In Press Coverage, Obama's Plans Are Bold, Bold, Bold
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
March 2, 2009
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The word of the moment sounds good -- but the Obama White House should be worried.
If you read the papers and watch the news these days, there's one word that is increasingly used to describe Barack Obama's agenda, from the economy to health care to energy and beyond. The word is "bold."
A search of the Nexis database for articles or statements in which the words "Obama" and "bold" appear together yields 2,752 examples -- and that's just in the last 30 days. Not all of those are direct descriptions of Obama's agenda, but many are. Just look at five passages from the last few days in the news pages -- not the editorials -- of a single paper, the Washington Post:
- On March 1, the Post reported that Obama's health-reform summit is "an early step in the president's bold plan to vastly expand the reach of the health-care system."
- On February 28, the Post reported that Obama has "transformed the domestic political landscape with a breathtakingly bold budget plan."
- On February 27, the Post described the "immense scope and bold prescriptions" of the Obama agenda.
- On February 26, the Post referred to Obama's "once-in-a-generation opportunity for bold policy shifts."
- On February 25, the Post reported that "not since FDR has there been an economic agenda as bold or ambitious" as Obama's.
Other news outlets have followed suit. You can, for example, find dozens of references to Obama's "bold" plans in Associated Press stories. Still others appear to have reserved the word for high-impact placement. The New York Times, to take another example, favors "bold" in headlines -- last week the paper featured stories topped with "A Bold Plan Sweeps Away Reagan Ideas" and "In Time of Crisis, Urging Bold Action and Big Ideas" -- but not so much in its actual copy.
The word also permeates television discussion of the Obama agenda. On Sunday, during the roundtable portion of ABC's "This Week," featuring host George Stephanopoulos and panelists George Will, Karl Rove, Stanley Greenberg, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, there were eight references to Obama's boldness. (Six were from Greenberg, vanden Heuvel and Stephanopoulos, while Will and Rove used it once each to express skepticism about Obama's intentions.)
The White House is undoubtedly satisfied with the discussions of its "boldness." President Obama has used the word himself. But the repetition of "bold" could become a double-edged sword for the president.
On the one hand, it's an overwhelmingly positive word; who wouldn't be happy with an agenda and a president routinely described as bold? Just look at the definitions on Dictionary.com:
not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff; courageous and daring: a bold hero.
not hesitating to break the rules of propriety; forward; impudent: He apologized for being so bold as to speak to the emperor.
necessitating courage and daring; challenging: a bold adventure.
beyond the usual limits of conventional thought or action; imaginative: Einstein was a bold mathematician. a difficult problem needing a bold answer.
Synonyms: fearless, adventurous, brave, valiant, intrepid, valorous, dauntless.
On the other hand, the White House might have reason to worry about the frequency with which the word is used. All Team Obama need do is look back at some research done by none other than Stanley Greenberg.
During the 2004 presidential election, in a paper titled "Toward A Bold Politics," Greenberg declared that, "Voters are ready to respond to new ideas, particularly bold ones." Greenberg urged Democratic candidate John Kerry to come up with a set of aggressive and far-reaching policy proposals.
Greenberg's research found that Kerry's most sweeping plans were more popular with voters than his more limited ones. From that, Greenberg concluded that bolder was better. But he then tested whether a hypothetical across-the-board bold agenda -- he called it "Bold Kerry" -- would be favorably received by voters. It was not.
In presenting the "Bold Kerry" agenda to focus groups, Greenberg described initiatives with phrases like "fundamental national commitment" and "major overhaul." While voters were receptive to phrases like that when used to describe individual proposals, Greenberg found that the across-the-board "Bold Kerry" agenda made members of the focus groups somewhat uneasy. "While voters are clearly open to bold initiatives to major problems, they may be less attracted to the candidate who wants to act boldly in every area, without exception," Greenberg concluded. "All together, that may have suggested an expanding scope for government beyond what people felt they could trust."
And now, how do Greenberg and Obama's other high-profile advocates describe the president's wide-ranging plans? Bold, bold, bold. The papers and TV commentators follow suit. But the White House should be careful. A little "bold" can be exciting. A lot of "bold" can be risky. And too much can seem downright reckless.
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