The White House, of course, does put a positive spin on all negative perceptions. The line is that the president inherited an economic mess that is taking longer than expected to fix; recovery is underway, affirming the president’s policies; the benefits of ObamaCare will soon become evident; Osama bin Laden has been taken out; the Afghanistan “preemptive withdrawal” strategy is working; and Libya is a matter for European and Arab countries and doesn’t require US leadership.

Still, much as we PR folks pride ourselves on our craft, there is a limit to what talking points can achieve. This narrative may satisfy political sympathizers but it is surely not enough to explain Barack Obama’s continuing level of popularity as the United States enters its election campaign season. Almost all of his predecessors had better economic records or could boast some significant progress in foreign policy. The fact is, Obama’s basic record does not compare favorably. So here are some non-spin explanations as to why he is still very much in the game.

First, there is currently no alternative to Barack Obama. Republican hopefuls have only just begun vying to win the opportunity to challenge him. The most likely choice at this point in time appears to be Mitt Romney, hardly a popular politician in his own party given the failing health care entitlement he introduced as governor of Massachusetts. Tougher opponents like Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Chris Christie of New Jersey have said they won’t be competing. Several other candidates could emerge, including Sarah Palin, the bête noire of European intellectuals, but at the moment there is no clear leader rallying the conservative base.

Second, although the economy is doing badly, many voters are willing to give the president a little longer before judging whether his deficit-led/ weak dollar approach has helped or made things worse. The jury is still out on Obama’s economic policies.

Third, Obama is the consummate social justice politician governing in a social entitlement era. Most people in Europe have grown up expecting the state to take care of their old age and ill-health, and to intervene in economic activities for the common good. The United States is perhaps a generation behind this curve but its entitlement programs are in many ways more generous than Europe’s. The wheels of our entitlement culture are beginning to look wobbly, with riots in debt-ridden Greece, resistance to austerity measures in Portugal, and budget travails in California. But the financial limits of big government are still not widely accepted among independents and liberals. The US federal government has been protected from high interest rates by the reserve status of the dollar but with the big three entitlements – social security, Medicare and Medicaid – all heading towards insolvency, judgment day is coming ever closer to Washington. The backlash has begun in the United States with the Tea Party movement but hard political choices can still be deferred for now and Obama has even extended the gravy train with his controversial ObamaCare legislation.

Fourth, the US media is overwhelmingly pro-Democratic, pro-big government and overtly partisan. This means that the president does not have to contend with the same levels of scrutiny and criticism as his predecessor or his political opponents. The new electronic media and Fox News have injected some balance into the equation, but the playing field is still heavily tilted in the president’s favor.

Add to these four facets the personal appeal of the president, a predisposition among Americans to want their presidents to succeed, the absence of personal scandals and the discipline of former officials to keep differences to themselves, and we have the basis for Barack Obama’s current approval levels. In Europe, his unwillingness to flex America’s muscles, particularly in Libya, is also an approach that has been largely embraced.

But two things are sure to change over the next year. First, Barack Obama will have an opponent who will challenge and bring greater attention to his record. Second, voters will be entitled to make a judgment on the president’s economic record. Will they feel better off than four years earlier? Will they believe that the economy is getting better as a result of the president’s policies?

Public relations cannot claim the credit for the president’s approval ratings. Too many other factors are at work. A lot will happen between now and Election Day and, as the campaigning gets underway, the real spin starts now.

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Newspapers are well known for their established biases while human interest magazine-style reports inevitably end up promoting some cause or other. Television and radio broadcasters may delude themselves into believing that they possess a divine gift for objectivity but surely every viewer and listener today can discern editorial slants, while documentaries have evolved from their ostensibly factual beginnings into a one-sided propaganda niche.  Wherever we turn, someone is trying to blind us with their insights and prejudices.  Heck, this column is doing exactly the same!

Gavin Carter

A fair-minded person might assume that an “information eco-system” characterized by so much diversity must produce a broad range of evenly or randomly distributed viewpoints.  But this simply isn’t the case.  As with natural eco-systems, there are winners and losers.

The fact that many countries, like the United Kingdom for example, maintain politically mandated requirements for broadcasting to be politically balanced demonstrates a widespread belief that objectivity from TV and radio organizations is unnatural and has to be imposed.  At the same time, it also indicates a belief that objective news dissemination on TV and radio (but not newspapers) is both socially desirable and somehow quantifiable.

In the United States, Ronald Reagan peeled away the pretense of government-controlled balance on the airwaves and the result is unabashed commentary across the political spectrum. Amidst this complex global web of modern news dissemination lies the common thread of hostility to those entities with interests in mineral extraction, energy and food production.  These poor souls are pilloried for supposedly causing environmental devastation, destroying communities and seizing resources and are characterized as deceitful, reckless and manipulative.  According to this narrative, the common man is helpless to resist such omnipotent forces for harm.

Thankfully, the media is here to level the playing field by exposing their malfeasance! What is striking about this situation is the pliant and timid response from the industries themselves.  And this has consequences for public relations counselors who are busy positioning organizations that are constantly under attack.  By and large the companies involved – such as electrical utilities or oil giants – treat opposition to their activities as if it was exclusively focused on them.  Everything is relative so outreach responses are designed to make them alone look good – or better than their competitors – be it through a campaign like BP’s Beyond Petroleum or through the modern practice of publishing corporate responsibility reports.

But can this blinkered outlook be sustained when reality is so different? What are the business consequences for other oil companies, mining interests and fishermen in our core resource gathering industries when a company like BP hands $20 billion to the United States Treasury in a shakedown, or British utilities succumb to a so-called windfall profits tax? In the United States, polling has consistently shown that around 80 per cent of information disseminators – er, journalists – identify themselves as politically left of center.  Perhaps this is not surprising given that a similar proportion of university and college professors and lecturers in the arts identify themselves in the same way.

PRs are always trying to put things into their proper context, so here is the key: The political left is philosophically opposed to economic development.  This is not to say that everyone on the left advocates ending all economic development now (although some do).  What we hear from the soft left are calls for greater government regulation, restrictions on what resources can be used, designations on areas from where they can be extracted, limits on quantities that may be taken, requirements on how they can be removed, imposition of taxes on their exploitation, etc.

In other words, while there may be some elements of acceptance on the left that economic development is a good thing, it is qualified by a series of conditions that they intellectualize as being socially desirable.  Escaping from political niceties, this is fundamentally anti-development.

Gavin Carter in the media throng

The bottom line is that economic resources that spur development – cheap and available gasoline/petrol, electricity and food – are anathema to the left.  They feed growing populations, transportation systems and consumption that are viewed as unsustainable and unnecessary. We are told that we don’t really “need” big power plants, chemical factories, oil tankers, tuna or modified crops.  Instead we have a duty to minimize our environmental footprint, carbon or otherwise, under the benevolent guidance of the political left. It is opposition to economic development  – not the more commonly protested safety or environmental issues – that drives criticism of the companies that public relations professionals are defending.  We need to wise up and recognize it for what it is.  Politics is the key. Gavin Carter is President of Gavin Carter and Associates in Alexandria, Virginia and purveyor of AskGavino.com

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