The first American president to appear on television was
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Speaking at the opening of the 1939 World’s Fair in
New York City, he declared the event “open to all mankind.” But for all
Roosevelt’s TV-friendly oratory, it wasn’t until 1960 with the election of John
F. Kennedy, historians argue, that television fully matured. Used with expert
precision, Kennedy became our first “TV president.”
The same technological
evolution can be seen with former president Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Clinton may have been the first president to send an email, but it is Barack
Obama, with his social media-savvy Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, that
have allowed him to take top honors as the nation’s first “multimedia
president.”
Too Cool for
School? Not This Prez
It’s that media/tech-savvy
distinction that allows Obama to connect with young voters –- better than even
the saxophone-playing-Clinton once did. Obama’s presidential “cool” allows him
license to use Kennedy’s favorite communications medium in new ways too. On
April 24, Obama was the guest-in-chief on "Late Night with Jimmy
Fallon" -- where he joined the host in a bit called “Slow-Jam the News,”
where current events are put to a relaxed R&B beat.
But humor was only part of
Obama’s continuing call to cool. His presence was a superb lesson in public relations.
Obama took the opportunity to
connect with Fallon’s college-aged and 20-something viewers to address an issue
that is central to their futures -– student loans and mounting debt. The
five-minute opener (with nearly 5 million YouTube views when I wrote this post) featured a smiling and hand-waving president
who morphed into mocking seriousness. With a bluesy backbeat, the chief jammer
began:
“On July 1st of this year the
interest rates on Stafford student loans -- the same loans that many of you use
to help pay for college -- are set to double,” he said. …“What we said [to
congress] is simple. Now is not the time to make school more expensive for our
young people.”
The camera returned to a
smile-suppressing Fallon, where he delivered the follow-up line in a raspy,
deep voice. “Ooooh yeah. You should listen to the president."
Public
Relations 101: Stay On Message
With performances like that,
who needs costly political ads or even stump speeches? Obama chose the student
loan topic deliberately. Hours before the live taping, Republican presidential
challenger Mitt Romney began backpedaling when it came to his opinions on the
“student loan crisis,” first tacitly endorsing the July 1 deadline and then
breaking with Republican colleagues to support the president’s call to keep
student loan interest rates in check.
Perhaps the Romney campaign
would like to blame it on the leap year.
On February 29, at a campaign
stop in Ohio, Romney answered a question from a law student that illuminated his position regarding
student loans and the need for market forces -- not public handouts -- to
determine the fair cost of financial aid.
“The right course for America
is for businesses and universities and colleges to compete, and for us to make
sure that we provide loans to the extent we possibly can at an interest rate
that doesn’t have the taxpayers having to subsidize people who want to go to
school,” he said.
That’s an opinion that speaks
to the Republican base. But throw in his campaign advisor Eric Fehrnstrom’s Etch a
Sketch comment
about being able to rewrite political narratives once the general election gets
underway and you’re left with a politician edging toward a John Kerry-style
flip-flopper.
We still have a long horse
race ahead in the game of presidential politics. But Obama’s smooth, humorous
and televised quasi-Romney dig will continue to serve him well. Not only does
the president rely on a host of media outlets to disseminate his message, he’s
skilled at shifting his tone throughout events.
Obama understands that
shifting tone is different than shifting message. We’ll have to wait and see if
Romney has been properly schooled and if Obama can remember his own lessons
come fall.
But for now, I’ll still agree
with the Roots rapper Black Thought, who at the end of President Obama’s slow
jam session called him the “POTUS (President of the United States) with the
mostest.”
Indeed.
The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer
of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing
Daily on 05/03/2012.
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