Once upon a time, Barack Obama understood the power of a good story. His campaign mantras — “Yes we can” and “Change we can believe in” — inspired voters, especially young people, blacks and Latinos, and propelled him into the White House. But once in office, Obama lost the thread of the plot. He abandoned his original message and embraced compromise and bipartisanship rather than pushing for dramatic change. That narrative hasn’t gotten far with a recalcitrant Congress, especially Republicans, who have their own high concept to pitch: Just say no to Obama.
In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, Obama will undoubtedly look to the Hollywood left for money and endorsements, but he would be equally well served to look to the Hollywood right — especially the legacy of Ronald Reagan — for lessons about how to tell his story and the importance of sticking to it and reinvigorating it when governing became problematic.
From Louis B. Mayer to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Hollywood right has told a simple but compelling story of American triumphalism: The United States is the greatest nation in the world.
Mayer’s Hardy family films, the most successful series in MGM history, promised Depression-era audiences that anything was possible so long as they subscribed to what he viewed as the holy trinity of American life: family, God and country. Several decades later, reporters attributed former actor George Murphy’s surprise election to the Senate in 1964 to his successful use of Mayer’s optimistic story line. Murphy, a Democrat turned Republican, “makes you feel good,” explained one journalist. “He has no doubts, and your own doubts can be resolved.”
Schwarzenegger employed his own heroic narrative in his gubernatorial campaign: He was a caring and compassionate populist who promised to tell Democratic and Republican politicians, “Do your job for the people and do it well, otherwise you are hasta la vista, baby.”
Few citizens, history shows, want to hear a Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty or Sean Penn point out what is wrong with the United States. They want to be reassured that in frightening times, their leaders can defeat all foes and deliver an essentially happy ending.
Reagan in particular understood this need and created a story line that was effective for campaigning and governing. During his gubernatorial bid in 1966, and his presidential run in 1980, he drew upon a simple narrative that he repeated over and over again — one aimed not only at the Republican faithful but at independent voters who could swing elections and provide the mandate needed for a conservative revolution in government. Reagan merged American triumphalism with messages of fear and reassurance: fear of communism and creeping federal socialism, and reassurance that he and determined conservatives could save the nation by defeating the Soviet Union and overturning the New Deal welfare state.
He campaigned for the presidency on a set of simple but powerful ideas: reduce taxes, return power to state and local government, and fight all enemies of America, foreign and domestic.
Once in office, Reagan ran into trouble when he abandoned his policy promises by raising taxes and increasing the size of the federal budget. Facing a tough reelection campaign, he revitalized his base by adding a new catchphrase that brilliantly restated his story line: “It’s Morning in America.” Reagan was victorious in 1984 in part because he shifted attention away from his broken promises and focused instead on the vision of a “happy ending” for America, a return to an imagined past of simpler, better days.
To be successful at winning and then governing during a second term, Obama needs to reconfigure his successful 2008 story line. It was, after all, a Democratic version of “Morning in America.” Like Reagan, he made citizens believe in the possibility of a better future. But unlike the former president, he insisted that change would come only by embracing an activist federal government that would work to better the lives of all Americans.
In 2012, Obama can learn from Reagan by steadfastly looking to a hopeful future rather than the disappointing past four years. He needs to re-engage his original promise of action. He recently pledged to be a “warrior for the middle class” — that has the right heroic ring to it, if he can demonstrate that he is a determined initiator rather than a weak conciliator.
But mostly, Obama needs to appeal to the imaginations, and even the fantasies, of the widest possible audience; he needs to remind the faithful and independents of what he told them in February 2008. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
Can a restatement of his 2008 story line again win millions of votes, and can it help Obama govern more successfully in his hope for second term? Yes, it can. Poll after poll indicates that Americans want change they can believe in now more than ever. An effective narrative moves voters, and mobilized voters move Congress — as tea party supporters have shown and as Occupy Wall Street activists hope to show. Citizens did this with and for Reagan, and they can do it with Obama — if once again his story inspires them to believe, to act and to vote.
• Ross is a professor of history at the University of Southern California and the author of “Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics.”
Comments (27)
Add commentvomit
This story is complete vomit.
First, I've never understood the right wingnuts canonization of Reagan. It's probably due to the fact that they have no other republican in history to idolize (save Abraham Lincoln) so Reagan wins by default.
Three words: Bedtime for Bonzo.
At least our current president never had a job involving a monkey.
And I about puked at the author's reference to Arnold Schwarzennegger as a "caring and compassionate populist." He won his election by simple name recognition in a state which values image over substance and fantasy over reality. It's how Hollywood makes its money. Don't forget, he married a Kennedy, and you can't get much more liberal than that.
Schwarzennegger left that state billions in debt and said "auf wiedersehen suckers." But boy, he sure can blow things up in a movie! And he has big muscles and lots of guns!
Finally, dude, Jane Fonda is irrelevant and has been for decades. Seriously. Can your wingnuts not find any other current liberal to bash? Fonda bashing is a horse so dead it has turned to fossils.
Reagan was a joke. But the bigger joke is the right-wing's beatification of him.
Reagan is held in such high
Reagan is held in such high esteem by many on the right, & the Reagan Democrats because he believed in Americans, not in a dis-functional federal government. BO is the complete opposite. He has NO faith in the abilities of the American people. His followers are just tools to him, or as Lenin called them, "useful idiots"! While those that believe in the American way, i.e. LIBERTY are considered the enemy.
@madison
How can you sit on you computer, and type such garbage? The present Republican party is completely against the American way of living! They are solely out for the upper class, and care NOTHING about the middle to power class of Americans!
jomac
He hasen't worked with a monkey your right, but then again joe biden's not quite as intelligent as a monkey, so please don't insult the monkey.
By the way did you hear BO's teleprompter was stolen in Virginia? left him speechless err,,,iii mean,,,,theeee, you know,,,, errr
This was a fairly accurate
This was a fairly accurate article. A lot of you have a hard time coming to grips with the terrible job that Obama and the Democrats have done the last few years. Remember that they had TOTAL control of Congress for two years and plunged this country into further economic problems. They have piled up record debt with nothing to show for it. There was no bi-partisan efforts when they had absolute power so they can't blame the other party(I'm not Republican) for a lot of their own problems. All they can do now is try to play all of us against each other. Don't fall into the trap. I did like Reagan because he made me feel proud to be an American. He admitted that he made mistakes. It's been a long time since a President has done that.
Just more screed from a
Just more screed from a dilusional university professor.
The left tried to equate Obama with Lincoln and that didn't work so now they're trying to latch on to Reagan's legacy. That's not going to work either.
How stupid do they think voters are, anyway? Fool me once...
@madison - you're exactly right.
It's not in Obama's DNA to present any positive message that he truly believes. The messages are rhetoric and lies as in "the ends justify the means".
First of all, Obama doesn't love America. He doesn't even believe in America. He's an angry, narcissistic, community agitator and an anticolonialist.
In his warped mind, America has been too exceptional for too long and it's past time to take her down a few notches.
How else could one explain his behavior?
Sait Reagan
I find the conservative obsession with Saint Reagan fascinating. It is almost a religion, so using the conservative theory it is more like a cult following Ronald.
Every thing Reagan did that the conservative liked gets endless praise. Things he did that the conservatives did not like are forgotten or denied. I find that to be especially true when you review every aspect of anything surrounding income taxes. You hear the ongoing Reagan lowed taxed, he lowered taxes, he reduced taxes. Yet when you point out the times taxes increase the response is the taxes were still lower than when he first entered the office. Which does not change the fact he increased taxes at one point.
Saint Reagan was a good president. But presidencies are subject to the events of the time in which the office was held. To forget everything before and after one person held the office is to be blindly lead to the cult alter.
@calypso
When I worked in the mental health field comments like yours above were considered slanderous against a president and were supposed to be reported to the secret service. Also how can honestly say that Bush did not lie to congress to get engaged in the way in Iraq?
Share the Wealth:
I thought you were kidding islandhopper. BO's truck was stolen. I tried to post the site but JE keeps cuting me off.
I guess you could call this sharing the wealth. Scary though, this man running the country and can’t even keep an eye on a truck.
“At least our current president never had a job involving a monkey.” That’s because Zippy boy has never had a job until now.
Oh, bill, I thought the left
Oh, bill, I thought the left was all about the First Amendment. Now you're going to call me crazy because you don't like what I write? Where's my freedom of speech?
I'll bet you were one of those "good" progressives that told the "bad" progressives to back off when they were comparing Bush to Hitler or calling him a terrorist or a war criminal. Cuz you are the speech police, right?
Do you write emails to Bill Maher and Ed Schultz complaining of their slanderous speech towards Cheney and Palin? Now that's some serious, mental instability.
Regarding Obama's stolen
Regarding Obama's stolen media truck -
"The story is funny and everything until you realize what a breach of security this really was.
Once somebody gained unsupervised access to that bus and it’s contents they could have done anything they want. What if somebody planted a device or some sort of miniaturized explosive….? What if somebody planted electronic tracking devices or audio or video devices….? They would know where the POTUS would be going days in advance. Can anyone imagine the sort of conversations they could listen in on if somebody planted as bug or the details of security they could see if there was surveillance equipment…?"
"This is a BFD. Getting to that podium is almost as good as getting up close to the POTUS."
"Which is why I suspect that there are some very sheepish faces around the White House this morning, and why the security plan for the equipment has probably been updated — and perhaps the team as well."
Read about it here -
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/10/18/presidential-podiums-pilfered/
@Calypso
Your comment about Bill Maher and Ed Schultz is funny If you think comment are slanderous,1 why do you watch them, and 2. they are more truthful than Fox news and your idol Mr Rush
Reagan...
Reagan was "successful" because he appointed big business lobbyists with specific interests to head federal agencies. Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, etc. These federal agencies were originally designed to make sure business in the US was done in a manner than benefited the country. Reagan's appointees did all they could to ensure that business could exploit the country as fast as possible, and disregarded future generations. I was born in the Reagan era, and I can say with confidence that his policies weren't looking out for me. I don't think his administration understood the concepts of sustainability, finite resources, or future generations.
Obama has had a hard time because he's wanted to change the nature of the top-heavy system. He's wanted to restructure the way business is done in the US. As he said in 2008, among other things he wanted to close corporate tax loopholes and make it easier for middle class Americans to survive. What would this have done? It would have held those exploiting our country for immediate profits slightly responsible and put some of that corporate tax-genearted revenue back into the infrastructure of the US. But people/business with money don't like their money being messed with, so they set out to marginalize Obama from day 1. Which is exactly what's happened, and why his administration has been attacked and blamed for nearly everything under the sun, including a mortgage bubble collapse that he didn't preside over, or two wars that he didn't initiate.
And what's wrong with being anti-colonialist? It might do us some good to acknowledge that in the process of building a great country, we committed some pretty egregious mistakes. But of course, nobody in the past has made mistakes, mismanaged the economy, or paved the way for future hardships. It's only this current generation of spoiled kids and their hero Obama, right?
Reagan was charismatic.
Reagan was charismatic. That's it. He wasn't a particularly good president--the 80's were a time of rampant income inequality, "greed is good" mantra, and the beginning of the end of the idea that it was everyone's job to make the world a better place. We've replaced that idea with selfishness, essentially. He wasn't the worst president, though, make no mistake. But he didn't tear down the Berlin wall with his own two hands, he didn't kick Gorbachev in the crotch and cause the entire USSR to fall, and he didn't fix our country's economic woes in the long-term.
Also, what is this railing against anti-colonialism crap? Do you idiots not realize that the Revolutionary War was--you guessed it!--a war against colonialism?
PP
I agree. I don't understand how modern day patriots infatuated with the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit of all that stuff can ignore the fact that we were fighting against colonialism. To argue that a current president is un-American or unpatriotic because he's anticolonialist is rubbish.
Actually, it could be argued
Actually, it could be argued that we are doing exactly that in Iraq, Afganistan, Libya, Iran, Uganda, etc. We are trying to colonize the globe.
it's bigger than that
Right on the money kpawsuh.
If Obama is anticolonial, as
If Obama is anticolonial, as I believe, he despises the Brits for being in Kenya and the indiscretion his "relatives" endured. Hence, he sent the Churchill bust back to England.
And that would explain why he doesn't have any regard for the founders of America either. He sees them as having taken the land from the indigenous people. And we present day citizens are just as guilty, in his eyes, as those hundreds of years ago are.
But he must be happy that the Brits were sent packing from America. It must be heLL to live with so many grudges.
He doesn't love America. Does he love anything actually? He's just an angry, mean, out to get ya, kind of guy. He must have excelled at being a community agitator - he sure has the personality.
Teleprompters
I get amused when the republipukes in here can't find real things to bash Obama about, so they bash him for using a teleprompter.
I got news for ya, ALL recent Presidents used the teleprompter in nearly every major speech ever since it was invented, including Bush-the-lesser.
But the amazing thing with Bush-the-lesser using a teleprompter was the stunning discovery that he could even READ!
But chances are, he could have confused his teleprompter for a Texas karaoke machine and didn't know the difference between delivering a speech and doing karaoke. Cheney probably whispered in his ear that it was karaoke to put him at ease when he denied WMDs.
@Jo MacNamara
Excellent points At least Obama can read which is far better than GWB!
Calypso
Okay Calypso, what about America is it that you love? You're an expert on all that Obama hates, as well as anyone who doesn't agree with you.
I love Southeast Alaska and wouldn't want to call anywhere else home. And I'm smart enough to understand that there are things we get right here, and things we get wrong. I'm also smart enough to understand that the political process is larger than one man, and to dump all blame of the mismanagement of the past decade or two onto one man is severely naive. Perhaps even angry, mean, and out to get ya.
ever
Ever Listen to Barry off the cuff? Sounds like a combination of Elmer Fudd Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny & (when it suits his need/audience ) Al Sharpton
Reagan vs. Eisenhower
Here's a must-read for everyone in here, especially those praising Saint Reagan of arms.
It's from America's greatest news source, the Onion.
It details how conservatives have confused Reagan with Eisenhower for over three decades. So now, when a conservative praises Reagan, they really meant Eisenhower:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/embarrassed-republicans-admit-theyve-be...
(snicker)(giggle)(snort)
I love the Onion.
Bwahahahaa!!
I love the Onion too!! That's great!
Please select one of the following options:
Jo: "I get amused when the republipukes in here can't find real things to bash Obama about, so they bash him for using a teleprompter."
For a proper O-bashing not involving a teleprompter, please select one of the following options:
A) Federal Budget
B) Obamacare
C) Entitlement Reform
D) Immigration Reform
E) Troops in Iraq/Afghanistan
F) Undeclared war on Libya without congressional approval
@Viking: a) controlled by
@Viking:
a) controlled by congress
b) a definite improvement over the status quo, but still not single-payer goodness
c) see answer a)
d) see answer a)
e) see previous administration, and see the immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, consequences of
f) not a war, but a NATO-led action; no need to pretend we're leading a coalition on this one
Any more questions? Maybe you should focus on the valid criticisms. I assure you, there are many, but his Rockefeller Republican policies are not among them.
good lord, calypso....
....don't you have anything of substance to say?
This kind of thing is EXACTLY the problem.
Fox 'news' wouldn't give President Obama credit if he single-handedly swam across the Atlantic and brought peaceful democracy to all of the Middle East and got us a $.50 per gallon oil deal - - - and you know it.
After Bin Laden - "the seal team did it"
Going into Libya - "you didn't get there fast enough" and "why use NATO, go in guns blazing alone"
After Libya, 8 months, no American casualties, total cost less than or = ONE WEEK in Iraq - - - "Wasn't fast enough" and "British and French did it" - wait, didn't the FOX crowd hate the French last year?
If FOX ever manages to tell the truth about anything - I'll be completely floored.
And as for the bust? " Intended as a symbol of transatlantic solidarity, the bust was a loaner from former British prime minister Tony Blair following the September 11 attacks. A bust of Abraham Lincoln--Obama's historical hero--now sits in its place. A White House spokesperson says the Churchill bust was removed before Obama's inauguration as part of the usual changeover operations, adding that every president puts his own stamp on the Oval Office." Newsweek.
Should President Bush have kept everything President Clinton had in the Oval Office? Of course not!
Get over yourself already!
Calypso is an advanced
Calypso is an advanced artificial intelligence, much like that old Mac program "Eliza." It sounds like you're talking to an actual person most of the time, but something just seems off...
He would not pass the Turing test, that's for sure.