Post by concerned on Oct 21, 2009 5:24:29 GMT -5
Could President Obama being throwing in the towel?
October 21, 2009
White House Memo
Obama Takes a Health Care Hiatus
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON — As Congressional leaders and White House officials huddle behind closed doors to settle their differences on health care legislation, one of the most powerful voices in the debate — President Obama’s — has grown noticeably quieter.
After spending much of the summer and most of September banging his presidential drum in favor of a health care overhaul, Mr. Obama, entering what one senior White House official called “a quiet period,” is intentionally lowering his public profile on the issue, for the moment.
The idea, aides said, is for the president to take a breather while Democrats resolve their internal conflicts, so he can come back strong with a fresh sales pitch when the legislation moves closer to floor votes.
“I think his time is better spent on this particular issue in conversation with members and in talking to his own advisers and instructing them on how to proceed,” David Axelrod, senior adviser to the president, said in an interview Tuesday. “That’s the phase that we’re in.”
But after his stream of all but nonstop public appearances on his top domestic priority, Mr. Obama’s health care hiatus raises some questions: Was his continued presence counterproductive? Might his high profile prove to have been too polarizing as Democratic leaders negotiate through a thicket of political considerations in search of a deal that can get through the House and the Senate? Did the president stop talking because the public had stopped listening?
“He’s been in very great danger of people hitting the mute button when he comes on television to talk about health care,” said David Gergen, who has advised both Republican and Democratic presidents on communications strategy. “So I think it’s wise to take a pause here and come back in full voice to make his case, because people are going to be more ready to listen again.”
On Capitol Hill, some Democrats seemed to agree Tuesday.
“I don’t know how much it helps, but it certainly doesn’t hurt the process to have him quiet,” said Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat who has been a less than enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Obama’s health care agenda.
Mr. Obama has not, of course, stopped talking about health care altogether. He used his weekly address on Saturday to take a swing at the insurance companies, which he accused of “rolling out the big guns and breaking open their massive war chest to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo.”
And in New York on Tuesday night, he told volunteers for Organizing for America, his campaign arm, that Democrats, who “can be their own worst enemy,” should “keep our eye on the prize” and come together around a health care bill.
But that is preaching to the converted, a task much different from trying to rally a confused country around a complex policy issue that could reshape one-sixth of the American economy.
And it is a far cry from the public relations offensive the president waged in summer and early fall, including a series of question-and-answer sessions in public forums, a prime-time address to a joint session of Congress, campaign-style rallies and a number of television interviews.
That effort helped revive health care legislation at a time when many analysts thought it was in danger of falling apart. White House officials say Mr. Obama’s speech in particular allowed him to reframe the discussion on his own terms.
“I think it changed the environment,” Mr. Axelrod said. “After a sort of helter-skelter August, it lifted the debate.”
But the gains did not last, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. It found that support for the health care proposals being discussed on Capitol Hill reached 42 percent after Mr. Obama’s speech on Sept. 9 but dropped back to 34 percent in a survey taken from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4. And a Washington Post/ABC News poll published Tuesday found that 48 percent approved of Mr. Obama’s handling of health care while 48 percent disapproved, little changed since summer.
Even so, Mr. Obama remains in a far better position than Congressional leaders to sell Americans on a health care bill, said Andrew Kohut, the Pew center’s director.
“Health care, when it is seen as something Congress is proposing without Obama, is less popular,” Mr. Kohut said. “There is still a bully pulpit, and when Obama used it in September, my interpretation of the numbers moving up is that it had to do with him.”
Mr. Gergen, the communications strategist, predicts a return to “full campaign mode” by the president. The question is how. One of the few tricks of the trade he has not yet employed is an address from the Oval Office, perhaps the biggest arrow in the presidential communications quiver. Aides say they discussed the idea in September but decided in favor of the address to Congress, because it afforded a longer format in which Mr. Obama could delve deeply into the issue.
Mr. Axelrod would not say whether an Oval Office address was under consideration now, but he made clear that Mr. Obama would hardly be silent for long.
“Having come all this way,” he said, “you can be assured that we are going to do whatever we can to focus attention on the magnitude of the opportunity here.”
And in the meantime Obama appears in New York City with photo ops. going for $30,000 all this in a convention hall a few blocks away from Wall St. He's getting closer to his goal of reforming Wall St. and placing it under the wing of the White House.
October 21, 2009
White House Memo
Obama Takes a Health Care Hiatus
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON — As Congressional leaders and White House officials huddle behind closed doors to settle their differences on health care legislation, one of the most powerful voices in the debate — President Obama’s — has grown noticeably quieter.
After spending much of the summer and most of September banging his presidential drum in favor of a health care overhaul, Mr. Obama, entering what one senior White House official called “a quiet period,” is intentionally lowering his public profile on the issue, for the moment.
The idea, aides said, is for the president to take a breather while Democrats resolve their internal conflicts, so he can come back strong with a fresh sales pitch when the legislation moves closer to floor votes.
“I think his time is better spent on this particular issue in conversation with members and in talking to his own advisers and instructing them on how to proceed,” David Axelrod, senior adviser to the president, said in an interview Tuesday. “That’s the phase that we’re in.”
But after his stream of all but nonstop public appearances on his top domestic priority, Mr. Obama’s health care hiatus raises some questions: Was his continued presence counterproductive? Might his high profile prove to have been too polarizing as Democratic leaders negotiate through a thicket of political considerations in search of a deal that can get through the House and the Senate? Did the president stop talking because the public had stopped listening?
“He’s been in very great danger of people hitting the mute button when he comes on television to talk about health care,” said David Gergen, who has advised both Republican and Democratic presidents on communications strategy. “So I think it’s wise to take a pause here and come back in full voice to make his case, because people are going to be more ready to listen again.”
On Capitol Hill, some Democrats seemed to agree Tuesday.
“I don’t know how much it helps, but it certainly doesn’t hurt the process to have him quiet,” said Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat who has been a less than enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Obama’s health care agenda.
Mr. Obama has not, of course, stopped talking about health care altogether. He used his weekly address on Saturday to take a swing at the insurance companies, which he accused of “rolling out the big guns and breaking open their massive war chest to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo.”
And in New York on Tuesday night, he told volunteers for Organizing for America, his campaign arm, that Democrats, who “can be their own worst enemy,” should “keep our eye on the prize” and come together around a health care bill.
But that is preaching to the converted, a task much different from trying to rally a confused country around a complex policy issue that could reshape one-sixth of the American economy.
And it is a far cry from the public relations offensive the president waged in summer and early fall, including a series of question-and-answer sessions in public forums, a prime-time address to a joint session of Congress, campaign-style rallies and a number of television interviews.
That effort helped revive health care legislation at a time when many analysts thought it was in danger of falling apart. White House officials say Mr. Obama’s speech in particular allowed him to reframe the discussion on his own terms.
“I think it changed the environment,” Mr. Axelrod said. “After a sort of helter-skelter August, it lifted the debate.”
But the gains did not last, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. It found that support for the health care proposals being discussed on Capitol Hill reached 42 percent after Mr. Obama’s speech on Sept. 9 but dropped back to 34 percent in a survey taken from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4. And a Washington Post/ABC News poll published Tuesday found that 48 percent approved of Mr. Obama’s handling of health care while 48 percent disapproved, little changed since summer.
Even so, Mr. Obama remains in a far better position than Congressional leaders to sell Americans on a health care bill, said Andrew Kohut, the Pew center’s director.
“Health care, when it is seen as something Congress is proposing without Obama, is less popular,” Mr. Kohut said. “There is still a bully pulpit, and when Obama used it in September, my interpretation of the numbers moving up is that it had to do with him.”
Mr. Gergen, the communications strategist, predicts a return to “full campaign mode” by the president. The question is how. One of the few tricks of the trade he has not yet employed is an address from the Oval Office, perhaps the biggest arrow in the presidential communications quiver. Aides say they discussed the idea in September but decided in favor of the address to Congress, because it afforded a longer format in which Mr. Obama could delve deeply into the issue.
Mr. Axelrod would not say whether an Oval Office address was under consideration now, but he made clear that Mr. Obama would hardly be silent for long.
“Having come all this way,” he said, “you can be assured that we are going to do whatever we can to focus attention on the magnitude of the opportunity here.”
And in the meantime Obama appears in New York City with photo ops. going for $30,000 all this in a convention hall a few blocks away from Wall St. He's getting closer to his goal of reforming Wall St. and placing it under the wing of the White House.
