Cut-It-Out Communications: PR and Politics

Election Night Contrast: Spin Versus Public Relations

The term “public relations” conjures up many different thoughts among people outside the industry. It is often mistakenly confused with the political term “spin,” an appropriate topic to consider during tonight’s election-night contests.

Spin refers to slanting your reaction towards news stories to put them in the most favorable light for your candidate or political party. Public relations, on the other hand, represents a marketing strategy through unpaid publicity, or news stories, as opposed to paid publicity, generally advertisements.

While both spin and public relations attempt to influence their target audiences with favorable material, spin represents a more blatant and forceful slanting of the facts, going right up to the border of outright untruths. Public relations involves framing a news story about your client in a way that will generate a favorable reaction among the public and lead to increased business.

Sometimes, “spin doctors” can take the same set of facts and slant them to reach polar opposite positions. Public relations, on the other hand, tries to inform the target audience with positive benefits about a given product and is held to a much higher standard of truth among business reporters and other media.

Public relations is a respected industry, and trade organizations such as PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) promulgate standards and efficacy requirements among their members.

So, next time you heard the word “spin,” don’t confuse it with PR!

President Obama Hits the Campaign Trail

President Obama is learning. He’s learning to play to his strengths in the governing process. And he’s learning the value of effective public relations.

Until just before the health care bill was adopted, President Obama remained ensconced in Washington unless he was visiting a foreign country. This may have been preferable in terms of consulting with legislators and making executive decisions, but it failed to utilize the Presidency as a bully pulpit. Now, the President is starting to do that.

President Obama is at his best on the campaign trail. But instead of campaigning to get elected, he needs to campaign for his legislative priorities. Only when he interacts with the general public and communicates with his charisma can he break the logjam in Washington and start to have a real positive effect.

The President is on the campaign trail now. He’s making daily appearances to push his financial regulatory legislation and, lo and behold, the Republicans just decided to back down and allow debate on the matter.

Of course, the Senate Democrats’ decision to stay in session all night to highlight the Republicans’ intransigence may have been a factor as well, but it’s still a pleasure to see the President on the news every night with the crowd whipped to a frenzy as he exposes the Republicans for what they’re really doing -- defending Wall Street bankers and campaign contributors.

It’s a pleasure to see the President learning on the job and serving the American public who elected him.

Demonization in U.S. Politics

I heard a right-wing talk show host the other day complain about demonization. That Obama got health care passed by demonizing insurance companies and was going to get financial regulation passed by demonizing Wall Street.

How best to define demonization? Well, it would involve describing normal people as somehow bent on evil for their own personal profit at the expense of everyone else.

But this outlook also personifies the basic system of capitalism, a competition among various companies and individuals to maximize profit, and the best man wins.

But demonization goes one step beyond. It involves outright falsehoods, distortions and a stepping over the line of healthy debate.

And this describes the Republican attacks on Obama to a tee. Their attempt to delegitimize him offers a textbook case of demonization. Declaring that he wasn’t born in the United States. Declaring that he’s a Muslim. Declaring that he hates America.

All for what? For promoting a health care bill not much different from the one passed by Mitt Romney? For selfish political reasons?

If it’s the latter, then there’s the definition of demonization provided above.

So before you accuse Obama of demonizing others, look at how you're demonizing him … Before you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, look to remove the beam in your own.

Public Relations and the 24-Hour News Cycle

Public relations has been transformed by the 24-hour news cycle, and nowhere is that more clear than in the recent national debate over healthcare legislation. Cable news networks were covering it 24/7, focusing, as usual, on the “horse race” aspects: Who’s ahead; what is the vote count; what are the results of recent polls.

Now, that the bill has been signed, the issue is being dropped like a hot potato in search of the next controversy. Already, the topic is being downgraded on print newspapers and eventually, another event will erupt, and the debate will be relegated to an occasional mention on a weekly basis.

While it may be good to tone down the intensity of the debate, this process does not result in the best policy choices for the American people. The white hot focus on the current issue du jour results in distortions and mischaracterizations, often accompanied by the use of fear and outright propaganda. The most controversial aspects, such as the public option in the recent healthcare debate, often must be dropped from consideration because of hysteria whipped up among the general public.

I am unsure what the cure is for the 24/7 news cycle, and it is good we do have some statesmen in Washington rather than just politicians. Maybe, it is a necessary evil in light of our right of free speech. But free speech does not let you shout “fire” in a crowded theater, and those in charge of the 24-hour news cycle must show some responsibility as well.  

The PR of a Political Scandal: Delay, Deny and Downplay

As I follow the development of two political scandals in the newspaper, one at the state and another at the local level, surprisingly both regarding domestic violence cases, it strikes me how tone deaf some politicians can be regarding the way these accusations develop into a full-blown story and how damaging that can be.

 

Time and time again, we watch as politicians delay, deny and downplay these accusations and let the story come out, drip, drip, drip, over several days or even weeks in front-page newspaper stories.

 

Newspapers, typically out to sell more issues, are always going to look to expose the foibles of elected officials, supposedly our leaders, superior to us, and showing us the way to move forward. I’d like to see an elected official, caught in one of these scandals, hold a news conference and say, “It’s actually worse than you’ve seen reported. Here are some additional facts you don’t know.”

 

Of course, these politicians are blinded by lawyers, who always want to obfuscate regarding clients accused of a crime. What the lawyers fail to realize, however, is that their political clients have two goals: one, of course, is avoiding jail; but the other, more important for their overall career, is maintaining a shred of empathy among the general public.

 

This PR side of the politician’s interest, when caught in the midst of a scandal, should not be neglected as these stories develop.

Public Relations and War

As the offensive against Marja in Afghanistan continues, it is helpful to reconsider the relationship between public relations and war.

 

War is a brutal business and encompasses, inevitably, the suffering and killing of innocent people, the ravaging of a nation’s infrastructure and, in general, many acts of mayhem and injustice.

 

To win popular support for such actions, it is necessary to communicate the reasons to continue the struggle, both for attacking and defending armies, terrorist groups or other participants. Each side wants to justify their efforts to the general population in the battlefield arena, to say, as Bob Dylan sarcastically sings, why “God is on their side.”

 

While some struggles, such as World War II, present an existential choice between good and evil, most wars are fought for more murky reasons. And the United States is not beyond reproach either.

 

However, when intentional repression occurs, or innocents are unfairly targeted for political reasons, it is generally possible to justify some kind of response, whether it be international sanctions or more extreme actions.

 

Surprisingly, these situations occur more frequently than might be thought, and generally serve as an instigation for conflict. When that happens, the role of public relations is not to obfuscate -- not to repeat a lie so often that you hope people might eventually believe it -- but to clear up the murky situation, to communicate your case in a clear and convincing manner so neutral parties will see the justice of your cause.

The Public Relations of Bipartisanship

Bipartisanship is the new holy grail for President Obama, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any shrewd political calculation involved.

 

It’s obvious to any politician that Scott Brown has changed the power equation in Washington, but that can play to either the Democrats or the Republicans favor. Democrats now realize the necessity of negotiation, but Republicans are facing a new pressure to deliver results because they can no longer sit back and watch the Democrats struggle to get 60 votes in the Senate.

 

So bipartisanship cuts two ways, and the Republicans can no longer just be the party of no because if the government grinds to a halt, all incumbents may end up paying the price.

 

President Obama is fairly good at outmaneuvering the Republicans, and he easily did so during their party caucus recently. However, the new healthcare meeting at the White House, scheduled for February 25th, may be more problematic. The Republicans will be prepared for cameras this time around, and they have already staked out a negotiating principle they know the President will refuse -- to start the process from scratch and throw out the current bills passed by the House and Senate.

 

If President Obama can counter this argument, he may win the confrontation again. And even if he doesn’t, he can claim the Republicans are acting in bad faith, and pivot from the meeting to using budget reconciliation in the Senate.

 

We all know how much President Obama wants bipartisanship, but he’s smart enough to use the offer of it to his political advantage.

Public relations and failure

Here's a post about the relationship between public relations and political failure. Our society makes it hard to admit defeat, so when faced with its spectre, politicians typically try to spin it away when it would be more effective to admit a loss and carry on.

Does this analysis apply to the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts? Unfortunately, it may. The one undeniable thing it demonstrated was that the so-called fringe right, the angry right, the Tea Party movement, whatever you want to call it, is not just a few crazies. You can't call a whole State, especially a traditionally liberal and Democratic one, crazy.

So Democratic legislators who may have believed their own spin about the radical fringes are now faced with an atmosphere where their jobs may be at stake. The result -- a headlong rush for the hills. Instead of fighting for what they believe in, and perhaps recapturing the momentum, they have abandoned national healthcare, financial regulation, cap and trade and a whole slew of worthy causes.

And we don't need a Republican lite environment in the Democratic halls of power. Democrats should stop pandering to the budget hawks and stand up for what they really believe. If I wanted a deficit hawk, I'd vote Republican, and if the Democrats keep capitulating the way they have been in the past few weeks, many others may consider the same thing.

Obama Runs Circles Around the Republicans

Obama ran circles around the Republicans when he attended one of their party caucuses yesterday. He outmaneuvered them right from the beginning when he brought a camera crew in tow with him, and the Republicans, reluctantly, had to let them in. You know, it’s all about the transparency they’ve been touting so they couldn’t very well say no.

 

Once there, Obama’s presence stole the show, and, as he stood at the podium with the Presidential seal on it, he looked down at this opponents, both figuratively and literally. He was able to debunk the Republicans’ lies, and what were they going to do? Call him a liar again like Joe Wilson? They’ve already tried that, and it would be against the spirit of bipartisanship.

 

Some well turned phrases by the President ensured he would receive favorable news coverage -- like that remark about their attitude toward his health plan, "a Bolshevik plot?"

 

The President received much more attention than his questioners who seemed offstage and essentially irrelevant to the event. They were left to grasp at straws, protesting that they were not the party of no, or obstructionists. That’s not much to take away from such a historic encounter.

 

Despite their protests to the contrary, the Republicans knew they were out-maneuvered and are not likely to repeat this format in the future.

Spinning about Democratic Arrogance

Republicans in Washington are using a new talking point: the Republican victory in Massachusetts resulted from Democratic arrogance in D.C.

This would be a good tactic if it were true. Democrats have leaned over backwards to include Republicans in the negotiating process for healthcare and received nothing in return. The Senate Finance Committee spent an interminable number of days courting its Republican members to no avail.

The question I am concerned about, though, concerns whether this tactic will work. Sometimes, the content of an attack only needs a tangential relation to the actual truth; if it is repeated often enough, people will start to believe it.

As an example, take the birthers movement or Sarah Palin’s shrill cries about “death panels.” I won’t even grace Rush Limbaugh with the promulgation of any of his remarks.

The next few days are particularly important for establishing the story line of Scott Brown’s victory, and I only hope the Democratic PR machine can get into operation fast enough to counter the Republicans’ lies.

Of course, it’s not all image. There are very real concerns for the rest of the Democratic agenda as well including energy legislation, financial reform, etc. I hope we’re not in for another three years of the “just say no” tactic the Republicans have used so successfully so far.