Community Corner
Obama as Communicator: Have his Messages Been Lost in Translation?
He has saved the country from a major depression and also ended the recession. So, why does that hardly matter to anyone?
There are those who voted for President Barack Obama and today feel they made a bad bet.
They feel the change he promised on the campaign trail has amounted to little more than a talking point to get elected.
The stimulus package is probably perceived as his biggest failure, despite the fact that leading economic experts agree it helped prevent a depression and end a recession. And had Republicans cooperated to fund it to the much higher level Obama originally wanted, the economy would be in even better shape.
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However, a year after he signed the bill, the percentage of Americans who believed the stimulus had created jobs was lower than the percentage who believed Elvis was alive, reported a Time Magazine article, "Why Change Won't Sell."
The truth is, reported the magazine, because of the stimulus package, $90 billion was invested in clean energy (compared to just a few billion spent in previous years); it included the biggest infrastructure push since Eisenhower's administration, the biggest middle-class tax cuts since Reagan's and the biggest new research investments in the history of all U.S. presidencies.
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On his first day in office, Obama froze White House salaries; he later created the TARP financial and banking rescue plan and eventually recovered virtually all of the bail-out money; he created the Making Home Affordable home refinancing plan; and he oversaw the creation of more jobs in 2010 alone than Bush did in eight years (the simultaneous job losses absorbed the perceivable impact of this gain).
Also, Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which restored basic protections against pay discrimination for women and other workers. This was after the GOP blocked the bill in 2007 (only five Republican Senators voted for the bill).
And that's just a list of ten accomplishments out of 200 accomplishments in his first three years in office.
But hardly anyone knows any of this.
Why?
Some posit that his administration, which including Obama himself, has done a poor job at getting his message out-- that his communications department failed to adequately market his achievements, while the Republicans never swayed away from a singular unified message: "Obama's failed policies..."
This notion was further underscored following President Bill Clinton's rousing speech last week at the Democratic National Convention, where the talk across Twitter and amongst live broadcasters was that Clinton did a better job in 40 minutes of galvanizing the party than Obama's handlers did in three years.
So, how would you characterize Obama's presidency? Do you feel that America would better view his time in office with clearer more consistent messaging?
Or would better messaging do very little to change your opinion of his tenure as the 44th U.S. president?
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