Obama’s inept Fox campaign

25 October 2009 |permalink | email article

The White House could learn some valuable lessons from FDR’s administration in terms of media savvy relative to its feud with Fox News. As Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten wrote Saturday, even though it is right on the merits in describing the Rupert Murdoch owned cable news organization as operating mainly as a surrogate for the Republican Party, making an issue of that fact is a tactical mistake.

Both David Axelrod, the chief White House political adviser and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel have insisted in network interviews that it is important for other news organizations not to be following Fox. It’s the height of hypocrisy because the White House has invited MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to private briefings with President Obama, even though their commentaries are as inflammatory from the left as those from Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck on the right.

FDR, although his administration lacked the electronic conveniences of communication such as television and the Internet, effectively marginalized fierce editorial page and business criticism, even convincing Francis Cardinal Spellman to convince the Vatican to silence Father Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic and pro-fascist radio priest who perverted the Catholic concept of social justice.

Roosevelt’s huge public relations success is attributable to former reporter Stephen Early, his long-time confident and press secretary who served during his 12-year term. He was also the chief White House communicator during the president’s New Deal policies and throughout World War II.

A key failure for the Obama administration is that lacks seasoned advisers with an institutional memory and communications gravitas. Kennedy’s guru was Ted Sorensen, while LBJ had Bill Moyers at his side.

Jon Meacham, in the Nov. 2 issue of Newsweek while discussing the Fox News affair, writes that to the base, the White House looks tough, willing to hit back – all while the base is getting few substantive reforms it has fought for. “No matter what the intention, the contretemps has made the White House seem more progressive than it is.”

Huffington Post reports that Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs told Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett that the attempt to exclude Fox News from a series of interviews with Kenneth Feinberg, Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation, was a mistake from a young Treasury Department staffer. It that a hint that the White House is getting a message, or just a flimsy excuse?

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