Saturday, June 23, 2012
By: Marcelo J. García
One has to get the policy right. But it is also in the nature of the job to “tell a story to the people,” one that gives them “a sense of unity, purpose and optimism.” This is what presidents do, according to President Barack Obama.
In an interview with CBS news last week (http://cor.to/Nwx), Obama said having failed to articulate this story to the US people was the main shortcoming of his first term in office. This is, remember, the master of political snake enchanters: the best speech deliverer of his generation and beyond and a man who won his way to the Nobel Peace Prize by force of poetic words about change and hope. In the interview, he sounded as if the day-to-day White House job had deprived him of his political narrative powers. “A lot of people are now saying, where’s the story that tells us where we are going,” said Obama. After the 2010 midterm race, in which Republicans gained major legislative ground, Obama had said that he had failed to “persuade people” and “set a tone” for his presidency. When and why “Yes, we can” and “hope and change” were swallowed by the wheels of Washington DC bureaucracy is something only Obama can know. But the truth is that he needs to get the narrative magic wand fixed quickly if he is to win a re-election this November.
It should come as no surprise that Obama told President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in a November 2011 meeting of the G-20 that he needed to “take some lessons” from the Argentine leader, who had then just won re-election by a landslide after having turned narrative into the chief drive of the second half of her first 2007-2011 term. The other leader listening to Obama was France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, who has already lost his job.
But things do change. POTUS, as the President Of The United States is referred to in US diplomatic jargon, would likely be surprised to hear that Fernández de Kirchner’s political communication is being questioned back in Buenos Aires.
This week, an opposition legislator presented a bill to ban the presidential use of the cadena nacional, a State broadcast all private television and radio stations in the country are obliged by law to air at the government’s request. The government-sponsored Media Act passed by Congress in October 2009 says that the government is entitled to use this faculty in “exceptional, grave or institutionally relevant situations.” When language is vague, interpretation reigns. Two weeks ago, the President resorted to the cadena on three occasions: Independence Day on July 9 and the inaugurations of a farming machine plant and a science and technology fair on the following days, triggering the rage of the opposition and the oppositionist press alike. There was none of that this week.
On Wednesday, PRO centre-right Deputy Laura Alonso, formerly the head of the local chapter of Transparency International, drafted a bill that would overall bar the use of cadenas. The argumentation presented by the deputy in the draft (http://cor.to/NwO) is not free from contradiction. Alonso says that on the Internet Era, “as millions of people access and produce information in real time,” the use of the cadena nacional “seems like a museum item.” But then she adds that the President’s “massive and abusive” use of this tool could “balance out the political picture in favour of (the government’s) candidates and against the opposition.” Further on in the draft, she refers to the cadena nacional as an “almighty tool” whose “discretional use” could “affect other people’s right to expression.”
The opposition has not been good either at capturing the imagination of Argentines. Most of the time, the opposition seems simply obsessed with ruining the government’s feel-good story yet unable to start a tale of its own.
The concern for the narrative has always been at the heart of the Kirchners’ era political nervous system. The tools have changed though. Before a seemingly insurmountable political conflict against the country’s heavyweight farming sector over export duties in the first half of 2008, the government had relied on established media to tell their story. As the farmers got the backing of urban middle class groups and mainstream journalism, the Kirchner government decided it had to build a communications system of its own. Result-wise, it was an undisputed success. The Kirchners staged the most impressive political comeback in Argentina’s recent history, riding on a counter-striking combination of policy reform and discourse. The sudden death of former president Néstor Kirchner in October 2010 gave her wife and President a final public empathy push that catapulted her to a comfortable re-election by a landslide a year later.
Anybody interested in the thorny relationship between communications and politics — Obama, to name a case — would be concerned if one of the terms of the equation overshadows the other. The public can only take a certain dose of political discourse — no matter how good it is. Good policy, on the contrary, is never excessive. “My job is about explaining and inspiring,” says Obama. It is, of course, also about delivering. The order of the factors sometimes does affect the final product.
By: Marcelo J. García
One has to get the policy right. But it is also in the nature of the job to “tell a story to the people,” one that gives them “a sense of unity, purpose and optimism.” This is what presidents do, according to President Barack Obama.
In an interview with CBS news last week (http://cor.to/Nwx), Obama said having failed to articulate this story to the US people was the main shortcoming of his first term in office. This is, remember, the master of political snake enchanters: the best speech deliverer of his generation and beyond and a man who won his way to the Nobel Peace Prize by force of poetic words about change and hope. In the interview, he sounded as if the day-to-day White House job had deprived him of his political narrative powers. “A lot of people are now saying, where’s the story that tells us where we are going,” said Obama. After the 2010 midterm race, in which Republicans gained major legislative ground, Obama had said that he had failed to “persuade people” and “set a tone” for his presidency. When and why “Yes, we can” and “hope and change” were swallowed by the wheels of Washington DC bureaucracy is something only Obama can know. But the truth is that he needs to get the narrative magic wand fixed quickly if he is to win a re-election this November.
It should come as no surprise that Obama told President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in a November 2011 meeting of the G-20 that he needed to “take some lessons” from the Argentine leader, who had then just won re-election by a landslide after having turned narrative into the chief drive of the second half of her first 2007-2011 term. The other leader listening to Obama was France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, who has already lost his job.
But things do change. POTUS, as the President Of The United States is referred to in US diplomatic jargon, would likely be surprised to hear that Fernández de Kirchner’s political communication is being questioned back in Buenos Aires.
This week, an opposition legislator presented a bill to ban the presidential use of the cadena nacional, a State broadcast all private television and radio stations in the country are obliged by law to air at the government’s request. The government-sponsored Media Act passed by Congress in October 2009 says that the government is entitled to use this faculty in “exceptional, grave or institutionally relevant situations.” When language is vague, interpretation reigns. Two weeks ago, the President resorted to the cadena on three occasions: Independence Day on July 9 and the inaugurations of a farming machine plant and a science and technology fair on the following days, triggering the rage of the opposition and the oppositionist press alike. There was none of that this week.
On Wednesday, PRO centre-right Deputy Laura Alonso, formerly the head of the local chapter of Transparency International, drafted a bill that would overall bar the use of cadenas. The argumentation presented by the deputy in the draft (http://cor.to/NwO) is not free from contradiction. Alonso says that on the Internet Era, “as millions of people access and produce information in real time,” the use of the cadena nacional “seems like a museum item.” But then she adds that the President’s “massive and abusive” use of this tool could “balance out the political picture in favour of (the government’s) candidates and against the opposition.” Further on in the draft, she refers to the cadena nacional as an “almighty tool” whose “discretional use” could “affect other people’s right to expression.”
The opposition has not been good either at capturing the imagination of Argentines. Most of the time, the opposition seems simply obsessed with ruining the government’s feel-good story yet unable to start a tale of its own.
The concern for the narrative has always been at the heart of the Kirchners’ era political nervous system. The tools have changed though. Before a seemingly insurmountable political conflict against the country’s heavyweight farming sector over export duties in the first half of 2008, the government had relied on established media to tell their story. As the farmers got the backing of urban middle class groups and mainstream journalism, the Kirchner government decided it had to build a communications system of its own. Result-wise, it was an undisputed success. The Kirchners staged the most impressive political comeback in Argentina’s recent history, riding on a counter-striking combination of policy reform and discourse. The sudden death of former president Néstor Kirchner in October 2010 gave her wife and President a final public empathy push that catapulted her to a comfortable re-election by a landslide a year later.
Anybody interested in the thorny relationship between communications and politics — Obama, to name a case — would be concerned if one of the terms of the equation overshadows the other. The public can only take a certain dose of political discourse — no matter how good it is. Good policy, on the contrary, is never excessive. “My job is about explaining and inspiring,” says Obama. It is, of course, also about delivering. The order of the factors sometimes does affect the final product.
