Sweeping Away the Cobwebs and Pulling Back the Curtains

Admittedly, this blog has been moribund for awhile.

But with the great changes that are sweeping the landscape, I’m determined to take my own positive steps – and actually start posting again.

So while this is brief, it also is a post. It’s a start. And yes, it’s about Barack Obama.

America’s 44th President continues to prove savvy in terms of the online world and to promise that his governing style will be one of openness and public accountability.

He has launched an Office of the President-Elect website that will be a source of information about the plans and personnel for his administration, walking the American people through the transition from W’s gang to his Cabinet and staff.

It’s as if someone has gently parted the curtains and let a little light into a room that has been plunged into darkness and despair for far too long. And it’s beautiful.

American Idol German Edition: Mr. Obama Goes to Berlin.

Barack Obama’s upcoming visit to Berlin seems to have generated a fervor that is akin only to the frenzy of delight that swept the United States when the Beatles came to play Shea Stadium.

Der Spiegel’s current cover displays a photo of the favoured Democrat and states “Deutschland trifft den SuperStar,” which basically translates as “Germany meets the superstar.”

The Main Event

This Thursday the Democratic nominee for the Presidency of the United States will speak in Berlin. Der Spiegel has speculated that the speech will draw between 10,000 to a million spectators eager to hear from the man often referred to in the local press as an “American Idol.” (And, in fact, I’m trying to decide whether or not to take my four-year-old on a five hour train trip to experience this rather historic moment- given her precocious nature I’m thinking likely not. Last thing I need is for her to bite a secret service agent in the ankle…)

A Little Background

Historically speaking, this is another opportunity for Obama to solidify the parallels between himself and JFK. This is his chance to present himself as the man who can bring hope for a new, shiny and improved America- a Camelot redux.

As noted on the Deutsche Welle website, Germans in particular but Europeans as a whole are eager for a change from the current American administration. German citizen Monika Staffel was quoted as stating:

We are waiting urgently for change because Bush has caused a loit of damage in the world…Now we want to know more about Obama’s positions….”

An Important Precursor: JFK’s Speech in Berlin

The speech in Berlin – perhaps expertly crafted by the ever-brilliant Theodore Sorensen- is a chance for Obama to recreate and perhaps surpass one of Kennedy’s greatest triumphs.

On June 26, 1963, John F. Kennedy gave what became known as the “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech shortly after the East Germans erected the Berlin Wall, dividing the city, already a bohemian island in the midst of the austere East, completely in two. In an inspiring oration, the young American President let it be known that the United States would not abandon Berlin to Communism. It was a message of defiance and a message of hope.

[Unfortunately these days it is also known primarily for the fact that by saying "ich bin ein Berliner," Kennedy accidentally labeled himself a jelly doughnut. "Ein Berliner" is a jam-filled pastry. He meant to say "Ich bin Berliner," which means "I am a citizen of Berlin."]

Obama and the Kennedy Connection.

Ever since the Kennedys and the Clintons began battling for the soul of the Democratic Party like the Jets and the Sharks, it seems that the Massachusetts clan has done whatever it can to draw parallels between Obama and JFK. As the blog Politico noted back in January, when Senator Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg endorsed Obama:

“Caroline Kennedy said there was ‘one candidate who offers the same sense of hope and inspiration’ as her father.”

And now the stage is set for an exciting, dynamic young candidate with a gift for oration to recreate a triumph belonging to another exciting, dynamic young politician with a gift for oration.

The Setting for the Speech

However, unlike JFK, Obama will not be allowed to speak at the Brandenburg Gate as Kennedy (and later Reagan and Clinton did) because he is not yet President. Instead he will speak at the Victory Column, the Shining, golden angel that watches over Berlin (the one on which the angels perch and watch over the city in the gloriously moving and beautiful film Wings of Desire- Wim Wenders’s love letter to Berlin.)

[Though historically the Victory Column is considered a representation of Prussian military might- perhaps not the ideal subtext for this speech.]

Why It is a Brilliant PR Move

With Obama’s recent repositioning on certain issues at home having led to serious criticism (from sources like The Huffington Post), the first tarnish on a golden reputation and repeated questions raised about his foreign policy experience, the candidate’s visit to Europe could not come at a better time.

He is being received with adulation. He will demonstrate how he can revive the United States’s declining world reputation. He may in fact prove to be the ultimate American idol.

Do you think a European success will silence critics at home? Do you think that it will matter? And do you think that, unlike JFK, Obama will craft solid policies and strategies as President, and not just prove to be a stylish, smart and well-spoken example of style over substance?

Myself- I am very much hoping that the answer is yes- that the man of the moment is the man of the future. Fingers crossed.

Stopping The Viral Spread: Obama’s Reputation Management Strategy

Face it- you think politics, you think spin. You think maneuvering. You think manipulation — not to mention rumour and innuendo. Don’t you?

That may be about to change due to a new PR tactic that the already Internet innovative BarackObama campaign has put into play: Emphasizing the truth.

How utterly strange.

Just a few days ago Senator Obama’s campaign announced the launch of a new website called www.fightthesmears.com.

The Purpose of the Site

The purpose of the website is to debunk the nasty whispered untruths that have been seeping out of the American right-wing media and spreading like wildfire across the Internet.

And, as Time magazine noted, Obama’s method for combating those ugly insinuations is through a form of community building with this website as a hub.

“Obama is enlisting his millions of supporters to help him hunt down and quash these stories, just as those supporters helped him turn his insurgent campaign into a history-making juggernaut. Says Obama adviser Anita Dunn: ‘We will not allow Michelle — or, for that matter, Barack — to be defined by rumors.’”

It is a clever idea and a canny use of technology. And it will be fascinating to see if it works.

The Site(In Brief)

www.fightthesmears.com is well-conceived, laying out the false allegation made about the candidate and counteracting it right below, often with supportive scans of documents or video clips.

It’s fairly well done and it’s already had a lot to tackle in terms of reputation management. The New York Times gave a brief run down of the rumours that the site is currently addressing, even though the candidate has already addressed them himself in other media countless times:

” ‘Fight the Smears’ is designed to systematically dismantle Internet rumors by letting users see both ‘the smear’ and, the campaign’s response. The site already features sections fact-checking rumors that Mr. Obama refuses to say the pledge of allegiance, or has written racially incendiary remarks into his books or that he is a Muslim.”

Will it Work?

If anybody can make this kind of approach effective, Senator Obama can. His campaign’s use of the Internet and social media has been tremendously savvy from day one. In their last edition focusing on the current crop of candidates for the President of the United States, The Economist mentioned Senator Obama’s ability to connect with his supporters via the Internet:

“His website was thus a vast social networking site….a mechanism not just for translating enthusiasm into cash but also for building a community of fired-up supporters.”

The question now is will he be able to sway those who do not yet (or just plain don’t) support him? Will this be an effective form of reputation management? Will this work? And is this method one that will be used again by PR practitioners in other political campaigns? What do you think?

You Always Hurt the One You Love? Musings on Bill & Hillary

Presidents and Presidential contenders have always had relatives they wished they could lock away until their nomination, if not their term, was over.

Remember Billy Beer?

But the latest relative that has embarrassed and seriously damaged a candidate’s chances is a genuine shock. Who would have thought the supremely savvy politician Bill Clinton would in fact be a liability rather than an asset to his wife during her historic presidential campaign

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s husband has brought her yet more negative publicity. As noted in a New Republic blog by Michael Crowley, this is due to an anger-fueled outburst concerning Todd S. Purdum, husband of President Clinton’s former Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers and author of an admittedly unflattering, possibly unfair and apparently dubiously-sourced Vanity Fair article about the former President.

But it was not the ex-President’s first major gaffe during the campaign.

That unfortunate distinction falls on his ungracious handling of Senator Barack Obama’s landslide South Carolina primary victory.

As Anne E. Kornblut of the Washington Post noted, the former President’s reaction was the comment that Jesse Jackson had won in South Carolina in 1984 and 1988. It was a statement that discounted Senator Obama’s sizable victory and tacitly suggested that it was only due to the state’s strongly African-American demographics.

That, as well as his furious tirades at the press after that statement generated justified media backlash, certainly wounded his wife’s campaign.

It also raised an interesting question- How should a candidate handle negative publicity when it is generated by one who is near-and-dear to them? And what do you do when that relative is as famous as you are?

Furthermore, how did Bill Clinton, an adroit master of the political game, blunder so badly?

With Senator Obama finally having sewn up the Democratic nomination, it is unlikely that former president Clinton’s latest outburst can have any further negative impact on his wife’s political career, despite the mushrooming coverage of his ranting denunciation of Purdum as a “scumbag” (and worse) to a reporter from The Huffington Post.

But one has to wonder what might have been if the man had been on his game- if he had managed to generate positive publicity for his wife’s campaign rather than negative. Would it have made a difference?