Eight Ways Obama Can Sell His Economic Policies

With a landmark health-care reform bill assuring him his place in the pantheon of presidents who delivered transformational change, President Obama can now turn his attention to the economy. Today's job numbers offer hope that the economy may have turned a corner and begun adding jobs, though not nearly enough to compensate for the 8 million that have been lost, and unemployment at 9.7 percent is still stubbornly high.

The political challenge for Obama, now that he's about to make the long-awaited pivot to the task of creating jobs and putting Americans back to work, is finding the balance between taking credit for policies he believes are working when most people aren't yet feeling the benefits. Democratic strategist James Carville says it's the hardest thing to do in all of political communications, and if you don't get it right, the voters will exact their revenge.

The first President Bush campaigned for reelection in 1992 on a claim of economic recovery, and was ridiculed when he visited a mall in Maryland and bought four pairs of sweat socks to show he was doing his part to spur consumer spending. Bush looked out of touch, and Bill Clinton won the election with the campaign's internal slogan "It's the economy, stupid." Two years later, Democrats lost both houses of Congress even though the economy was humming and unemployment had gone from 7.8 percent to 5.7 percent.

Clinton barnstormed the country talking about his economic successes, but the voters didn't want to hear it, recalls pollster Stan Greenberg. White, blue-collar voters, particularly males, often take a big hit when there's a recession, and when the elites say things are getting better, these voters get angry. They were the among the last to benefit from the prosperity that became synonymous with the Clinton years, the last to cross the bridge to the future that Clinton touted in his second Inaugural Address.

The two Clinton-era sidekicks, Carville and Greenberg, shared the results of a Democracy Corps poll on voter attitudes about Obama and the economy at a breakfast Wednesday with reporters in Washington. The economic numbers are "grim" and selling health-care reform will be a "hard slog." Pessimism has jumped, particularly among new voters who supported Obama, unmarried women, and people under 30, who are economically worse off.

When Obama in his State of the Union address talked about how his policies had brought the economy back from the brink of depression, the dial tests in Greenberg's focus group "went through the floor. People hated it. They thought it was arrogant and he wasn't in touch with their experience," said Greenberg. Health-care reform, touted as a major legislative achievement, elicited ho-hums in a focus group. Voters are open to it, but can't understand why the administration has been absent during the jobs crisis.

Of course, even if the administration focuses exclusively on jobs, "who's to say that's going to create jobs?" Carville interjected, pointing out with his Cajun common sense that advising the White House to concentrate on jobs is telling them something they already know. But there are ways Obama can talk about an improving economy that won't anger voters who are still hurting:

• Talk up the tax cuts in the stimulus package. They're ongoing, and account for a third of the $767 billion recovery plan. Who knew?

• Tout the tax credits for small businesses that are part of the health-care reform bill, a nice counterpunch to corporations complaining about higher taxes.

• Highlight the bipartisan commission to attack the deficit. Its report is due in December. Voters worried about runaway government spending need to know Obama is serious about getting the deficit under control.

• Emphasize that you have a plan. You don't have to change your policies, just repackage them as an economic plan in place that's beginning to show promise.

• Treat the tea-party folks as gingerly as the Clintonites treated Ross Perot. Take their concerns about deficit spending seriously. Remember you're not running against them—you're running against the Republicans.

• Make Republicans run with the Republican brand, which remains deeply unpopular. Obama didn't get much of a boost from passing health-care reform, but the GOP's numbers are downright awful. Just 24 percent of the country currently calls itself Republican according to Pollster.com

• Don't overpromise. You don't want to get caught again in the little "green shoots" or the projection of 8 percent unemployment that turned into 10 percent and strained the administration's credibility.

• Show confidence in your ability to govern. Go with what Congress is able to pass, and avoid anything that shows gridlock or Democratic disarray. Competence matters.

Polls on health care are about evenly split, and that's not enough of a division to bring down the Democrats in the November election. But anger about the economy, which has its most extreme expression in the tea-party movement, is not going to fade, and intensity is what drives voters to the polls. Those who want to protect what Obama is doing had better join the fight or lose by default.