Obama to Launch “Conviction-Based Presidency”

WASHINGTON (MNS) There are reports emanating from the White House which suggest that the Administration will, this week, begin a campaign to re-brand Obama and his policy-making team as the “Conviction-Based Presidency”. A high administration official speaking on the condition of anonymity confirmed the report and added, “Up until now, we believed that by constantly repeating the word change while fully accepting the rhetoric and parameters of the debate as established by the commercial press, and by extension, their corporate paymasters, would keep the woefully ill-informed public, which surprisingly includes most of those famously well-educated Obama voters, loyal and happy. We now realize this was a mistake”.

He went on to explain. “It appears that many people actually expected us to fundamentally change the underlying assumptions which made possible Bush policies on torture, the Constitution, executive secrecy, warrantless wiretapping, Wall Street bailouts, healthcare and the so-called War on Terror. We, of course had no intention of doing any such thing and thought that by nominating people such as Robert Gates, Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton and Timothy Geithner to serve in the cabinet, and Rahm Emanuel to serve as Chief of Staff, that we had been more than transparent about our intention to tenaciously defend the rights of entrenched interest groups. Unfortunately, many of our voters obstinately refused to heed these wholly unsubtle messages and now feel betrayed.”

It is precisely this lack of understanding that they hope to address with the new “Conviction-Based Presidency” campaign. “This is not about actually anchoring policy discussions in convictions—after, all, the president doesn’t have any other than wanting to appear conciliatory and be liked by whomever he is speaking to at the moment—but rather to make swing voters believe that he actually possesses core principles.” The official said that this will be done through a well-planned series of appearances in which he will turn up the emotional volume when speaking about issues that focus groups have identified as being important to his base. “We are in a tough spot here. The official continued, “People don’t understand how hard it is to make policy after you’ve sold your soul to corporate and military interests to get elected.”

When we contacted veteran Democratic operative Bob Shrum about the initiative, he said, “This is clearly the way to go. During the eight unsuccessful Democratic campaigns I have worked on I have always advocated in favor of ersatz demonstrations of concern for all of the party’s traditional constituencies while making sure to react fearfully and derivatively to all things that the Republicans and their media apparatus deem as central to the national debate”. As he looked out toward Nantucket Sound from his summer retreat he added, “From where I sit, the results speak for themselves”.