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Branding and politics in America have been inextricably linked since the founding of the Republic – long before “branding” was even a well-defined concept or discipline.  “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” evoked in a single poetic phrase and song the powerful image of military hero William Henry Harrison and the well-known John Tyler on a single ticket, carrying them to victory in the 1840 presidential election.

Albert Lasker a well-known and successful advertising man, played a pivotal role (albeit well-hidden) in packaging and selling the candidacy of Warren Harding in 1920, resulting in the election of arguably America’s least qualified and least successful president. 

In 1969 Joe McGinnis published the “Selling of the President” describing in detail how Richard Nixon was “marketed” and “sold” to the American people by a cynical group of advertising people much like a bar of soap.  The book caused a minor sensation reinforcing doubts many had about Nixon’s trustworthiness.

Perhaps the best use of branding principles and tools was the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama.  Using a thoroughly 21^st Century approach to branding, his campaign captured the themes of Hope and Change in a way that resonated with millions of new voters and traditionally independent-minded Americans and propelled him to a very unlikely victory.

When it came to governing, however, the Obama team has apparently jettisoned the branding approach – either by design or by terrible mistake.  Rather than wrapping the significant achievements of the first 18 months of his Administration in the themes of renewal and change, he has settled for a communications strategy that lurches from issue to issue, with no discernable thread tying it all together.

In the absence of the appearance of a coherent strategy, opponents on the right and the left have filled the vacuum with their own interpretations – he’s a socialist; he’s a corporate sellout, etc…

Had the Administration wrapped their major initiatives – stimulus, health care reform, financial reform, energy legislation – in the language of brands, it would have blunted the impact of the relentless attacks and delivered on the brand promise of his campaign.

Instead, many of the attacks have stuck; the significance of the achievements has been misunderstood and diminished and the Democrats’ majority in Congress looks increasingly in jeopardy.

Capitalizing on the Administration’s failure to brand its approach to governing has been a rag tag bunch of malcontents, cranks and fringe players who would have been largely dismissed by the media and pundits of all stripes had they not discovered their own powerful brand positioning as the “Tea Party.” 

Had they decided to reclaim the brand of a similar “movement” in the 1850s – the Know Nothings – or a more recent incarnation as the John Birch Society they likely would have been written off as fringe players so far outside the mainstream as to deserve contempt but not coverage.

However, by evoking the image of the Founding Fathers, Sam Adams and the American Revolution and wrapping themselves in the Constitution, they captured the attention of the media who have bestowed a level of credibility on what is likely a moment, not a movement.

But like all good brands, the Tea Party struck a chord and filled a need with a portion of the population – anger, frustration, anti-Washington and anti-establishment.  The question now is will it have staying power – to the election and beyond. 

As all marketing practitioners know, the worst thing you can do for a lousy product is great branding.  Great branding will lead consumers to try your product and if it disappoints they will be driven away and very hard to lure back.

Come January, those voters full of anger and captured by the allure of the Tea Party brand may find themselves terribly disappointed by the actual brand experience. That disappointment would likely land the Tea Party brand in the dustbin of history beside the Know Nothings and the John Birch Society.

It took all of about 45 seconds for the finger pointing to start.  Since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced last week that the Senate would not take up a comprehensive climate change bill this year, the accusations have been flying fast, furious and often over the top (see Paul Krugman’s diatribe in the New York Times this morning).

For a quick read on the post-game analysis, Politico has a good article that outlines five different reasons why the bill failed:

1. The environmental movement was ineffective (the administration’s point of view).

2. The Obama administration didn’t give the issue enough attention or show enough leadership (the environmentalists’ point of view)

3. Key Senate Republicans, including Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.),  Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) changed their minds after the 2008 election and didn’t work with Democrats to get to a bill that would get 60 votes.

4. Key moderate Senate Democrats, such as Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), were never enthusiastic about the bill and didn’t engage.

5. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) misplayed their hand by insisting on a economy-wide solution that couldn’t get 60 votes until it was too late.

In the end, all are correct.  No one group was responsible for the end of the legislation.  But, it has been interesting to note some of the reactions from some leading bloggers on the topic.

On The New Republic’s environment blog, The Vine, Bradford Plummer asks four “what ifs?” that outline how the climate debate could have been different.  After examining these four scenarios, Plummer comes to the conclusion that, in the end, the Democrats in the Senate pursued the wrong strategy and should have more quickly changed course and embraced a more limited bill.

Plummer points to a story in Rolling Stone as a good example as any as to the arguments environmental groups are making (all of which coalesce around the  point Politico made above regarding the failure of the Obama administration to push sufficiently hard for the bill).  While Plummer thinks think that getting the Senate to 60 votes may have never been something President Obama could have made happen, he does believe that the criticisms being lobbed against the administration have merit.

In fact, the Rolling Stone article places the blame at the feet of both the Senate Democratic leadership, especially Majority Leader Reid, and the Obama administration.  It argues that both played into opponents’ hands by inviting business to sit at the backroom negotiating table and not pushing hard enough.  One key paragraph:

Indeed, the president has made no concrete demands of the Senate, preferring to let Majority Leader Harry Reid direct the bill – a hands-off approach that is unlikely to produce a measure of any substance. “You have two camps right now in the Senate,” says a top congressional source. “One is the camp of ‘Let’s put something together, put it out there, whip it really hard and get to 60.’ And then you have the Harry Reid model, which is ‘Let’s wait until we know we have 60 votes.’ ” Climate advocates are furious at the least-common-denominator approach, saying it takes victory off the table. “You can’t run up the white flag,” Sen. Jeff Merkeley of Oregon said in June, “until you have the fight.”

And another…

But the Obama administration let the opportunity [the BP oil spill] slip away. On June 15th, the president – a communicator whom even top Republican operatives rank above Reagan – sat at his desk to deliver his first address to the nation from the Oval Office. It was a terrible, teachable moment, one in which he could have connected the dots between the oil spewing into the Gulf and the planet-killing CO2 we spew every day into the atmosphere. But Obama never even mentioned the words “carbon” or “emissions” or “greenhouse” – not even the word “pollution.” The president’s sole mention of “climate” came in a glancing description of the “comprehensive energy and climate bill” that the House passed. In a moment that cried out for direction-setting from the nation’s chief executive, Obama brought no concrete ideas to the table. Restating the need to break our addiction to fossil fuels, he stared at the camera and confessed that “we don’t yet know precisely how we’re going to get there.” He didn’t challenge Americans to examine their own energy habits. He didn’t rally his fellow Democrats into a fight with the Republican Party of “Smokey” Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who later apologized to BP. Far from offering a clarion call for action, Obama said, meekly, that he would listen to give senators from both parties a “fair hearing in the months ahead.” Then he asked us to pray.

Finally, it is interesting to look at the comments of Tom Friedman’s favorite climate blogger, Joe Romm at Climate Progress (that’s not a slam, more professional jealousy).  Romm, in his July 23 post  title “The White House lamely blames environmentalists for climate bill failure,” lays the blame at the feat of moderate Democrats (separate from the leadership) and the Obama administration. His two key paragraphs:

On the  political front, the White House  deserves most of the blame for not getting Republicans.  Why?  Because  the White House never tried to keep moderate Democrats in line, never made  it clear that there was definitely gonna be a vote on this bill and the moderates should figure out what they needed to support the bill (as in the case of healthcare reform).

The WH thus enabled  nonstop public (and private) criticism and bitching about the bill from  a core group of moderate Democrats, which  not only became a self-fulfilling prophecy — that  getting the Democratic votes needed was impossible — it convinced Republicans that there was no possibility of getting anywhere near 60 and thus  no reason for them to stick their necks out.  That is,  it was always going to be harder for even a moderate Republican to support this bill than it was  for even relatively conservative Democrats.

To be sure, Romm does not believe that it was all the Democrats’ or environmentalists’ fault.  In an earlier post titled “The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama, Part 1,” he blames them for about 10 percent of the problem.  Of the remaining 90 percent of the blame, he gives 60 percent to Republicans and their industry allies and 30 percent to the media for giving them a platform.

So, who was to blame?  If I were a environmentalist, I’d put more of the blame at the feet of Harry Reid than the administration.  His strategy gave opponents of climate change legislation of plenty of room to operate.  However, they can’t blame him too much since they need him to win in November.

This is not the end of the debate.  Next up will likely be new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency to move on the issue now that the Senate has failed to move.  However, this being Washington, those regulations are likely going to be challenged in court by industry or a legal group acting on behalf of industry.  Given the reputation of the court that will hear the case, there is a good change they will be thrown out.

This debate is far from over.  Stay tuned.

Sure, if you talk about any subject in a clumsy fashion you will turn people off — just look at how Obama and major progressive politicians managed to turn a winning political issue, health care reform, into an unpopular one!

Yes, much of the climate language that gets tested is truly lame.  But the fact that poor messaging fails is not an argument for not doing messaging on the subject at all!

What is especially lame I think is that many (but not all) progressives and environmentalists have stopped even talking about any of the basic environmental benefits of clean energy.  Here’s a simple message (to go with the energy independence and clean energy jobs pitch):   Strong action to reduce carbon pollution is crucial to preserving and improving clean air, clean water, and a livable climate for our children [emphasis his].  If you can’t even utter that basic sentence or something like it, you simply aren’t serious about explaining to the public why they need to put a price on carbon pollution.  “Global warming pollution” can also be interchanged with “carbon pollution.”  I tend to use both.  “Carbon” happens to be shorter and punchier, but then I devote a significant fraction of my talks to global warming.

As the pundits finish digesting and reviewing the President’s Oval Office address from last night, the Lexington columnist over at The Economist argues that the American voter will be largely judging congressional Democrats (as the proxy for the President) on issues other than the administration’s response to the situation in the Gulf of Mexico.

Instead, the magazine (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know newspaper is the prefered term) argues that the 2010 election will be determined by how the American voter views responds the Administration’s three signature policies: the stimulus, Afghanistan and healthcare reform.

Indeed, The Economist argues…”He will decide the fate of his presidency. You could in fact argue that he has decided it already, by placing three huge and deliberate bets during his first year and a half in office. What he is mainly doing now is waiting to see whether they come good or not.”

Of the three issues, The Economist believes healthcare may be the most troublesome.  And the administration knows this.

This [healthcare] has already been inscribed in White House lore as a magnificent victory, snatched in the spring of this year from the mouth of defeat by a combination of presidential fortitude and congressional ingenuity (or stubbornness and rule-bending, as Republicans see it). Posterity may indeed one day thank the president for taking America a giant step closer to entrenching the principle of universal health coverage that other rich countries take for granted. But posterity has no vote. And as November’s mid-terms approach, polls suggest that most Americans will not be thanking the president for health reform when they go into the voting booth.

Far from delivering a gain, health reform could well turn out to be a negative, at least for the mid-terms. When the Democrats won a victory last month by holding a white working-class district in a special election in western Pennsylvania, their own candidate felt obliged to assure angry voters that he for one would have opposed Obamacare if he had been in Congress at the time.

By the president’s own account, health reform is his proudest achievement, one that would justify his election on its own. And yet it has attracted criticism from every point of the spectrum. Conservatives denounce a budget-busting government takeover. Many on the left who made a fetish out of the so-called “public option” will not forgive Mr Obama for ditching it. And a lot of voters in the middle have reason to suspect that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as the legislation is known, is not as affordable as the president claims, especially after so many measures to “bend the cost curve” were left on the cutting-room floor as the measure made its tortuous way through Congress.

Is it far-fetched to argue that having cast his main bets Mr Obama can now do nothing except await their result? Of course. He can, for a start, work harder to explain them. The president did not expect health reform to go down like this. Once it was passed, he predicted in the spring, Americans would wise up to the lies of the Republicans and see that “nobody is pulling the plug on granny”. Now that spring has given way to summer, the White House has embarked on yet another campaign to hasten the voters’ understanding. Mr Obama visited an old folks’ centre in Maryland to spell out the excellence of the forthcoming changes. But voters, not being stupid, are not so sure. This is complex legislation whose full costs and benefits will take years to be seen.

The Economist is not alone in this thinking.  This week, Time ran a story that further outlined how the legislation will may be a political minus for the Democrats in the mid-terms.   As Kate Pickert points out, millions will be spent on this issue trying to affect public opinion.  In the middle, as usual, are conservative and moderate Democrats in swing districts that are key to helping the Democrats retain majorities in both houses.

It will be fasciniating over the next five months or so to see how the both sides play the public relations game.  As both articles note, the Administraton has tried to go on offense on this issue.  This effort will be supported between now and Election Day by several big-dollar interest groups and, despite the recent schism over Arkansas, organized labor and much of the NetRoots.  The Republican and business groups have already started their campaign to make the legislation a political liability with The Wall Street Journal editorial page, The Daily Caller, commentators on Fox News and Fox Business and other members of “the usual suspects” already leading the way.  As the polls show, the oppostition starts out with the advantage.

The Obama administration came into power with experts saying that the Obama campaign had rewritten the rule book on how to conduct a political campaign.  However, as administration staff and their supporters quickly found out, it is much harder to conduct similar campaigns from inside the halls of power.  The question remains, have they learned to adapt?  So far, the answer is largely no.  If they are unable to turn the current situation around, one of the Obama administration’s signature accomplishments may end up being the millstone around the Democratic Party’s political fortune.

After about six months off from blogging, I’m back.  Don’t worry, I didn’t have a David Schuster moment.  So to cover the time off, some things I think I think.

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I have to admit I was not amazed that The New York Times knew about the Securities and Exchange Commission filing a civil case again Goldman Sachs before many at Goldman Sachs did.  (According to Politico, someone must have tipped off the Times since they were able to get a 1,200 word story up on their Web site minutes after the suit was filed — updated version here.)  On the other hand, some at Goldman Sachs found out when the story appeared on CNBC. I originally thought Goldman’s DC lobbyists would have known something was coming, but I’ve been hearing they are viewed as lepers and treated accordingly.

This has been a bad year for the vaunted Wall Street investment firm. Suspicions about Goldman’s activities in the AIG and Greece collapses, the ongoing talk that it puts its interests over those of its clients, the so-called revolving door between the firm and the government and other real or imagined black eyes have united the left and right  in putting the firm as the centerpiece of their anti-Wall Street, anti-bailout opposition.

But there have been a number of self-inflicted wounds too.  Whether it was Lloyd Blankfein’s comment about the firm doing “God’s work” in The Sunday Times that quickly went viral, the widely mocked announcement from the firm’s charitable foundation about  making a billion dollar donation to small business around the same time that firm reported it has  billions to release as bonuses, or the firm’s increasingly frosty relations with reporters, the firm has made a number of missteps that the firm’s in-house PR team was slow or unable to counter.  (UPDATE: Another example, CNBC’s Erin Burnett on “Morning Joe” Monday morning said that it took Goldman 10 hours to get out any response the federal charges, which esstentially lost the firm one whole news cycle.)  The fact that Goldman hired an outside public relations firm (not Ogilvy PR) showed that some at the firm were not happy with the results the in-house team under Lucas van Praag was producing.  When Charlie Gasparino, who has both defended and attacked the investment firm, went live on Fox Business to report about the infighting by the board over the outside PR firm’s recommendations, you could tell how divided the firm’s leadership was on what steps the firm needed to take to stop the reputational bleeding.

Now, with the SEC suit, the firm has gone from having a PR problem to having a real problem. Look for the firm to circle the wagons even tighter.  The Obama administration will likely use the SEC suit as justification for pushing harder for financial services reform, which will create more headaches for the firm in the short term.  (What, you thought the filing on the law suit and some of the White House’s harshest criticism of Wall Street was coincidental?)

UPDATE 2: President Obama is going to Wall Street on Thursday to make a speech on financial services reform.

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There was a very interesting story in Politico about the views of the Obama administration inside the Beltway and outside the Beltway.  Here are several key paragraphs:

While Washington talks about Obama’s new mojo, polls show voters outside the Beltway are sulking — soured on the president, his party and his program. The Gallup Poll has Obama’s approval rating at an ominous 49 percent, after hitting a record low of 47 percent last weekend. A new poll in Pennsylvania, a bellwether industrial state, shows his numbers sinking, as did recent polls in Ohio and Florida.

So there are two Obamas: Rising in D.C., struggling in the U.S.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell admits that Republicans won the health-care messaging war and says he has been traveling to dinners and fundraisers across the country to implore Democrats to fight back.

“The spin took hold,” Rendell said. “I expected more of a bounce than he got, but again it all goes to 16 months in which the Republicans have dominated the spin on stimulus and health care. … It’s time for us to roll up our sleeves and say, ‘Game on.’ And the more we do that, the better it will be.”

It’s yet another deficit for Obama to tackle: The Republican Party has closed its popularity gap with the Democrats, and people say they’d be at least as happy with the GOP in charge of Capitol Hill. Wall Street sees a recovery, but everyday Americans think their country is still on the wrong track. And health reform is even less popular now in some polls than it was before it passed.

“Everyone in the pressure cooker in Washington got all excited like the millennium had arrived [when health care reform passed], but I don’t think most reasonable people read it that way,” Democratic Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen said. Bredesen said people are worried about the cost and “appalled at the process in the Congress that produced it.”

Bredesen said that in the states, it’s not about power politics and who’s up and who’s down, but about the cost — an estimated $1.1 billion for the Volunteer State from 2014 to 2019, with the costs ballooning just as the state was expecting to begin recovering from the trauma of the past three years. “We haven’t given raises to state employees for three years and probably won’t for three more years,” Bredesen said.

Now there are still six months to go until the mid-term elections and plenty could change if the unemployment rate goes down.   But right now the signs are not good for the Democrats.

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Speaking of November, my first post on The Intersection asked if it was time for MoveOn.org to move on.  One of the things I pointed at was threats by it (and other liberal activist groups) to punish Democratic incumbents they viewed as insufficiently liberal by finding candidates to run against them in the primaries.  Even if their candidates didn’t win, they hoped that the incumbent would tack to the left in the future.  That strategy had limited success in 2008.

In 2010, MoveOn.org and others are trying the same strategy by backing Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter in a primary challenge against incumbent Blanche Lincoln.  To help Halter the groups helped raise millions to fund his campaign through their grass roots networks.  Now, with less than a month to go before the primary, the most recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll (April 12-14) shows that Lincoln is leading Halter by 12 points (45-33).

Assuming no major changes until the May18 primary, the question becomes what did MoveOn.org get for its effort? It has forced Lincoln to spend money on a primary challenge that she certainly needs for a general election campaign where she currently trails all five potential Republican challengers.  The primary battle has also driven up Lincoln’s negatives, again something she didn’t need.  She was always one of the most vulnerable Democrats incumbents in a state that has been trending increasingly Republican.  If she loses, it would be fair for the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to place some of the blame at MoveOn.org’s feet.  If the Democrats lose control of the Senate, look for MoveOn.org and its allies to be placed in the center of the Democrats’ circular firing squad.

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If there was any issue where public relations setbacks have slowed momentum on another one of President Obama’s  signature goals, it is the environment.  Even before the Copenhagen climate change conference, it became apparent that the widely-hyped talks would go nowhere.  Despite attempts by the President to rally the talks, all Copenhagen really produced were some largely meaningless announcements and an agreement to try to rally in upcoming talks in Cancun.  Attempts to spin them differently were knocked down by pundits and the press not associated with the environmental movement.

Copenhagen was not the only public relations setback. First, the so-called Climategate scandal put climate change advocates on the defensive for several months.  When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the organization that shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore, was forced to retract a study on the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, the environmental movement suffered another set back.  Industry and conservative attacks on cap and trade as “cap and tax” and a job killer largely stuck and Sens. John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham were forced to stop using the phrase since it was a seen as a political negative (much like the environmental movement had to stop using global warming since the public no longer “bought” the phrase).  At the same time, President Obama’s green jobs speeches fell largely of deaf ears.

As a result, and in conjunction with high unemployment, the public has soured on environmental issues.  For the first time ever, a Gallup poll showed that Americans preferred developing energy supplies over protecting the environment by a 50-43 margin.  A March CNN poll confirmed something that Gallup noticed last year, the public thought the country should give a higher to improving the economy than protecting the environment. (Interestingly, this is a generational issue with Americans over 50 largely supporting economic growth, while those under 50 still supporting protecting the environment over economic growth.)  The poll also showed that only two percent of voters thought that the environment would be the biggest issue influencing their vote in November.  Finally, a Rasmussen poll from March showed that Americans had flipped on the cause of climate change in a year:

Nearly half of voters (48%) believe global warming is caused primarily by long-term planetary trends, a number that also has held steady since last July. Just 33% blame the problem on human activity, which is one point below the lowest level measured in over a year. Eight percent (8%) attribute global warming to some other cause, and 11% are undecided.

Belief that human activity is the primary cause of global warming has declined significantly. In April 2008, the numbers were nearly the mirror image of the current findings. At that time, 47% blamed human activity, while only 34% named long-term planetary trends as the reason for climate change.

While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has made noises about personally leading the fight to pass a climate bill, the public support for the issue and a cap and trade solution is much lower than it was a year ago.  There is an outside chance that the a less aggressive bill, pushed by Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington could pass, but time is quickly running out on the Senate calendar for action this year.

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Fun post from the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz on Twitter today:

Love that @KeithOlbermann is broadcasting his hate-tweets (kind that would’ve been written in crayon years ago). Very entertaining.

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I understand the need for companies to get their name aligned with a  good cause, some known as corporate social responsibility in PR-speak.  But I pity the ESPN play-by-play announcer who has to  regularly mention the new Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl (the old Emerald Bowl  in San Francisco).  Given the number of 250+ pound players on the field, I’m not sure that this is the best use of Kraft  marketing dollars.

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Speaking of sports…college football added an additional game with the new Pinstripe Bowl to be played at the new Yankee Stadium.  The game will feature the number six team from Big 12 and the number three team from Big East.  I’m sorry, but I don’t get it.  I’ve always questioned the need for the Eagle Bank Bowl (Washington in December?) and the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl (Boise in December?).  I assume the bowl organizers are hoping that local teams Rutgers or UConn make it into the bowl every because — well, have you ever tried to navigate Manhattan or reserve a hotel room in New York on December 30?  Add the potential for lousy weather and I see a lot of empty seats, similar to what we get here in DC for the Eagle Bank Bowl.  Let’s call the game for what it is, another game between two mediocre teams during an increasingly crowded and irrelevant bowl week.

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Finally, it appears that the Nike/Tiger Woods ad backfired on Nike.  According to a poll by HCD Research, the percentage of Americans who had a favorable opinion of the company dropped after the ad ran and went viral.

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In the words of Maury Povich, until next time America….

Cross Posted on The Huffington Post.

Again some recent items from the week past…

U.S. News‘ “Washington Whispers” notes that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that the Pentagon’s Iraq PR campaign to reach out to former military officials “did not violate the publicity or propaganda prohibition.”  The GAO report, which was released back on July 21, received minimal media attention.  A Google News search only found articles from the Associated Press and The Hill, along with pieces in some smaller trade publications.

In regard to the program, U.S. News further reports,

The GAO report, signed by Acting General Counsel Daniel Gordon, was requested by House and Senate Democrats who were concerned that the Pentagon was violating a law that prohibits using appropriations for propaganda. The GAO said that, unlike propaganda, the retired officers program was about helping pundits tell the straight story about the wars. “Federal agencies have a responsibility to inform the public about their activities and programs, explain their policies, and disseminate information in defense of those policies or an administration’s point of view,” the report said.

That said, the GAO did make one recommendation…

While DOD understandably values its ties with retired military officers, we believe that, before undertaking anything along the lines of the now-terminated program at issue in this decision, DOD should consider whether it needs to have additional policies and procedures in place to protect the integrity of, and public confidence in, its public affairs efforts and to ensure the transparency of its public relations activities.

The program created a huge brouhaha when David Barstow of The New York Times originally reported it in April 2008 and the reporting won a Pulitzer Prize.  I have to admit that I am cynical by nature, but I have to admit was I underwhelmed by the story (its follow-up that focused on Gen. Barry McCaffrey’s business dealings, which was also addressed in the GAO report, was much more interesting).  As one whose firm does government public relations work and as one who has a government client, I’ve always felt that much of the criticism of the government’s use of traditional public relations tactics and public relations firms was misplaced.  Sure, there have been times when the line between public relations and propaganda has been crossed, but in vast majority of cases I find it sour grapes when groups complain that the government uses traditional public relations tactics or firms to make its case.

As I mentioned on my earlier Twitter post, it will be interesting to see how Congress reacts to this report.  According to The Hill, Sen. Russ Feingold’s office had no immediate statement on it and, as of this morning, no statement appears on the Senator’s home page.

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The Times had a fascinating front pager yesterday in regard to the apparent cease fire between Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.  The hosts’ bosses at  General Electric and News Corporation agreed to have the hosts of their respective 8 PM cable news shows stop taking swipes at each other (or, in the case of O’Reilly, General Electric).

For those who have not been following the feud, here is a short recap.  Olbermann, the ratings underdog, began by regularly challenging statements that O’Reilly made on his program.  O’Reilly then retaliated by going after NBC News’ objectivity and, more importantly, General Electric’s business practices (although not usually referring to Olbermann by name).  This led to a scene earlier this year when MSNBC critics (with an O’Reilly producer present) brought up many of O’Reilly’s complaints at a General Electric stock holders’ meeting.  Those questions stopped when General Electric turned off the microphones.

I think first and foremost, the thing to remember is the the key word here is “apparent.”  As Olbermann told the Times, he was not a party to the deal.  Moreover, should a deal exist, it has not stopped other Fox hosts going after NBC and General Electric and other MSNBC hosts from going after Fox hosts, such as Glen Beck.  Nor should they.

Moreover, the deal doesn’t seem to cover other corporate entities — the New York Post recently went after MSNBC’s David Shuster over an alleged tantrum.   In short, both networks have had their share of cringe inducing moments and even if they aren’t brought up between 8-9 PM ET, they get coverage elsewhere.

In the end, I don’t see many of the big journalistic crises that others, such as Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star, Salon’s Glen Greenwald and the team at Mediaite (run by MSNBC contributor Dan Abrams), do.

Would I like to have seen the feud continue.? Not really.  It has long since become tiresome, especially on Olbermann’s part.

Does it reinforce some of the talking points that Greenwald and others make about “corporate media?”  Yeah.  But there is nothing stopping others, including others at MSNBC, from picking up Olbermann’s mantle (assuming he agrees to the terms of the deal).

Is there a winner here? Yes. Fox. The story makes it seem like General Electric sued for peace which means O’Reilly’s tactic of going after Olbermann’s employer worked.  It also puts Olbermann, MSNBC’s most popular host, in a pickle.  If he abides by the deal, he looks like he was muzzled and it hurts his credibility with his  fan base.  If he doesn’t, then he gives O’Reilly an excuse to go back after General Electric.

FWIW, Barnhart also links to Olbermann’s ratings over the past year click here.  In short, Olbermann is back to about where he was this time last year.

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In his question of the day, Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic asks if the White House can turn around the health case debate in the next three weeks.

With the House having gone home for August recess and the Senate scheduled to do so at the end of the week, look for the war over health care to continue back in the states.  I think the President and the Democrats have a lot of work to do to repair the damage that has been done to their position, as evidenced by the polls.  But I wouldn’t count them out.  Led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, look for a lot of Democrats to go after insurance companies.

As Politico reported this morning, expect the insurance companies to push back (emphasis in the original)…

EXCLUSIVE — FOOD FIGHT AT THE TABLE — THE HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY, LONELY IN THE LEGISLATIVE CROSSHAIRS, IS STARTING TO PUSH BACK, ACCUSING DEMOCRATS OF USING INSURERS AS A SCAPEGOAT — America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP — the national association representing nearly 1,300 member companies providing health insurance coverage to more than 200 million Americans) is urging the industry’s hundreds of thousands of employees to GO TO TOWN MEETINGS WITH MEMBERS OF CONGRESS IN AUGUST TO CONFRONT THEM on House Democrats’ top recess message — that health-reform legislation is “health insurance reform to hold insurance companies accountable.” The association’s positive TV ad will continue into this week, but look for the spots to toughen up soon.

AHIP’s director of strategic communications, Robert Zirkelbach, tells Playbook: “The American people want Washington to focus on solutions, not the same old divisive political rhetoric that hasn’t worked in the past. Our industry has offered to completely transform how health insurance is provided today. We have stepped up to do our part to make health-care reform a reality. That’s an INCONVENIENT FACT that some people have chosen to ignore. These attacks are politically motivated, and they ignore the significant commitment that our industry has made to the health-reform process. WE’RE GOING TO BE VERY ACTIVE. We have people on the ground in more than 30 states. There are thousands of industry employees WHO HAVE NOW HAD THEIR INTEGRITY CALLED INTO QUESTION. They want to have their voices heard as part of this.”

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While much of the attention has been paid to how the Democrats fight back on health care, I think the more interesting battle to watch is whether the Democrats start an internal civil war with the liberal wing of the party going after the more centrist wing (not just the House Blue Dogs).  Last week alone, Sen. Tom Harkin suggested that the Senate Democrats vote on committee chairmanships by secret battle, a not not-to-subtle threat to Sen. Max Baucus, who helped broker the Senate Finance Committee’s reported deal.  In the House, Rep. Maxine Waters suggested that the liberal wing of the party run liberal candidates in the upcoming Democratic primaries in an effort to elect candidates who are, well, more liberal.

This threat is not new, although much of the attention was paid in recent elections when conservative Republicans ran a similar campaign against moderate Republicans (see Lincoln Chaffee, Wayne Gilchrest and, most recently, Arlen Specter).  In 2008, the liberal wing of the Democratic party unseated Rep. Al Wynn of Maryland and threatened to go after other Democrats who were not viewed as sufficiently anti-war.  A recent cover story in National Journal noted that the elements in the party were working on a campaign to repeat the Wynn case in 2010 as part of an overall attempt to reduce the influence of the moderate wing of the party (including trying to undercut the legacy of the Clinton administration).

This strategy did not work well for Republicans.  It will be interesting to see if the Democrats follow a similar path.

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The first NFL preseason game is next Sunday night — not a moment too soon.  Yes, I AM ready for some football.

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