January 31, 2010 – 12:31 pm
So I watched the president’s appearance before the GOP House caucus. It came, of course, two days after Mr. Obama delivered his State of the Union address. Drafting an SOU is generally a team effort. I have been on one of those teams (1988), penning the best received, per the pulse polling, section of that […]
January 28, 2010 – 12:23 am
Mr. Obama’s first State of the Union Address: good speech — and not so good. On one hand, the President can be extremely appealing. Numerous times in the evening, I found myself liking him — particularly when he seemed to break from text and, with a smile, remind both parties of their common duty to […]
January 28, 2010 – 12:08 am
One commenter — “Pedro” — suggested that Ed write under a pseudonym. I’m for it. I tried to persuade him to stay on as a contributor. I thought, well, some say WHWG is a kind of think tank as well as a communications and policy consulting firm — so why not create a WHWG Fellows […]
January 3, 2010 – 12:17 pm
As Ed’s piece (immediately below) on Nigel Lawson reflects, December saw the transformation of climate change discussion. By month’s end, dismissing so-called “deniers” was out. Honoring skepticism was in. Why? Two events, of course: the outcome (more aptly non-outcome) of the Copenhagen summit and the release of the University of East Anglia emails. Despite President […]
September 8, 2009 – 12:16 am
OMG! No! No! No! How will I live? How will I feed my puppy, my parakeet, my pet rock? Not that I would elevate parochial interest above the greater good. Speechwriters are not a lobbyists, at least not until someone shouts fire us. That said, I am closer to Vinca on this than to Matt. […]
That distinction belongs to Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” fiasco. For using the bully pulpit to bully yourself, Nixon’s noxious self-nailing ranks as a gold medal performance unlikely ever to be equaled. But President Obama’s outing last week surely takes the silver. By Sunday, Rasmussen was reporting that 40 percent of likely voters… […]
Here is a sentence unsurpassed in American historical writing for its poetic power and its intimations of moral and philosophic depth: “No political contest in history was more exclusively or passionately concerned with the character of the beliefs in which the souls of men were to abide.” The author was Claremont professor Harry Jaffa. The source […]
The Obama White House is learning the limits of communications. According to Rasmussen, the President’s approval rating have shrunk to about where they were on Election Day: 52 percent favorable, 47 percent unfavorable. The difference between Mr. Obama’s highly favorable number and highly unfavorable is now negative seven percent. Looking at the charts of public […]
In this blog and in columns before Election Day 2008, I have warned that Mr. Obama was in danger of being seen as congenitally weak. For some time now, he has needed to take actions — even actions that might cut against his grain — to establish that he will be resolute in the face […]
Today’s New York Times includes an article about Republican leaders who say the party needs to move beyond the invocation of Ronald Reagan. I largely agree. In the 2008 campaign, every GOP candidate sought to capture the mantle of Ronald Reagan. The result was a field that occasionally seemed focused on returning to the past rather […]
The leaders of France, Canada, the UK and the US have just finished back-to-back orations at the D-Day commemorative ceremonies. We have witnessed many such anniversary observances over the years — every one moving, not simply for what has been said there, in Normandy, but far more for what so many did there, all those […]
Below, you will see the guest post from Philip Murphy, communications chief of a Fortune 100 company. I don’t know Mr. Murphy, and I am not sure I remember which company employs him, but I heartily endorse what he has to say. Writing well requires clarity of thought. Expressing thoughts clearly, working through their implications […]
I had a seat in the audience yesterday for former Vice President Richard Cheney’s speech on the threat to the United States of terrorism, on methods used to interrogate captured terrorists during the Bush years and on the Obama Administration’s release of documents detailing those methods. It was at the American Enterprise Institute here in […]
Let me second what Vinca says about Mr. Obama and the TelePrompter. More than with any other office — well, almost any, chair of the Fed being the exception — presidential communications is about discipline. Some of this is that, as president, your words become policy. If you care so little about them that others […]
You know things are getting dicey in Obamaland when the highly regarded Politico runs a full page Friday story titled, “Lesson: Communications Is More Than Eloquence — Obama’s campaign messaging skills not translating to office.” Politico says the problem has many sources. Messages go from gloomy talk to happy talk and back to gloomy in […]
