"Things could have been worse" might not be an effective Democratic message.
Saturday, Feb. 6, 2010
by James A. Barnes, National Journal
In his State of the Union address, President Obama defended the stimulus package that Congress passed early last year, then saw unemployment hit double digits. What his critics fail to understand, Obama said, is that "because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed."
But essentially saying that "things could have been worse" might not be an effective message for Democratic candidates to carry into this year's high-stakes midterm elections.
The president isn't the only Democrat who has tried this defense. It seems that a week doesn't go by without House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California issuing at least one press release lauding the results of the Recovery Act. Shortly before the State of the Union address, her office trumpeted the headline of a USA Today survey of economists, "Experts: Stimulus Reduced Our Pain."
But with unemployment still stuck at high levels, Democrats can't count on being rewarded on Election Day for taking what they say were necessary steps to keep the economy from plummeting into an abyss. This was borne out by a focus group that Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg and Andrew Baumann, a senior associate at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, conducted in Las Vegas. Each of 50 swing voters turned a dial during the State of the Union address to register real-time reactions to the president's remarks.
Although Obama hit several high notes with Greenberg's dial group -- calling for financial system reforms and going after big banks and Wall Street were particularly popular -- the president fell flat when he took credit for having pulled the economy through "the worst of the storm."
"On the dials, they did not love the discussion about what progress had been made," Baumann said during a conference call with reporters shortly after the president's address. That was an understatement. In a subsequent report on the dial group session, Greenberg wrote, "Whenever President Obama took credit for bringing the economy back from the ledge or pointed to macro-level indications of economic growth, voters turned their dials down."
Long before "green shoots" became the favorite buzz phrase of optimistic economists, voters had established their standard reaction to declarations that a turnaround has begun even though unemployment figures don't yet agree: They don't buy it. Indeed, polling during past economic recoveries found that it can take well over a year before the public is reassured that the country is on the mend.
What's more, Democratic media consultant Jim Margolis says, "I don't believe voters respond to things that didn't happen to them. Rather, they are concerned about what is happening to them -- an upside-down mortgage, unemployment, and the struggles of everyday life."
He continued, "It is very hard to say to people, 'Imagine what would have happened if this administration hadn't taken the steps they did to save the economy.' "
Obama often alludes to the fact that he inherited a weak economy from his predecessor, but unlike some other Democrats, he has been careful lately not to explicitly blame George W. Bush for the nation's woes. That may be because the blame game is not very effective once your party has controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for a while.
In the special Senate election in Massachusetts, Democratic nominee Martha Coakley tried to tie GOP nominee Scott Brown to the discredited policies of Bush, who left office with an extraordinarily low job-approval rating. But those attacks didn't even dent the Republican, who pulled off a staggering upset that is still reverberating in Washington. Democratic operatives say they doubt the blame game will work any better 10 months from now.
Even though a plurality of Americans continue to tell pollsters they are more likely to fault Bush and his party for the country's economic woes than to pin the blame on Obama and the Democrats, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said, "Unfortunately, that is not as relevant as we would like it to be." People may still blame Bush, "but there's no question when you're the party in charge, and if you've been in charge for two years, people can't but help hold you responsible. They can't help but to downgrade the performance of the president and Democrats; that's impossible."
Some Republicans suspect that the more costly Obama's agenda becomes, the more likely voters are to assign the nation's economic problems to him and his party. "Whether or not the American people say this guy inherited such a mess, the problem is, ownership is being turned more and more over to Obama and House Democrats because of the spending," said former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf.
Fahrenkopf, now president of the American Gaming Association, said that Obama's situation resembles Ronald Reagan's in 1982, a year that saw unemployment hit 10.4 percent right before the midterm elections and Republicans lose 26 House seats.
"I very much sense the same feeling of wanting the president to succeed," said Fahrenkopf, who took over the RNC after the 1982 midterms. Although Obama has projected some of the Gipper's trademark optimism lately and his job-approval rating hasn't tumbled nearly as low as Reagan's during the 1982 recession -- the worst postwar slump on record until the current downturn -- there's a big question whether Obama enjoys as much residual political strength as Reagan did.
At the end of 1982, analysts at the Gallup Organization noted a paradox in their surveys on Reagan and his handling of the economy. Although a "solid majority" of respondents in the Gallup polls that year thought that Reaganomics would worsen their own financial situation, there was consistently "more public faith" that Reagan's economic program would eventually help the nation as a whole and have long-term benefits. "The public has more confidence in Reagan than approval ratings of his performance would suggest," Gallup reported. "While only one-third approve of the way he is handling the economy, close to half express some degree of confidence that he will do the right thing with regard to the economy."
That was part of the basis for Reagan's rallying cry of "stay the course" during the 1982 campaign season, a phrase that was mocked after Republicans lost more than two dozen House seats. But in retrospect, it may have resonated with the electorate. "The econometric models were predicting a seat loss of 40," recalls veteran GOP pollster Fred Steeper, who was conducting surveys for the National Republican Congressional Committee at the time. "We thought just losing 26 was the net effect of the 'stay the course' campaign."
Can Obama and his party duplicate that strategy this fall to stem their losses? Retired GOP adman Doug Bailey, who is credited with mapping the "stay the course" game plan, expresses doubts. "It was a little easier to make the case [in 1982] that the president knows what he's doing," Bailey said. "With Reagan, I think what people saw in him was a central core of beliefs that is solid. With President Obama, they may not see that central core of programs or beliefs that they can hold on to."
Bailey credited Obama with being a very confident speaker in the Reagan mold. Yet he added, "He communicates that you ought to like him a lot, but he doesn't really leave you with rock-solid certainty that you know exactly what his priorities are."
Bailey's assessment echoes the conclusion of Greenberg's report on how the focus group of swing voters responded to Obama's State of the Union address: "Still, the president and the Democrats in Congress do not yet have a narrative or a framework to explain their economic policies in a period where the gap grows between macro- and micro-growth."
Their narrative is not likely to be "stay the course."