Obama Still Hunts for a Catchy Slogan
Once more President Barack Obama is determined to win the future. After a long hiatus, he is again talking about putting the American economy on a new foundation. But when it comes to speaking with utter clarity, his interest has never waned.
Let me be clear, he likes to say and keep saying.
The Obama presidency is littered with catch phrases and rhetorical devices, enthusiastically embraced and summarily discarded as tastes and political needs change. None has piqued the publics imagination. Six years into his tenure, Mr. Obama is still casting about for a slogan as punchy and enduring as FDRs New Deal, Lyndon Johnsons Great Society or even his own 2008 campaign mantra: Yes We Can.
In todays short-attention-span politics, every president needs a motto. And the Obama presidency has been in search of a clear theme from Day One, said Stephen Farnsworth, author of the book, Spinner in Chief: How Presidents Sell Their Policies and Themselves.
Mr. Obama came into office promising to put the nation on a new foundation, a phrase he had come up with himself in crafting his inaugural address in 2009. He used it 103 times in various speeches and statements in 2009-10, according to speech texts compiled by the American Presidency Project at University of California, Santa Barbara.
Then he stopped.
Americans went three years without hearing Mr. Obama discuss his new foundation. Some didnt miss it. Presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin once said the phrase reminded her of foundation girdles,the womens undergarments.
Yet in June 2013, while seeing off top economic adviser Alan Krueger, the president trotted it out once more, telling the audience that weve cleared away the rubble of (economic) crisis and laid a new foundation for growth.
Since then he has used the phrase at least 19 more times, the universitys records show.
A slogan with even less staying power was Win the Future. It popped up in an Obama speech at a community college in North Carolina in late 2010, as he made the case that both parties should set aside narrow differences and work in bipartisan fashion to help the country win the future.
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Obama Still Hunts for a Catchy Slogan