Thursday, January 18, 2007

Hewitt Melts Snow

Rarely will you hear or see me say very many positive things about Blew Blewitt, but he is absolutely right here and he makes Tony Snow look like Scotty McClellan in the process. Tony should know better...

Read the whole thing, but here are the key parts:
First, business-as-usual dictated that the White House released all the crucial details before the speech, thus draining the address of audience and drama. Ratings were in the tank as a result, as one would expect from the closest thing to a rerun the political world sees. I asked Snow why the rush to gut the audience, and he explained how this allows the White House to get inside the MSM’s news cycle and thus positively affect the coverage.

Tony no doubt believes this. It is nonsense, though, and the new news cycle doesn’t care what the morning papers say or don’t say. Americans respond to first person appeals, not the laundered spin of the MSM –an impact that is not merely blunted but wholly destroyed by the promiscuous peddling of talking points prior to launch. If the president is going to have a chance of persuading the public, the public has to actually watch him. They didn't. He didn't. It isn't that complicated.

When I suggested that Steve Jobs built audience and interest by holding all details about the iPhone in the deep freezer, Tony responded that the war in Iraq isn’t the iPhone –completely true, of course, and completely beside the point. Creating audience and gaining credibility with it, whether the financial and electronics press, or the American public, always begins with the audience’s attention.

Want to kill all of the State of the Union’s impact? Tell everyone what is in it.

Want to build audience? Tell no one. Don’t even give a copy to the Speaker. Make her listen and react, and all the Congresspeople as well.

That’s point one. Now to the "follow up" that wasn’t.

Explaining why it is necessary to “surge” and why the sacrifice of American lives is not just noble, but necessary, requires a daily engagement by the Administration’s best communicators, and across the entire media spectrum. The center-right doesn’t much care what is said on Russert’s Sunday coffee clatch, and there is a good argument that independents don’t either. There is no mass audience anywhere, and no single appearance on a single show will do. The key message –the war can be lost in Iraq, with slaughter on a scale approaching Rwanda and immediate effects on American security—is not getting through or not being believed. Part of the problem is that in a shattered media environment, the Administration and the Pentagon, as well as GOP leadership on the Hill, are not making the case day-in-and-day-out. “Making the case” doesn’t mean the Sunday shows, by the way, or an op-ed here or there.

It means the Today Show, the O’Reilly Factor, Lou Dobbs and Jay Leno.

It means the Weekly Standard and the New Republic, and every paper’s D.C. bureau chief.

And it means, most definitely, the blogs, and not just on conference calls that allow the list to get checked off all at once.
While we're on the subject, the Ohio GOP could stand to learn a few of these lessons too...