STFU Award: Political strategists and experts

Somewhere someone said it first. ‘Pres. Barack Obama was losing the PR war to the Republicans in debating his stimulus his bill.’ Then someone else picked up the all-purpose observation and repeated it. Noticing the allure of drama to an otherwise wonky story, other “experts,” “strategists,” and pundits continued the refrain until it filled the echo chamber and was accepted as a universal truth.

There was just one thing missing from this analysis: a source. What was the factual basis for the claim? What knowledgeable, objective person were they quoting? What empirical evidence led to this conclusion?

There’s an old joke… What do you get when you give a reporter two pieces of information and a deadline? The answer? A trend. And so the trendy analysis continued until it was interrupted by real data.

A Monday Gallup poll found that 80 percent of voters felt that passing an economic stimulus proposal was important or very important (51 percent very important, 29 percent important). RealClearPolitics.com reported in their poll of polls that Pres. Obama enjoyed a 64 percent job approval while congressional Republicans earned a mere 31 percent approval. This happened while Republicans were winning the PR war.

What could have possibly led all these experts to conclude that Republicans were besting the president? A bunch of grumpy old men saturated the airwaves peddling 30-year old sound bites and the same baseless predictions that created the current mess. Because of the overall volume of their wall-to-wall pronouncements, the chattering class concluded the opposition must be winning.

I have a little reminder from any Communications 101 course: In order for communications to occur, you need a sender, a message, a receiver, and feedback to suggest the receiver got the message. Short of that complete cycle, you can’t assume that any real communication occurred.

In the Republicans blitz, you had a sender and a message but no feedback that any intended receiver heard or bought into their claims. The only people who seemed to receive the messages were the drama-hungry media. Despite the Republican offensive, Americans didn’t seem to be persuaded. The experts didn’t get the memo.

It’s the same old drill. News stations keep a stable of experts who tell us what we should think about every situation. They pronounce their opinions with absolute certainty, things of which they have no clue. Then they tell two friends. And they tell two friends. And so on. And so on. Until you have a trend story: Republicans are winning the PR war against the stimulus.

By the way, congress agreed on a stimulus plan this week, with the support of a majority of Americans.

To the news pundits who repeat the same tired cliché’s without any facts or sources…I hereby bestow the Peoples Pundit STFU Award. Shut The Fuck Up!