that should have surprised anyone. Because he and his team have communicated their messages so consistently and clearly nearly every day for the last couple of months, we pretty much knew what he was going to say already — generally, if not in the detail. That conveys a reassuring sense that his team has a plan, that they know where they’re going. Let’s hope appearance equals reality.
But that’s just my two cents. I’ve asked Fleishman-Hillard’s network of professionals to offer their own assessment of the President’s speech last night, and here’s what my colleagues are saying:
John Fitzpatrick, Executive V.P. of our sister agency, Strat@comm, gives high marks, but cautions this is just the beginning. “Although 9-11 was a catastrophic event unto itself,” John said, “in a sense, this was Obama’s moment to stand atop the proverbial fire truck with megaphone in-hand to rally the nation as we struggle to deal with another unfolding crisis of historic proportions. He nailed it…. We can’t lose sight, however, this was but a speech…,he’s been on the job but a month…and the real work in the weeks and months ahead remains daunting.”
Kathleen Siedlecki, a leader on healthcare policy at FH Washington, D.C., says: “On healthcare, I think [Obama] delivered a strong message about the important first, and immediate, step forward with pushing through an expansion of the SCHIP within the first month of his administration. However, the much, much harder work is ahead in terms of shaping and them moving a broader reform package…. The big question is: how fast can he move forward on an HHS nominee after the Daschle withdrawal? He will need a strong general to help him head into battle on this one.”
“A TON of promises and very little detail,” says FH D.C. healthcare policy specialist Anne Woodbury. “This [speech had] A LOT of spending commitments. No idea where the money will come from. How are we going to pay for all this stuff? This is very concerning to me as a fiscal conservative.
Still, Anne says, “Obama has done more for the cause of healthcare reform in the last 30 days than in the last decade. I applaud some of the health spending in the stimulus, but it spits in the face of the hard work that has happened to get us to this place, including the creation of a Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. I was very disappointed that there were no details on his health reform plans other than the very bold statement that it will happen this year. Praising Obama for an uplifting ending, she also says, “I can’t believe he almost said, ‘Read my lips!’ about tax increases.”
“Overall, I think his speech will have a positive impact on the morale of the country,” writes Sue Preziotti, a healthcare communications expert in FH’s New York office, “once again grabbing at our true American values of hard work and resilience that inspire confidence and make us feel empowered to impact our own future. It was definitely not too alarmist. The tone was just right…. The President spoke to us as if we were intelligent, addressing the situation head-on, and he was convincing when he said, ‘I get it about the banks.’”
Ken Fields, a public affairs leader in our St. Louis office, responded well to Obama’s words, but felt they tended toward “laundry-list” rhetoric we hear for most such speeches. “He definitely bridged from the problem to the solutions and the potential that he says can be achieved in attempting to implement the solutions. But… the weight of that, I think, began to feel like a laundry list. And, it was in the same speech where he talked about not believing in big government. I think that line will be hard for most independent observers to accept.”
Pat Cleary of FH Washington, D.C., someone who has written and delivered more than his fair share of speeches in a long career in government and trade associations, wondered how realistic the President’s goals are: “It was a good speech, if expensive. Does anyone believe we can pay for all of this by raising taxes on only five percent of the population….?”
FH St. Louis public affairs veteran Marianna Deal, didn’t get the warm, fuzzy feel from the speech. “I found [the President's] speech to be very mean spirited, divisive, contradicting and his lumping together groups of Americans as the bad guys was particularly offensive to me,” Marianna writes. “Automakers, Wall Street, bankers and people who took loans that they knew they would never be able to pay, for example, were all demonized in the speech. As someone whose family is in the banking business, I didn’t appreciate being lumped in with Citigroup and others. My family has been very conservative and responsible in the way we have managed our business. We didn’t contribute to this problem….”
“On the positive side,” Marrianna adds, “I thought he demonstrated a more positive outlook for the future than he has so far. I liked the part where he declared that we will rebuild and recover. As managers, we are constantly reminded that staff takes their cues from us … if we are negative, they will be negative. The American people need to see their chief executive as having hope. He did do that.”
Donna Rohrer, one of the leading transportation communications counselors in our D.C. office, offers, “[W]hat impressed me most about last night’s address to the joint session of Congress was the happy realization that here is a President who embodies principled leadership. The tone and substance of the President’s remarks conveyed to a student of professional ethics, the following tenets of principled leadership: An ability to articulate his values for Americans – centered around the primacy of personal (and collective) responsibility; His statement of goals and objectives for policymakers and the outcomes he announced he is willing to be judged by as President; Showing his ability to confront problems directly and candidly without rancor; A demonstration of willingness to be inclusive and to listen to others’ ideas; And his drive to be innovative and decisive…. If he turns out to be a President whose personal style sets the example for the nation – he will surely be remembered as one of America’s most principled leaders.”
“There’s no question that Obama pulled off the two-step”, says Jonathan Berke, of the FH D.C. healthcare policy team, referring to Dionne’s column. “The triumph… was packaging a fairly liberal policy agenda in a speech that would at the same time be anodyne to political pundits and resonant with ‘outside the beltway’ viewers. Consider some of the initiatives mentioned in the speech: carbon cap-and-trade, health care reform this year, proper contextualizing of Medicare/Medicaid cost growth as derivative of rapidly ballooning health care costs in general, and reiterating a commitment to withdrawal from Iraq. To me, the only notable omission was the Employee Free Choice Act.”
Lisa Lake of FH D.C.: “Much to my relief, the President’s address was refreshingly candid, specific in outlining a road to recovery, and, yes, inspiring and hopeful to boot. At a time when unambiguous, straight-talk solutions are essential to restoring American confidence, President Obama’s strategy for economic rebound appears to embody all the brass tacks of a solid business plan — and he presented it as such last night…. Yet, the truly reassuring effect of President Obama’s address stemmed from the manner in which he unabashedly yet constructively took the nation — big business, government and individuals alike — to task for getting ourselves into this mess in the first place.”
Awel Gheddai of FH Atlanta, believes that “the subtlety of [Obama's] tone, which hinged on accountability is something that hasn’t been truly ‘heard’ for a while. By mentioning the ‘deficit of trust’ and laying out plans to help healthcare (R&D for cancer, electronic health records, preventive research), education (Improve early childhood education, charter schools, teacher employment) and general fiscal responsibility (no-bid contracts in Iraq, reform “cold war” defense budget, tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas AND cost of war in Iraq to be divulged) there is an end point, and the means to get there, that are being highlighted as opposed to being blindly promised…. The morale of the country will ride the wave of Obama and his campaign for ‘change’ for a little while longer…. And, come this time next year, if more is not being done to change the current status quo, the issues will have to be revisited, albeit with justified skepticism.”
Finally, according to Lowen Baumgarten of FH D.C.: Obama’s speech could have been divided into two halves: (1) a Schumpeterian lesson in the function of finance in a capitalist economy and in any government stimulus, and (2) a return to Obama’s soaring oratory from the campaign, filled with messages of hope and optimism. I think, as it seems most pundits do, that the finance lesson made a decent case for another bank bailout. Whether the American people were convinced should become clear in the next few days. As for the soaring rhetoric, it didn’t work on me. When he talked about finally taking on energy independence and healthcare reform after decades of putting it off, I thought: why this year? Clearly, this must not be the year to take on all those major efforts.”
Thirteen analysts; 25 opinions. What do you think?
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“Obama’s Speech: A Tonal Masterpiece” featured in Time magazine. http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1881776,00.html