President Obama Versus the CW Machine, Round One

[Emit]

A striking fact about the current political environment is that despite the ground-breaking Democratic victory on November 4th - whose seeds were planted by progressive online activists - the new administration is dealing with an oddly familiar political brew: the "liberal media" mantra is rekindled, conservative talk radio (i.e. anti-liberal radio) is resurgent, Rush Limbaugh is more relevant than ever, Ann Coulter is once again doing the network rounds, and if online commentary over the past month is any indication, many progressives still feel disconnected from the levers of power.

The assumption that the new presidency would transform the political process, usher in an era of unprecedented citizen empowerment and decimate the old conventional wisdom-making machinery, has been undermined by the reality of entrenched power structures, deep-seated rivalries, die-hard habits and Beltway business as usual.

~snip

Which brings me to the point of this post: President Obama's Internet acumen - and that of his advisers - won't protect him from the formidable Conventional Wisdom Machine. I'll take as my starting point a piece from Chris Cillizza in which he offers a counterintuitive take on events of the past week. Counterintuitive in the sense that the week has not played out according to the script he elucidates, a script, it should be noted, that has lots of credence among political observers:

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama and his team learned a very important lesson that they are seeking to put into practice in the White House: the power of the media is overrated. Time and again during the campaign, Obama used his burgeoning grassroots army -- now more than 13 million email addresses strong -- to push out the message that he wanted to dominate the day rather than the message the media was focused on. Utilizing You Tube and a variety of other social networking media, Obama was able to speak directly to his supporters and, as importantly, to undecided voters about the issues of the day.

~snip~

In reality, events have unfolded very differently. That's not surprising; the role of the web has been misstated in the campaign and it is being overestimated in the post-campaign period. On TechPrez, Zephyr Teachout makes an important point regarding the latter:

Organizing for America sent out a request for house parties today, asking people to watch a video about Obama's economic recovery plan, talk about it with their friends, and build support for it. While there will be tweaks, this is the kind of action we can anticipate from OFA. I predict that there will be perhaps a thousand of such parties, then hundreds, then dozens. I think OFA will fail in its mission to directly engage Obama supporters in supporting Obama's executive actions. And I think this is a very good thing.

It will fail because Obama--suiting a President--is not oppositional, conflict-driven, and not likely to pick out particular targets to be won over--all things that are likely to engage people. It will fail because it is from OFA, not from Obama. And it will fail because OFA cannot be a new democratic party, but will have a hard time defining what it is, and what kind of real power ought exist at every level of the organization.

This is a good thing because it is not intended to be a representative organization, where people have real power.

Obama's Internet savvy cannot overcome the CW Machine. The grassroots infrastructure his campaign built may be able to influence some of the commentary, alter portions of the debate and mitigate some of the effects, but overall, the CW Machine, composed of myriad online and offline components, will grind away and do its business, larger than any one candidate, leader, party or movement.

~snip~

If hindering the Democratic agenda by exploiting missteps is a core mission for Republicans, Democrats would do well to note how effectively Republicans have done just that in the nascent days of the Obama presidency and how unpredictably the CW Machine has operated (or how predictably for those who are less sanguine about the fungibility of a web-fueled grassroots campaign).

Perhaps the best strategy in light of all this is simply to govern based on solid Democratic principles and let the results - and history - trump the CW Machine.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-daou/president-obama-versus-th_b_164405.html