Obama Looks to History for Economic Message

Obama Looks to History for Economic Message

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG

Wall Street Journal

Published: January 11, 2009

President-elect Barack Obama appeared Sunday on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos. Mr. Obama said that it would take time to fix the economy but that swift action was necessary. - Lauren Victoria Burke/ABC News, via Associated Press

WASHINGTON — It is still a week before he takes office, yet President-elect Barack Obama is everywhere: on the Sunday talk shows, on radio and YouTube, on Capitol Hill, drawing on the techniques he employed during the campaign and lessons from predecessors as he seeks to shape public attitudes about the economic downturn.

His aides said Mr. Obama had studied the way Franklin D. Roosevelt approached the first 100 days of his presidency, and in particular had seized on the notion of Roosevelt having a “conversation with the American public” to try to prepare it for a difficult time. He has, aides said, even looked at the words Roosevelt used and the tone he struck.

Mr. Obama has sought to strike a balance: emphasizing the depth of the problem, to create a sense of political urgency for Congress to act quickly, while not being so pessimistic that he could further destabilize the jittery financial markets or deplete the sense of energy and hope accompanying his election.

Yet even as the president-elect looks to the past — he said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he had been reading Lincoln in preparation for his inaugural address — he and his team are mobilizing to use the most up- to-date techniques to communicate with the public and rally support.

His aides said they would begin sending to supporters and posting on YouTube videotapes of economic experts in the administration — like Lawrence H. Summers, who will be director of the National Economic Council — talking in detail about Mr. Obama’s economic proposals. That is following on a technique they used the first time to explain a complicated economic report this weekend. (His advisers said they had found in the campaign that using experts, even those not widely known, rather than employing familiar political faces in these types of videos was far more effective in engaging grass-roots supporters.)

At the same time, the incoming administration is preparing to release more reports that will set out in specific numbers the goals for the huge spending Mr. Obama is proposing. The details include things like how many classrooms will be modernized, one aide said.

Mr. Obama’s aides said they were keenly aware of how President Bush, in their view, had failed to effectively explain the bailout plans he sanctioned last year or how they would benefit ordinary people, and as a result saw public opinion turn quickly against them. Mr. Obama’s effort to avoid repeating that mistake was on display Sunday morning when he made the case for his economic stimulus plan — saying it was essential to arrest and reverse a rapidly deteriorating economic situation — for 30 minutes with George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” on ABC.

“It’s going to take some time to fix it,” Mr. Obama said, adding: “But what we tried to do was put forward a plan that says, let’s act boldly, let’s act swiftly. Let’s not only provide a jump-start to the economy and immediately create or save 3 million jobs, but let’s also put a down payment on some of the structural problems that we have in our economy.”

Mr. Obama’s aides said that for the next three weeks, he would pack his schedule with interviews, speeches, news conferences and limited travel to try to rally public support behind the effort. The overall political goal, aides said, was to ensure that Mr. Obama’s economic recovery program was approved quickly by a substantial bipartisan vote in Congress, while at the same time playing down public hopes about how quickly it might work.

Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said: “We’re going to continue to make the choice clear. One course is do nothing and continue to shed millions of jobs and the other course is to begin to invest in creating 3.5 million jobs and American competitiveness. And to do it as quickly as possible.”

Obama aides said he had used the transition to study how Roosevelt had tried to inform and reassure an anxious public. They said he had read a book on that period, “The Defining Moment,” by Jonathan Alter.

Until his inauguration, Mr. Obama has the advantage of being able to promote solutions without having political responsibility for the increasingly acute economic situation. But though he can no doubt count on some patience from Americans, if history is any guide, he will fairly quickly be held accountable for whether his remedies result in tangible improvements. And in the meantime, he will face the need to manage expectations without stepping into negativity.

“A great deal is going to hang on his Inaugural Address and what his first statement is about how he’s going to deal with the economic crisis,” said William E. Leuchtenburg, an emeritus professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who has written several books on Roosevelt. “Can he be reassuring both in his rhetoric and by announcing a series of programs that plausibly seem as though, if they don’t solve the crisis, they will at least improve things markedly in a reasonable period of time?

“If he’s able both to instill confidence in the American people in the national government and in himself in his Inaugural Address,” Professor Leuchtenburg said, “and if he is able to get under way — announce a series of initiatives that appear to be both bold and with the promise of being effective — those are the two things that would be most like Franklin Roosevelt.”

Mr. Obama’s aides said the effort to rally support for his plan was not patterned on a political campaign, akin to what Mr. Bush did early in his second term in his unsuccessful effort to persuade Congress to pass his proposed overhaul of Social Security. Mr. Obama is not planning extensive travel, like visiting the districts of wavering Republican members of Congress, and he has no plans to set up a central war room to direct the campaign.

There is little doubt on either side of the aisle that Mr. Obama can get Congress to pass a stimulus bill. The question is whether he can create one that can draw enough Republican votes to give the parties shared ownership of a plan, providing a basis for cooperation on other big issues, like health care and global warming — and reducing the partisan recriminations should the plan fail to live up to its promise.

But Mr. Obama’s team will still be able to call on Washington’s partisan political machinery if necessary.

Brad Woodhouse, who was a senior Democratic Party strategist in the campaign, has assembled a group of 25 organizations — including unions like the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and grass-roots groups like MoveOn.org and Acorn — to build public and Congressional support for Mr. Obama’s economic package.

Mr. Woodhouse said the group was in the process of raising money for television advertisements that would pressure local lawmakers to support the plan. He said he had consulted with several of Mr. Obama’s senior strategists.

“We’re doing this with the notion,” Mr. Woodhouse said, “that if we can help in any way, even at the margins, to make this any easier on Obama, it will preserve some of his political capital.”

Adam Nagourney reported from Washington, and Jim Rutenberg from New York.