NYT, pg1: Obama Looks to History for Economic Message

[DeepModem Mom]

Obama Looks to History for Economic Message
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG
Published: January 11, 2009

WASHINGTON — It is still a week before he takes office, yet President-elect Barack Obama is everywhere: on the Sunday talk shows, on radio and YouTube, on Capitol Hill, drawing on the techniques he employed during the campaign and lessons from predecessors as he seeks to shape public attitudes about the economic downturn. His aides said Mr. Obama had studied the way Franklin D. Roosevelt approached the first 100 days of his presidency, and in particular had seized on the notion of Roosevelt having a “conversation with the American public” to try to prepare it for a difficult time. He has, aides said, even looked at the words Roosevelt used and the tone he struck.

Mr. Obama has sought to strike a balance: emphasizing the depth of the problem, to create a sense of political urgency for Congress to act quickly, while not being so pessimistic that he could further destabilize the jittery financial markets or deplete the sense of energy and hope accompanying his election.

Yet even as the president-elect looks to the past — he said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he had been reading Lincoln in preparation for his inaugural address — he and his team are mobilizing to use the most up- to-date techniques to communicate with the public and rally support.

His aides said they would begin sending to supporters and posting on YouTube videotapes of economic experts in the administration — like Lawrence H. Summers, who will be director of the National Economic Council — talking in detail about Mr. Obama’s economic proposals. That is following on a technique they used the first time to explain a complicated economic report this weekend. (His advisers said they had found in the campaign that using experts, even those not widely known, rather than employing familiar political faces in these types of videos was far more effective in engaging grass-roots supporters.)

At the same time, the incoming administration is preparing to release more reports that will set out in specific numbers the goals for the huge spending Mr. Obama is proposing. The details include things like how many classrooms will be modernized, one aide said....

***

Mr. Obama’s aides said that for the next three weeks, he would pack his schedule with interviews, speeches, news conferences and limited travel to try to rally public support behind the effort. The overall political goal, aides said, was to ensure that Mr. Obama’s economic recovery program was approved quickly by a substantial bipartisan vote in Congress, while at the same time playing down public hopes about how quickly it might work....

Obama aides said he had used the transition to study how Roosevelt had tried to inform and reassure an anxious public. They said he had read a book on that period, “The Defining Moment,” by Jonathan Alter....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/politics/12obama.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

[Skittles]

1. Obama is picking up steam

:thumbsup:

[MasonJar]

2. But what is the specific plan? I am totally chagrined after we virtually

wasted the first $350 billion wih a plan thought up and implemented by supposed experts. It was a give-away to the very institutions which ruined the US economy, while the little guy was the fall guy for the collapse.