Obama Needs Help With Campaign Slogan
By Bradley Blakeman
Newsmax.com
In the presidential election of 2008 Barak Obama
became an iconic brand under the trademarks of “Hope
and Change,” “Change We Can Believe In,” and “Yes We
Can!”
In 2008, after a brutal primary season, Obama beat
Hillary Clinton for the nomination and became bigger
than life — getting swept into office on lofty
rhetoric, overstated promises, and slick slogans. He
blamed much of America’s woes on his predecessor.
Then governing set in.
With high unemployment, soaring gas prices, massive
national debt, consumer uncertainty, millions of
home foreclosures, businesses going bankrupt, a
Middle East meltdown and a looming showdown with
Iran, the state of the union does not lend itself to
any of Obama’s old 2008 slogans.
The man who promised hope and change has a record to
defend this time around.
A majority of Americans believe that they are not
better off than they were before President Barack
Obama took office and that the United States is
overwhelmingly on the wrong track under his watch.
The slogans and lofty rhetoric of 2008 no longer fit
the reality of 2012.
So, now the Obama administration has embarked on a
series of speeches to test possible new slogans that
define the president’s re-election bid.
Recently, the Obama team spent hundreds of thousands
of dollars testing out new slogans and phrases.
None of them seem to be gaining traction with the
American public. Tom Hanks and Hollywood producers
even developed a 17-minute video titled, “The Road
We’ve Traveled,” in an attempt to remind people that
Obama is the same person in 2012 that he was in 2008
— his abysmal record notwithstanding.
Here are some of the Obama slogans they are testing:
“An Economy Built to Last,” “A Fair Shot,” “Winning
The Future, We Can’t Wait” and “An America Built To
Last.”
Despite their best efforts, nothing seems to be
catching on.
There is no doubt that Obama feels a need to
reinvent himself, which shows a great weakness in
his messaging and communications strategy.
If he had a record to herald as opposed to one he
must defend, the president would have built off the
great slogans of “Hope and Change” that helped get
him elected in the first place.
His slogan could have been, “Promises Made —
Promises Kept” or “Hope Is Alive.”
Every campaign seeks to define itself in just a few
words. The catchier and more clever the better.
The Obama slogans of 2008 were brilliant. If you can
get supporters and reporters to parrot back your
slogans, it goes a long way to defining what the
campaign and candidate stands for.
When a campaign is unable to come up with a slogan
on its own, it runs the risk of others coming up
with one for it.
I can think of several that may be apropos for Mr.
Obama: “It Could Be Worse,” or “Hopeless,” or even,
“No Hope — Now Change.”
The bottom line in politics is if you do not have a
record to stand on — then no amount of pithy slogans
can make up for it.
To borrow a line from The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled
Again.”
Bradley A. Blakeman served as deputy
assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001-04.
He is currently a professor of Politics and Public
Policy at Georgetown University and a frequent
contributor to Fox News Opinion. Read more reports
from Bradley Blakeman —
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