So what IS a "narrative"?
The best description I've found anyplace came from, of all places, Forbes Magazine, in a column on leadership by Nick Morgan written, like so many were, back in March. He used Toyota and the Obama administration as examples, and he explains why the so-called"narrative" is making the media squeal so much:
"The rest of us, however, want only one thing from virtually every organization in the world besides the one we work for. We want it to do its basic job. We want Toyota to make cars that work--safely,efficiently and perhaps even with a little style. We want the White House and President Obama to get things done that are useful and move the country forward.
"We don't keep score. We do pay attention, over the long run, to how well the organization does its basic job. We're simply too busy, too distracted, too information-overloaded to give anything more than 25miles from us more attention than that.
"Which leads to the second issue, the narrative. Because our brains retain stories better than any other form of information, we develop shortcuts to handle all the information we need to in the modern world.The most important shortcut is the narrative. The narrative is the quick story that has developed over a long period of time for any organization, company or important public figure. It's the way we store and organize the information."
He goes on to say that once a "counter-narrative"crops up--like the weak, emasculated one put forth by right-wing pundits and Maureen Dowd, that it's extremely hard to counteract,because it gets stuck in the public's brain.
However,a company--or president--can overcome that by "moving fast and decisively" on issues or on legislation, which is what President Obama then did on health care right after this piece was published, and what he did with BP even as Dowd was whining to her manicurist about how she can't find a man.
In fact, I found another narrative-complainer right after Obama's State of the Union address, in which Ezra Klein, writing for the Washington Post, had said that, yeah, the speech was fine, but it needed "a good follow-through:"
"But the State of the Union only comes once a year. And it's hard to imagine voters buying Obama's narrative of progress and achievement unless they see, well, some progress and some achievements. Obama made a strong statement in favor of health-care reform, but he didn't call on the House to pass the Senate bill, or the Senate to pass modifications,or for any alternative path to be followed. Success here will be measured not in reactions to the speech, but in the outcome of the effort."
And of course, Obama DID deliver. Three months later.
The thing about all these people who demanded that Obama deliver as part of the narrative, was that after he DID deliver, I didn't read any op-eds from them saying, NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT!
Why do you think that is?
Last summer, for example, Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote op-ed after op-ed about how the Stimulus funds had been wasted on tax cuts and that Obama had been obsessed with health care reform and that the nation was crying for infrastructure projects and jobs, jobs, jobs.
This summer, which Vice President Biden is calling, "The Summer of Recovery," more than 500 Stimulus-driven infrastructure projects will begetting underway, creating thousands of jobs all over this country, and I am WAITING to read one Bob Herbert column praising that effort.
(Again,another liberal, mind you.)
Anyway,Morgan winds up by saying:
"That narrative has to be simple, consistent and all about your functional role in the world. You've only got one story. Make it a good one. "
So,what does that have to do with us, the lowly Obama supporters? Isn't it the job of the White House communications office to create their narrative? Aren't we just narrative-consumers out here like everybody else?
Not necessarily.
First,I'll quote from a rousing piece by Kate Zernike in the Times, "Democrats Need a Rally Monkey,"
because she's talking to US, not to the White House, and then, I'll talk to my fellow Obama supporters.
Again,this article was written in early March, before the oil gusher and before health care reform had been passed, when all the pundit poo-bahs were soooo sure that the Republicans were going to kick our asses allover the place in the fall.
One of the people quoted by Zernike said the party was "snakebit" and "once a party's snakebit,it's really snakebit."
Uh...no.
She goes on to quote Stanley Greenburg, a Democratic pollster, who said there were two things that Dems needed to do in order to maintain our governing majority in 2010 and thus, hope to continue to get ANYTHING accomplished without suffering a complete governmental shutdown by the right wing:
"They have to show that they can govern successfully—passing some version of healthcare reform would be his preference—and then they have to frame the election as a choice for Democrats: “Do you want to rally behind your leaders, or do you want to go back to the policies that got us into this trouble in the first place?”
“The energy comes in the choice,” he said.
Ahhh, the CHOICE.
I thought we reached a real tipping-point in the past few days as far as the Dems' ability to point out for prospective voters what that choice really is, when ranking Energy and Commerce Committee Republican Congressman Joe Barton took his chance to grill BP CEO Tony Hayward on the cataclysmic disaster unleashed upon the residents of four states as well as untold millions of suffering marine animals due to his company's reckless pursuit of profit over commonsense--and chose instead to APOLOGIZE to the oil company for the fact that President Obama had demanded accountability from them on behalf of the people.
For young voters especially who may have turned out in '08 but don't really see why it would matter if they voted in '10,for a congressperson they know little about, when Obama himself is not on the ballot--this is the reason.
If the Dems lose the House in '10, then Joe Barton will take over the committee that is responsible for the oversight of regulating companies LIKE BP.
Other Republicans will take back control of committees who are supposed to oversee Wall Street, the environment, health care, and other areas that the Republicans, themselves, ran into the ditch under George W. Bush,and created the problems that President Obama and the Dems have been working so very hard to repair.
And for those voters who may not be so young, but who may be Hispanic, we don't have to say much of anything.
All we have to do is point to Arizona.
In '08, there was a generational divide in the Hispanic vote, as there was across the board. Older Hispanics often voted along cultural lines;pro-life, strong defense, and so on, and so voted for McCain who, even though he rejected it during the campaign,had actually written some pretty good legislation earlier in his Senate career on immigration reform.
That was then. This is now.
The Republican Party has embraced the right-wing fringe nutcase branch of their party, and all the xenophobic, immigrant-hating baggage that entails. In Arizona right now, not only can you get arrested for looking Hispanic and not having proper "papers" on you, but ethnic classes in schools that teach Hispanic culture have been canceled across the board, teachers who speak with Hispanic accents have been fired--flat-out--and now, a new law has been proposed in their state legislature that denies American citizenship to babies born in this country--a clear violation of 14th Amendment rights.
Republicans everywhere embrace this ideology and routinely send around viral e-mails full of nasty ethnic slurs and jokes.
If Hispanics do not turnout in full force and vote Democratic in November, and Republicans take back the House and/or Senate, as well as governorships, they can count on more and more Draconian laws and less and less opportunities for sensible immigration reform, not to mention a steep increase in hate crimes committed against them, particularly in border states.
If Republicans take back the House AND the Senate, they will set about attempting to repeal or overturn everything Obama has tried to do, and they will shut down and obstruct everything he tries to do in the future, and they will, without fail, work on behalf of Big Oil, Wall Street, Big Corporations, Defense Contractors, and any other entity that will look down its noses at the "small people" that President Obama and the Dems have been trying so hard to help.
AND, they will make it their mission in life to get rid of Obama in whatever way they can.
They will search for some sort of bogus impeachment charge, or, failing that, they will simply "Jimmy Carter" him, by making him look like such a failure that he will be sure to lose the White House in 2012, putting them firmly back in power, which is where they feel entitled to be.
Which would put this country right back where we were in the years 2000 to2006.
Think about that for a minute. Talk amongst yourselves. I'll wait.
So, again, what can we do about it?
The first thing we can do is get it through our heads that Obama is in the process of transforming the Democratic Party.
Those of us who remain active in Organizing for America--there are 13 million in the OfA database, but it's hard to gauge how many remain activists right now--realize this, but the old die-hards (those who still bitch about Howard Dean's 50-State Strategy) still don't GET it.
The Democratic Party is no longer meant to function as a gigantic wheezing behemoth of a top-down Frankensteinian monster-machine that plods along like a big cyborg, gobbling up campaign donations and spitting out advertising spots and Party organization-approved plans, where a young volunteer must "pay dues" in the Party machine, work their way dutifully up the chain of command, and so on.
It's more like a living,breathing organism, filled with energy and life, and yes, there is a structure, and you can work your way up, but it can happen pretty fast,and it's based on one thing, and that's your own energy, creativity, and hard work--not the glasses-on-the-nose approval of some appartchik somewhere whose butt you had to kiss.
Outsiders looking in--and that includes the chattering class--have never quite grasped the concept, either. When OfA guru David Plouffe recently announced the new strategy for 2010--that Dems were going to take $50 million and, rather than pour it into the gas tank of the cyborg, they were going to use it to do the unprecedented--go after the first-time voters from the campaign of '08--young people, Hispanics, and African Americans who were swept up in Obama's message and who might not be planning to vote in the mid-terms but who could possibly be persuaded by OfA volunteers--the outcry was swift and predictable in the piece in the Post by KarenTumulty:
"Some veteran Democratic Party operatives are also skeptical that the $50million investment will payoff--except, perhaps, in keeping the grassroots operation alive for Obama's reelection bid two years from now. Some even suggest that the president's team has put his long-term interests ahead of his party's immediate struggle for survival.
"I have zero confidence that they're heading in the right direction here,"says one longtime Democratic organizer who didn't want to be quoted by name criticizing his party's major midterm election initiative. Added another: "I think they're going to come in for a very rude awakening.It's going to be brutal."
"If that turns out to be the case, the doubters say, Democrats will wake up the morning of Nov. 3 wishing they had spent that $50 million on more traditional methods, like television ads, for reaching their base and persuading independents."
Ewww--that was quick--immediately assuming that all the president is trying to do is set up his 2012 operation. As if it would help him very much to RUN in2012 if he lost the House and Senate in 2010 with approval ratings below 50%.
Buried two-thirds of the way through the article is that,in campaign after campaign--mostly gubernatorial, but also in several special elections (Massachusets comes to mind)--all the traditional Party machine methods were used, and those elections were lost.
But what the article does NOT say is that David Plouffe did not come floating down from Mount Olympus and hand down a Dictate to the Party Faithful.
(This is because the article was written by an old political hand who, I gather, does not Get It.)
THEY ASKED US.
For those of you not active in OfA, I'm here to tell ya, they sent out a detailed questionnaire months ago, asking US what WE thought would be the best way to reach out to voters to get them to the polls in 2010,and then they analyzed the results of those polls.
And a clear majority of the OfA activists felt that the smartest use of volunteer time, energy, and money would be to use it to reach out to those first-time voters who were so enthused in '08 but who may have become disillusioned or who may have just gotten busy with their lives and may not realize how important these elections really are to the president and to THEM.
Somebody who took a little more time to analyze this was Matt Bai, writing for the New York Times Magazine, who goes into the uneven love story between President Obama and the Democratic Party. It's a long piece, but worth the read.
Whenever I read political pieces like the one that decries the "waste" of $50million (before it's even spent) and how Obama and his team are going to wake up and regret it, it just reminds me of sooo many articles I read in the weeks and months leading up to his primary victory and then his election victory.
The same pundits who are whining about lack of narrative and are criticizing him for not running the Party properly are the same ones who predicted his downfall time and time and time again. Then never bothered to apologize when they were caught out wrong. Time and time and time again.
So:Here's the thing.
Obama's team is not telling a story.
THEY ARE GOVERNING.
Previous presidents may have gotten these two words mixed up:
STATECRAFT.
STAGECRAFT.
It's easy to do. See--one has a "T" and one has a "G."
One involves working your ass completely off trying to GET THE JOB DONE and one involves USING PROPS AND PRETTY SCENERY IN ORDER TO PRETEND YOU ARE GETTING THE JOB DONE.
(Fools the media every time.)
We Obama supporters who intend to help him stay in the White House and keep his majority in the House and Senate, we will be asked what that story is, though, when we make our phone calls and knock on doors.
And here it is:
1. He--with the help of a Democratic congress--gets the job done. (Stopped a major Depression.Check. Health care reform. Check. Help for BP victims. Check. Student loan reform. Check. and so on.)
The Republicans have voted against every single thing that Obama and the Democrats have tried to do to help the American people and have sided with corporate interests every time.
2. If we stay home and do not vote--or vote for an opponent in the mid-terms--Republicans will take back congress and the Senate, and then the oil companies will be back in charge of regulating themselves; Wall Street will be back in charge of its own oversight; immigration laws will become more punishing, and so on, just like it was under George W.Bush.
And then, in 2012, we could have a President Palin. Then you could see what bumper-sticker governing is really all about.
For those of you who would like to pitch in and do what you can--make a call or two, or whatever--it is so incredibly easy. You can do it from your home computer. Organizing for America gives you all the information and support you need, and since you're already talking to people who voted once for Obama, it can actually be fun!
Visit thisweb page for a video and further instructions.
