the need for speed, and authenticity

In today’s New York Times, I read about the importance of the rapid response in political campaigns. (I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Brian Stelter’s byline on the story, he (formerly) of TV Newswer fame. Bravo!):

Today, campaigns act within hours to anticipate the news cycle and twin their response with the original attack in voters’ minds. In the fall, Mrs. Clinton’s team swiftly knocked down an NPR report that said she had failed to tip a waitress in Iowa (the campaign had kept the receipt).

Parrying a television advertisement with another, however, has typically taken days if not weeks.

“There’s no question that the Obama response to Clinton’s 3 a.m. ad was created to make news,” said Larry Rasky, the communications director for Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2008 presidential campaign. “It seemed fast and effective in terms of repositioning the story.”

The Obama campaign has proved to be far and away—by miles—the most effective in working the current media terrain. They get New Media, and they get Old Media. They have left no stone unturned in the brave new world of  politics and geopolitics, which is, to a large extent, driven by the global media.

Obama began his quest for the presidency with the most coveted prize of all in the world of pop communications: a send-off from the Queen of Infotainment. Since then, the Obama folks have shown that they understand every demographic and interest group in America—including the rich and untapped pool of voters who read tabloids. 

I’m not mocking the Obama campaign but admiring it, because it understands that the old categories in politics have broken down. The campaign has a superior grasp of media.

But it will always be the politics that does you in, as David Brooks notes today:

Clinton had sounded like Old Politics, but Obama created a vision of New Politics. And the past several months have revolved around the choice he framed there that night. Some people are enthralled by the New Politics, and we see their vapors every day. Others think it is a mirage and a delusion. There’s only one politics, and, tragically, it’s the old kind, filled with conflict and bad choices.

The Obama campaign had the bad luck of bad timing yesterday. But the campaign has also made a lot of bad choices.

Toward the end of the press conference, the question of Goolsbee’s meeting was raised again. Obama answered curtly and then walked out after a staffer called last question. The press erupted with shouts, but Obama continued to walk out.

He paused only to say, “Come on guys; I answered like eight questions. We’re running late.”

Eight whole questions! What a great effort!

But that’s nothing compared to the lawyerly parsing from Team Obama that makes Bill Clinton look like a D student:

“At no point did anyone in our campaign convey to anyone that there had been any backing away from Obama’s position on Nafta,” a campaign spokesman, Bill Burton, said Monday …

The controversy began last week when CTV, a Canadian television network, reported that an Obama official had called the Canadian ambassador in Washington to play down the significance of Mr. Obama’s criticism of Nafta.

The campaign and the Canadian Embassy issued denials that were, it appears, technically accurate. But they were incomplete because they did not address Mr. Goolsbee’s meeting with Canadian officials.

This is by now a well-known Obama tactic: to provide “evidence” that the person making an attack against him is not telling the whole truth. This tactic has been referred to as jujitsu, and it has worked well to repel the attacks of his opponent Hillary Clinton. He has often appeared to win an argument by getting in the last word.

When your opponent is the media, however, you never get the last word. Besides, while words do matter, impressions matter more, as today’s New York Times piece points out [e.a.]:

The memorandum exposed Mr. Obama to accusations of hypocrisy on a touchstone issue …

The memorandum raises questions about the transparency and the ability of the campaign to address problems before they grow.

Yes indeed: if you project the image of being above-it-all, then you’d better be above-it-all. The aura around Obama changed yesterday. Seen from the position of a defensive crouch, he’s no longer such a cool cat.

Such is the awesome power of having one bad PR day.

The final word on that goes to CNN’s Candy Crowley, the star of my posts yesterday for her beginning the day with her flat-out denial that there was a NAFTA-gate and then signing off with what may become Obama’s euolgy:

CROWLEY: Also, today, Anderson, Hillary Clinton put out an ad talking about Obama and how he has talked so much about Afghanistan, but noting that, as committee — that as chairman of a subcommittee with some jurisdiction over U.S. policy in Afghanistan, he has failed to chair a single committee meeting.

All of this, Anderson, under one single umbrella. This is Hillary Clinton saying, Barack Obama is not the guy you think he is – Anderson.

COOPER: It’s an interesting point that she made in the sound bite that you played, where she said, look, if this was my campaign, which had had a meeting with the Canadian government and then people from my campaign had denied it, you know, how would you be covering this story?

This certainly does seem, for Obama, a candidate who’s talked about transparency and a campaign which has tried to pride itself on transparency, a black eye.

CROWLEY: Well, absolutely.

And this is a double whammy, the trade and the NAFTA issue, as to whether this aide of Obama’s went and talked to the Canadian government and said, oh, listen, he’s not actual really serious about this. The problem is not just, where does Barack Obama stand on NAFTA? His campaign makes a credible argument that he’s been for — against NAFTA, at least portions of it, the labor and the environmental part, for some time.

The question here is, for a guy that says no more Washington- speak, I’m going to tell you exactly where I stand, this becomes a public relations issue. And, you know, we have talked before, Anderson, sometimes, the perception of something is worse than the reality.

And for a candidate whose entire campaign is built around an adoring public’s perception of him as a Messiah, that is one pretty big goddamn problem.