Time to Re-architect Presidential Communication

[gulliver]

Now that we know the Dem legislative agenda is going to be blocked until 2012, the Dems are free to take a few risks and create a permanent change in the communication relationship of government to media and in the relationship of the Presidency to Congress. The current relationships are wholly outmoded and detrimental to the country in the modern media environment. Current technology has the capability of providing immediate, direct, and repeated communication. We should be using it.

I'm no communication expert but what if President Obama established something like the following precedents:

1. Eliminate the Presidential Spokesperson as we know it. Presidents would usually speak for themselves.
   
2. Hold twice-weekly press conferences with the media. Use video conferences when the president is away from Washington.
   
3. Hold semi-weekly question-and-answer sessions with Congress or with Congressional Committee members of all committees.
   
4. "Televise" the conferences and meetings with Congress. The video streams could be available for broadcast by any broadcaster and also live streamed directly from a U.S. government website. The streams would also be made available over the Internet as video archives and transcripts.
   
5. The conferences should be true two-way conferences. The president should be able to ask questions as well as answer them.

Eliminating the Presidential Spokesperson would safeguard the presidency from falling into the hands of the merely telegenic, the practiced posers, and traders on name recognition. Frequent, repeated meetings of the president, the press, and Congress would make good communication skills a requirement for the presidency.

Moreover, the questioners themselves would be forced to improve. For example, we would not see the current pattern where a reporter asks a loaded question, the president answers, and then the reporter reports the answer in whatever way he/she chooses to interpret or understand it. The president would be able to address the reporter's interpretation in short order at the very next conference by directly addressing the reporter. That would help reduce misunderstandings and provide a deterrent to spin or dishonesty.

The American people would have a more responsive government, because their questions and concerns would be addressed right away. They would have a more honest, efficient, and competent government as well.

Would Fox News refuse to participate? Would the GOP Congress refuse? I'm sure they would try to think of a way. Fox News is a creature of the current chaotic and outmoded communication environment. They trade on the fact that their assertions and complaints won't be addressed in real time. They need inefficient communication from government and the Dems to survive. I think the non-Fox press would never refuse a press conference. Frequent press conferences would give the White House Press Corps more to do, saving them from the pink slips that their current level of activity justifies.

It seems to me that short of something like this "Prime Minister's Questions on steroids," there is little possibility of a real dialog. We end up with the "conflictinator." The time for bursty, sound-bite communication, echo chambers, and go-betweens is over, imo. We live in a a highly efficient, universally accessible media age, yet we still conduct communication with our leaders via telegraph and semaphores.

[pinto]

1. Interesting ideas.

:thumbsup:

[gkhouston]

2. Obama would certainly come off well in a "Prime Minister's Questions" format

and the public could see what's on the Republicans' minds. :thumbsup:

[gulliver]

4. It would be fairly riveting to watch Obama...

...with the Republicans if that televised discussion he had with the Republican Caucus on health care was a preview. I think open, rapid, continuous conversation like that would be devastating, not just for Republican leaders, but for Fox News, American Crossroads, etc. Imagine if Obama were at a Press Conference and said, "American Crossroads had an ad on TV last week. I invited their representatives here to discuss it, but they apparently decided not to show up. Here's the ad. (Plays ad.) My problem with it is that its just not true, and I am wondering where they are getting their information..."

[gkhouston]

6. LOL, and point well taken! n/t

[MineralMan]

3. Well, if they do, I hope they'll abolish the use of nouns as verbs.

That'd be a great start. :hi:

[gulliver]

5. I thought I verbed it correctly.

Are you sure? ;-) :hi:

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Better tell John Keats first:

First reference in the Oxford English Dictionary:
"1818 KEATS Let. 23 July (1931) I. 219 This was architected thus By the great Oceanus. "

He also used 'architecture' as a verb. The other usages given for 'architect' as a verb are by Harper's Magazine in 1890, and ones from 1912, 1913 and 1923.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. If I were Obama, I'd speak for myself as often as possible

and never have a self interested and unlikeable Gibbs type take my place. I'd not have Gibbs as press agent to an Ice Show.

[gulliver]

8. Exactly. If I were Bush, I would have Dana Perrino speak for me...

...as often as I could. Spokespeople prop up and protect bad leaders and hobble good ones. If Obama talked to the press directly about half as often as Gibbs currently does, Obama would be making mincemeat of the Republicans. For some reason, we are still caught up in the old fashioned idea that a presidential press conference has a sort of ceremonial infrequency. That type of press conference is very harmful to good leaders.

For example, Obama invariably says the right things at his press conferences, but people miss them, have a hard time looking them up, referencing them, etc. They are too infrequent. Obama has his press conference or speech, then the GOP responds, then there is a vacuum for, potentially, weeks. During that time, the whole conversation is turned over to cable news and the blogosphere.

But what if, instead, Obama just kept the conversation going on a continuous, twice-weekly (or so) scheduled basis? The Press Corps would engage him a lot more, asking follow-on after follow-on. Obama could patiently answer every question he could. He could tell people that he doesn't have the answer on some things, but "we'll pick it up Wednesday." It would not be long before 1) a president like Obama would win the trust and respect of the Press Corps and 2) a president like Bush would lose same.

The same sort of frequent, direct, televised communication with Congress would serve Obama well too. Republicans could not complain that he doesn't listen to them if there were twice weekly, televised, three-hour sessions where he does just that. But, more importantly, it would be much more difficult for Republicans (or anyone) to spin issues. It would never be more than two weeks until Obama could simply call the spinners on the carpet by name, on television, and proceed to school them.

I think this type of frequent, direct communication is much more viable and efficient nowadays. The infrastructure needed to provide the American public with much better information and control is very cheap. It would demand a lot of the President's time to do this, obviously, but undercutting propaganda such as Fox News, making blaring Rovian ad deluges irrelevant, making the two-faced pay a price, and scaring unqualified dunderheads away from the Presidency would have value too.

I dunno. It just seems like someone like Obama would not have to expend too much effort doing something like this and would have great results. Someone like Bush couldn't do it at all.