Obamathon: Is the President Overexposed?

By now you know the problems with President Obama’s media strategy. He’s too somber. Also, he laughs too much. He needs to get out and communicate more. And he’s doing too much TV. He’s overly professorial. And too fluffy. He needs to be a calm, grownup voice. And he needs to share taxpayers’ rage. But, you know–calm their rage too.

As Obama held a weeklong media blitz–Jay Leno, 60 Minutes, a prime-time press conference, ESPN–listening to the contradictory feedback has been like watching a golf pro get his swing coached by a team of feuding instructors. On 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft critiqued Obama as he spoke. After the President chuckled at the observation that the only thing people hate more than bailing out banks is bailing out automakers, Kroft asked, “Are you punch-drunk?”

Maybe, maybe not. But viewers at home may have felt whiplash.

The recurrent meme was that the President was risking “overexposure.” As it is so often these days, his critics’ model was WWFDRD? What would Franklin D. Roosevelt do? F.D.R. reassured and galvanized Americans during the Great Depression with his fireside chats on the radio, but he gave only about 30 in 12 years so that each one would be special.

F.D.R., however, was able to roadblock attention in American homes on the only mass broadcast medium in existence, one so new and intimate it still seemed like magic. Obama is in a mediasphere that includes broadcast, cable, blogs, Twitter and sundry home-entertainment boxes. To persuade in this world–and the President is not just the decider but also the persuader–you have to go multiplatform.

So is Obama doing too much TV? To people who follow politics constantly, sure. (“The first President whose campaign was his qualification for office continues to campaign,” sniffed George Will.) But those are not the people you go on the Tonight Show to get. The broader electorate doesn’t seem so burned out yet, judging by Obama’s approval ratings and the TV ratings. But that didn’t stop the fainting spells over whether Obama was somehow abandoning his duty by talking to the public on TV. (This is a bad thing, by the way? I mean, we gave how much airtime to Octomom?)

No serious person believes the wheels of government are actually grinding to a halt while the President agonizes over whether North Carolina can take Duke or that Obama is cackling with wicked glee at the thought of autoworkers being thrown on the streets. (Least of all Kroft, who was smiling broadly himself as he asked the “punch-drunk” question.) Instead, these controversies are either surrogates for political arguments or another way the press plays the news-cycle game. Did the President win the interview, or did he lose it?

Thus Kroft’s bizarrely meta question: “Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he’s sitting there just making jokes about money’?”–asking the President to analyze the public’s reaction to his tone in an interview he was in the middle of. And thus the hyperventilating over Obama’s Leno sit-down, coverage of which focused not on substance but on Obama’s comparing his bowling skills to the “Special Olympics.” Here’s another thing F.D.R. didn’t have to deal with: a public jaded by superficial, 24/7 political spin.

There are definitely dangers to media blitzes, as Obama’s TV week proved. Too many just-for-fun bits, like his ESPN bracket pick, could make him look as if he has his eye on the wrong ball. (Which may be why he said he didn’t stay up to watch a six-overtime game because “I’ve got work to do.”) Every time he forces himself to say, “I’m as angry as anybody about those bonuses,” it sounds clearer that he’s not as angry as anybody. And he may actually do better in tough Q&As, like his press conferences, than in soft ones like Leno’s. He gaffes more when he feels he’s on friendly turf. (See his flub about “bitter” small-town Americans at a fundraiser in the primaries.)

But whether Obama persuades or fails, Americans are listening to more than the faux-controversial snippets blared out on the Drudge Report. They’re absorbing the serious arguments, weighing the options, taking the measure of a President who came across as confident, wry and eager to engage. (And who, yes, sometimes says dumb things and apologizes for them.)

Listening to F.D.R.’s fireside chats today, it is still amazing how well he was able to personally connect, reassure and educate. But what F.D.R. was able to do in one broadcast today takes a raft of appearances that create a composite impression: gravitas from a press conference and 60 Minutes, living-room intimacy from Leno, regular-guy connection from ESPN.

So WWFDRD today? Probably something different from what F.D.R. did then. He might even overexpose himself.

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