Grading Obama: The President Commits a Horrific PR Blunder in His Friday Economics Press Conference
By TJ Walker, CEO, Media Training Worldwide
Every politician commits gaffes from time to time. Take, for example, Reagan saying, “We begin bombing (the Soviets) in five minutes” Or Romney’s “People are corporations my friend.” President Obama is unusually disciplined and, by my count, utters fewer gaffes per 100,000 spoken words than any other president in the modern TV era.
But….
“The private sector is doing fine,” uttered by President Obama at his press conference on Friday, is a gaffe of monumental proportion. Like most gaffes, what Obama said was technically true: When you compare the employment rates of the private sector versus the state and local government sector, the private sector is hiring tons of people whereas government is committing massive layoffs of teachers and other public workers.
However, in politics, it’s not enough to say something that is factually true. Instead, you have to worry about whether something appears to be true and how it will appear when taken out of the context of the entire sentence and discussion. If there is anyway a 6 word sound bite can be used against you to make you look bad then it is, by definition, bad for it to come out of your mouth. Savvy politicians of all parties realize there is nothing more pathetic than complaining about being “quoted of of context.”
Obama’s statement was a horrific PR blunder for the following reasons.
- Republicans want the entire election to be framed around the economy. Obama’s quote allows them to redirect the media’s and public’s attention to the economy.
- Republicans wish to portray Obama as someone who is incompetent and clueless about the economy as a whole. This quote lends itself to that theme.
- Republicans have long pushed the message point that Obama is a “Socialist” who only cares about government and is at odds with those in the private sector. This sound bite feeds into this GOP talking point.
- Republicans have long worried that the super-rich Mitt Romney would appear to be out-of-touch with economic concerns of ordinary people. Obama’s quote allows for Republicans to attack on this issue rather than have to defend Romney.
- Obama has now provided footage to the Republicans to be played in TV ads again and again from now till election day. In six words, Obama has give the perfect TV weapon to his opponents.
Oh, and by the way, Obama’s message of the press conference on the need for Congress to pass parts of his economic stimulus? That got completely buried and is now even less likely to happen.
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TJ Walker is the founder of a leading news/communications website TJWalker.com. Walker is also the “Inside Communications” columnist at Forbes.com and is a regular commentator for the Reuters Insider Network. “TJ Walker’s Secret to Foolproof Presentations” was a #1 USA Today bestseller, and a Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek Bestseller. As CEO of Media Training Worldwide, Walker has trained thousands of presidents, prime ministers, senators, members of parliament, CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize winners, professional athletes and Miss Universes.
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I just have to take issue with the recycling yet again of the myth that Reagan’s comment was a gaffe. He was preparing for a weekly radio taping and doing a microphone level check. Like most people with radio experience, he was playing around with the crew and said the famous sentence instead of “testing 1 2 3″ and happened to be captured on tape. He knew exactly what he was saying, and it was a playful, if injudicious moment. He learned that preesidents can’t ever joke, even during a sound check.
Oh, ye people of short memory! Most of us out here in are former members of the middle class, and it is our group who is suffering the most from joblessness. We are now essentially poor. Yet what did Romney say just a few short months ago? “I’m not concerned about the poor.” Sure he’s not. He and his masters are quite rich, thank you, and his “private sector” is doing quite well! In fact, they are buying an election, they’re doing so well!
Everybody knows he meant to say “Wall Street is doing fine.” The PR blunder was in not clarifying his words right then and there.
HORRIFIC?
Great to get headlines in an online newsletter.
If you measured public opinion on that statement — made months before most Americans are even paying ANY attention to the election — you’d find 3% of people aware of it, and half of them don’t care, and of those who do care, they are die-hard Dems or die-hard GOPs, and in four weeks (if that), it’s fogottten.
Methinks some of us are WAY too close to the politcal malestrom and project our obsession to the American citizenry.
Big mistake.
If he said this October 20, THAT would be pretty darned bad.
It’s already over and done and explained, and then Romney hopped right in with “we don’t need more firefighters or TEACHERS, so that mirror soundbite will be there for counter-TV ads if they are even needed.
HORRIFIC? Speaking of an horrific overreaction and use of adjectives . . . .
The Bamster has made far more gaffes than that (57 states, anyone? Polish death camps perhaps?). Most of us will never find out about them because the media and his handlers (and the writer of this piece) do their best to protect the president from any criticism. Want proof? Watch video of Ashleigh Banfield on MSNBC covering for him after the above mentioned gaffe.
Hello: Frankly, I find the word “horrific” grossly inappropriate and the reference to the President’s comment as a “PR blunder” to be totally inaccurate when referenced to the practice of public relations. Read more:
http://prdude.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/heres-something-thats-truly-horrific-and-its-not-a-pr-blunder/