Stimulus Package Needs to Stimulate Public Perception.

Posted on | February 7, 2009 |

The Obama administration, so good at delivering their message during the 2008 presidential campaign, has failed to deliver any clear message concerning the economy. The White House, Congress and the media’s inability to explain the package and how it will stimulate the economy drags down America’s perception of the nearly $1 trillion dollar bill nearing a vote in the senate. It is also damaging America’s perception of the economy and confidence that things will ever get better. America’s perception of economic policy is a crucial factor toward stimulating the economy.

Knowing that the White House is currently filled with some of the brightest minds, I am very surprised that they have not been able to mount any kind of communications strategy concerning the stimulus package, which could end up being the most important thing Obama pushes through legislation in his four or eight years as president. President Obama and the White House must address America in clear terms how the stimulus package will work, and, further, where they stand concerning the economic crisis. I may not have agreed with his policies, but Ronald Regan was a genius at communicating difficult economic problems by talking like a grandpa to the television, and using props on his desk in the Oval Office. He could even convince the poor that they would somehow be better off in the long run if their social programs were cut!

My hunch is that the White House’s current failure to explain anything about the economy clearly reflects the frightening possibility that no one can really understand how the financial mess got so bad, and no one really understands how to fix it. Language surrounding the economic crisis became increasingly incoherent after Henry Paulson failed miserably to explain to Congress why Wall Street needed a bailout. In the past four to five months, everyone from economic experts, to the White House, to news journalists recycle the same words and phrases: meltdown, catastrophe, tsunami, freeze . . . all kinds of frightening adjectives and superlatives for disaster that never really specifically define the disaster itself. For instance, immediately following the expectedly dismal January job’s report just this morning, Obama announced that the we have to act on the stimulus package now or the “crisis” will “meltdown” into a “catastrophe,” repeating that the conditions are “dire.”

Language is crucial in a “crisis,” and words carry a heavier weight than they would during a quieter time. My cynical argument is that even if the brightest minds who currently occupy the White House have not the slightest idea how the economy got in this “dire” situation, and even if they have no idea how to get it out of this “meltdown,” they need to frame their language in such away that explains where we are and how we might get out. We need Obama and other leaders to use language in such a way that shows that they have a confident grasp of how difficult the situation is.

A great deal of the reason why the Bush administration destroyed public confidence in Washington is that they failed miserably in communicating effectively. They could barely form complete sentences! Bush began his eight years telling the American people that if we did not go to war with Iraq, we would face a catastrophe of proportions never seen before in history. Bush ended his eight years telling the American people that if we did not bailout Wall Street, we would face a catastrophe of proportions never seen before in history. Iraq turned into a protracted fiasco. And now TARP, too, has rapidly degenerated into a protracted fiasco. In both cases, no one could coherently articulate the how and the why.

Now, Obama and the White House is recirculating the same language. I do not think that America can survive another inexplicable and nebulous threat of catastrophe of proportions never seen before in history. I and the rest of the country have no doubts that we are in a confusing, difficult and dangerous economic condition. And no one has any doubts that it is time for action. But instead of preluding action with bombast, leaders need to instigate and accompany action with clear and articulate voices.

If you tell people that horrible danger lurks in the darkness in their neighborhood, they will lock their doors and hide, paralyzed with fear. If you explain calmly and with confidence what might be hiding in the darkness and how to possibly manage it, you make people less frightened, and perhaps more willing to walk out the door. Right now, since the most we can clearly understand is that we are on the verge of apocalyptic disaster, the most we can do is shrink up in fear and confusion. If we could hear some concrete, confident and perspicacious discourse, we might feel more “stimulated.” Hell, we might venture out of the doors and become consumers again.

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