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“Historians will puzzle over the fact that Barack Obama, the best communicator of his generation, totally lost control of the narrative in his first year in office and allowed people to view something they had voted for as something they suddenly didn’t want,” says Jim Morone, America’s leading political scientist on healthcare reform. “Communication was the one thing everyone thought Obama would be able to master.”

So writes Financial Times Washington Bureau Chief Edward Luce.

I’m doing a multipart series on progressive messaging, since the failure of that messaging is the second-most important reason we are not going to get a strong enough climate bill this year (assuming the conventional wisdom is wrong and we get one at all).  Of course, the most important reason, by far, remains the self-destructive demagoguing and obstinacy of anti-science, pro-polluter ideologues.

The failure to advance a narrative (frame or extended metaphor) has been a disaster (see Part 1 and Part 2).  It’s worth understanding why that happened.

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Here’s an anonymous Senate staffer in an email published by TPM Josh Marshall:

The worst is that I can’t help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They’re afraid to actually implement them and face the judgement of the voters. That’s the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.

Nowhere could that be clearer than in climate and clean energy jobs bill.

The public support for action — including by a clear majority of independents and even many Republicans — could not be stronger as poll and poll makes clear.  And still we see the likes of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) pointlessly back-pedaling on this straight-out political winner.  Perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise from her — she clearly doesn’t get the paramount importance of averting catastrophic global warming (see “Sen. Feinstein’s scuttling of solar, wind projects a baffling mistake“).  But I don’t understand why some top climate scientists, a number of whom live and work in California, haven’t visited her to spell out what unrestricted emissions will do to that great state — see Steven Chu on climate change: “Wake up,” America, “we’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California,” Part 2.

If there is no comprehensive bill this year, and it was an iffy proposition before the Massachusetts Senate debacle, the main reasons will continue to be the polluter-backed disinformation campaign and anti-science ideologues.  But a related reason will be the “massive botch” of progressive messaging — see Part 1 and Part 2 (and yes, I will start laying out the positive message in the next week).

So here’s the whole email from the Senate staffer — and I welcome (anonymous) emails from any Hill staffers (current or former) who might take a different view:

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Here’s your opportunity to vent about the Massachusetts Senate race. It should have been an easy progressive win to replace Ted Kennedy, on the eve of passing health care reform – the cause he worked so hard for.  But the anti-progresssive won, and, sadly, he seems unlikely to support climate action, as he once did (see “MA Senate candidate Scott Brown pushes anti-science nonsense, flip-flops on clean energy action“).

I was talking to a highly respected newsman last week, and he just lit into what he saw as the dreadful messaging of progressives on the climate and clean energy jobs bill.  “Massive botch” was his phrase. In particular, he was baffled about why we don’t talk about the clean air benefits of reducing pollution or focus on the benefits for real people (and yes, I know we do the latter I bit).

Readers know that I am baffled about much of progressive messaging (see “Can Obama deliver health and energy security with a half (assed) message?“).

Those in power right now do messaging poorly — and that certainly extends to most of team Obama.  The President is an exception, but since the administration as a whole lacks a compelling and consistent narrative, his great speeches mostly become unechoed one-0ffs without an enduring power to move the nation.  That is doubly the case because many progressives out of government seem hell-bent on beating up the President and progressives in Congress for trying to achieve the achievable.  Ironically, in so doing, they actually shrink the political space of what can be done.

I’m starting on a multipart messaging series that will focus on the bipartisan clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill.  But first I wanted to stir things up with extended excerpts from two recent pieces that go to the heart of these two great failings.  Let’s start with one of the best-known progressive columnists, EJ Dionne of the Washington Post, from his Monday column, “Mass. Senate race’s lesson for Obama,” on the flawed messaging  of the insiders:

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Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday is an opportunity to learn from his mastery of rhetoric.

Consider King’s powerful words about the civil rights struggle, which echo today in the climate battle:

We are faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The ‘tide in the affairs of men’ does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’

Note how King repeatedly uses key figures of speech — alliteration, metaphor — and extends the metaphor of another master of rhetoric, Shakespeare (Julius Caeser), all of which are classic oratorical strategies (see “How to be as persuasive as Lincoln, Part 1: Study the figures of speech and Shakespeare“).

I think science has mostly told us what it can about the fiercely urgent need to act swiftly to avoid adding the bleached bones and jumbled residues of our civilization to the pile.  Our urgent need now is for much more persuasiveness (see Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1 and Part 2: Why deniers out-debate “smart talkers”).  I have a dream that progressives will some day have the winning words to match their vital ideas.

King’s most famous speech illustrates the rhetorical principle of foreshadowing, as I discuss in my unpublished book on rhetoric, excerpted below:

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Science writer Chris Mooney was one of my biggest inspirations to become a blogger.  We share a great dissatisfaction with the messaging of scientists (see With science journalism “basically going out of existence,” how should climate scientists deal with well-funded, anti-science disinformation campaign?).  I blogged on the recent Science magazine bombshell that found: Mountaintop “mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance of scientific evidence that impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for losses.”

Mooney has a piece at Science Progress “When Scientists Speak Out:  The Power of a Communications Plan,” which looks at how the authors of that study got so much press attention.  Since the climate science community could learn much from these scientists, I’m reprinting it below:

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What is the best way to talk about those who are devoting their efforts to spread disinformation on climate science and/or climate legislation?  Recent speeches by President Obama and Australian Prime Minister Rudd, who represent the two biggest industrialized countries that have so far refused to take action, offer some suggestions.

Certainly, if you want to hear the best progressive messaging on energy and climate — if you want to know the best phrases and framing — listen to the President.  In two recent speeches Obama has gone out of his way to criticize the disinformers and delayers.

In Florida late last month, Obama said “The closer we get to this new energy future, the harder the opposition is going to fight, the more we’re going to hear from special interests and lobbyists in Washington whose interests are contrary to the interests of the American people.  Now, there are those who are also going to suggest that moving towards a clean energy future is going to somehow harm the economy or lead to fewer jobs.  And they’re going to argue that we should do nothing, stand pat, do less, or delay action yet again.”

A few days earlier, at M.I.T. he said:

The naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized. But I think it’s important to understand that the closer we get, the harder the opposition will fight and the more we’ll hear from those whose interest or ideology run counter to the much needed action that we’re engaged in. There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy — when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs. There are going to be those who cynically claim — make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary.

Obama understands that our current economic system is dangerously unsustainable, and that the opposition is driven to a large extent by those who act out of narrow self-interest or ideology.  He doesn’t use the term “denier,” instead accusing those who spread anti-scientific disinformation of cynicism.  He does use the word “delay” in both speeches, focusing on the primary goal of the opposition.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what words the President uses — those who oppose his policies will misquote and misrepresent them.  One of the leading disinformers, Pat Michaels, made this absurd assertion on National Review Online:

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President Obama delivered a rip roaring speech yesterday in Cincinnati (text and videos here).  It’s how he should have been messaging all along.  Even though it focused on health care and the economy, Obama talked about clean energy, as always does:

And we’re making an historic commitment to innovation–much of it still to come in the months and year ahead: doubling our capacity to generate renewable energy; building a new smart grid to carry electricity from coast to coast; laying down broadband lines and high-speed rail lines; and providing the largest boost in basic research in history.

So our Recovery plan is working. The financial system has been saved from collapse. Home sales are up. We’re seeing signs of life in the auto industry. Business investment is starting to stabilize. For the first time in 18 months, we’re seeing growth in manufacturing….

We have to build a new foundation for prosperity in America….An America where energy reform creates green jobs that can never be outsourced and that finally frees America from the grip of foreign oil.

In the clip above, he launches into a scathing attack on the status quo special interests who are trying to block action on health care reform, and lays out the catastrophe that awaits this country if we do nothing.  This is precisely what he needs to do on climate change, even though (some of) his advisers are foolishly suggesting otherwise.  Obama said bluntly:

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Here a quiz:

1)  What’s worse from a messaging perspective, “the public option” or “cap-and-trade”?

2) Tell me in one sentence what team Obama says is the benefit of passing a health care reform bill.

3)  Tell me in one sentence what team Obama says happens if we fail to pass the climate and clean energy bill.

On health care, no simple, repeated core message exists, so the whole effort is a muddle.  Obama needs to delete and reboot.  Let’s hope he does so Wednesday night.

On climate, at least we have one positive message:  clean energy jobs, jobs, jobs.  That is a key reason public support has held firm even in the face of a multimillion dollar campaign of fraud and disinformation by the fossil-fuel-funded right wing (see Yet another major poll finds “broad support” for clean energy and climate bill: “Support for the plan among independents has increased slightly” and Swing state poll finds 60% “would be more likely to vote for their senator if he or she supported the bill” and Independents support the bill 2-to-1).

Normally, however, a winning campaign has four messages, as I discussed in this post from a year ago, “Can Obama win with half a messaging strategy?“  Since team Obama got its messaging act together pretty fast after its near-fatal lameness of August 2008, I’m hopeful they will do the same after the near-fatal lameness of August 2009, since I don’t think they can deliver health security and energy security with half a message (or less).

Let me repeat what I consider to be Messaging 101, which apparently has been lost again by team Obama and progressive leaders.

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“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering,” President Franklin Roosevelt told an audience in Madison Square Garden in 1936. “They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.”

Can anyone imagine President Barack Obama saying anything like that? The nickname of Roosevelt’s successor in the White House, Harry Truman, was “Give-’Em-Hell Harry.” As the Republican minority, backed by an avalanche of special-interest money, mobilizes to thwart the health reform agenda of the Democratic majority, maybe the time has come for “Give-’Em-Hell Barry.”

The most dangerous deficit that the United States faces is not the budget deficit or the trade deficit. It is the Democrats’ demagogy deficit. Franklin Roosevelt, looking down from that Hyde Park in the sky, would not be surprised that conservatives are seeking to channel populist anger and anxiety, not against the Wall Street elites who wrecked the economy, but against reformers promoting healthcare reform and economic security for ordinary people. As he told his audience in 1936, “It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them.” But FDR would be shocked by the inability of his party to mobilize the public on behalf of reform.

Michael Lind has a terrific Salon column today, with the subhead, “Why can’t Democrats mobilize the public for healthcare reform? Blame the demagogy gap.”  I’d replace demagogy with the less incendiary and more accurate “rhetoric gap.”

Demagogues are a dime a dozen, and demagogy isn’t inherently persuasive or winning.  But rhetoric is.  Rhetoric is what makes a great, successful President (see “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor”: How to be as persuasive as Lincoln, 3).

I blog about the health care debate in part because success there probably makes it more likely we’ll see a climate bill and in part for what it tells us about Obama’s messaging.  The ‘good’ news on the first front is that the American Enterprise Institute’s savvy centrist Norman Ornstein writes today that “The odds remain reasonable that a solid, if not dramatic, health reform bill can make it through this process and become law. Any bill, under these conditions, will be a major accomplishment. The odds have been improved, not damaged, by the president’s approach” — thanks to “Obama’s Health-Care Realism.”  We’ll see.

Although he has the eloquence to be an FDR — and his achievements in clean energy and climate to date are far greater than most progressives give him credit for (see “The Green clean energy FDR: Obama’s first 100 days make — and may remake — history“) — Obama can’t truly be the clean energy FDR if he doesn’t master FDR’s ability to fight rhetorical fire with fire.

Now, unlike health care, where the whole message is a muddle, team Obama has half of the energy and climate message right (see “Clean energy messaging 101: ‘Green’ jobs are out, ‘clean energy’ jobs are in“).

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From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books….

I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts….

No, I’m not operating under the misimpression that my writing can be compared with George Orwell’s.  I know of no essayists today who come close to matching his skill in writing.  On top of that, bloggers simply lack the time necessary for consistently first-rate efforts.  I’ve written some two million words since launching this blog three years ago this week.  Perfection isn’t an option.

But operating under the dictum, “if you want to be a better writer, read better writers,” I took on vacation Facing Unpleasant Facts, a collection of Orwell’s brilliant narrative essays.  My life has been almost the exact opposite of Orwell’s.  Indeed, if you think you had a rough childhood, trying reading, “Such, such were the joys.”  Compared to Orwell, we’ve all been raised by Mary Poppins.

Orwell does have the soul of a blogger, as we’ll see.  He is solipsistic almost to a fault, but with a brutal honesty that puts even the best modern memoirist to shame.

Read about how his headmaster cured his bedwetting with a beating, a double caning with a riding crop in fact, after he foolishly announced that the first one “didn’t hurt.”  Or read “Shooting an Elephant,” with its gut-punching first line, “In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people — the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.”

Second, he has “a power of facing unpleasant facts,” which I think is perhaps the primary quality I aspire for here.

I joined the new media because the old media have failed us. They have utterly failed to force us to face unpleasant facts — see “What if the MSM simply can’t cover humanity’s self-destruction?” and “The media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress” and dozens more examples here.

Unlike Orwell, I knew from a very early age, certainly by the age of five or six, that I would be a physicist, like my uncle, and I announced that proudly to all who asked.

I knew I didn’t want to be a professional writer since I saw how hopeless it was to make a living that way.  My father was the editor of a small newspaper (circulation 20,000) that he turned into a medium-sized newspaper (70,000) but was paid dirt, even though he managed the equivalent of a large manufacturing enterprise — while simultaneously writing three editorials a day — that in any other industry would pay ten times as much.  My mother pursued freelance writing for many, many years, an even more difficult way to earn a living (see also “This could not possibly be more off topic“).

Why share this?  Orwell, who shares far, far more in his master class of essay writing, argues in “Why I write“:

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Now that they* have shut down his original blog, Roger Pielke, Jr., is desperately trying to remain relevant in the blogosphere.  Pielke’s preferred strategy — as it has always been — is to utterly misrepresent what people say and then attack that misrepresentation in the hopes of garnering media attention.  Baselessly smearing the professional reputation of hundreds of leading U.S. scientists means nothing whatsoever to him — if it gets him press coverage (see details here).

These days, the main “media” paying attention to Pielke, Jr. (as with Pielke, Sr.) are the global warming deniers (see “Uber-denier Inhofe gives big wet Valentine’s kiss to Pielke — go figure!“).  So it’s no surprise that Pielke Jr.’s latest distortion was immediately picked up by Swift Boat smearer Marc Morano, much as the main person pushing Pielke Sr.’s climate disinformation is anti-science blogger Anthony Watts (see “Like father, like son: Roger Pielke Sr. also doesn’t understand the science of global warming — or just chooses to willfully misrepresent it“)  What is (a little) surprising is that Pielke would utterly misrepresent something I wrote when everyone can plainly see what he is doing.

Normally I’d ignore this, but I need to set the record straight when Pielke falsely claims I called Democratic members of Congress “liars about the promise of [green] jobs” — and when Morano trumpets that lie.  I advanced the jobs message in the very post Pielke attacked and have blogged repeatedly about the millions of green jobs Democrats are in the process of creating — as Pielke knows.

Also, this post gives me a chance to praise the real leadership that Sen. John Kerry has been showing on the climate and clean energy bill — and his crucial understanding and articulation of both winning messages.

Last night I wrote a post that ended with a discussion of the need for pushing two key messages to advance legislation in the Senate — 1) the threat posed by global warming and 2) the clean energy opportunity.  I excerpted a January piece I wrote:

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If you want to hear the best progressive messaging on energy and climate — if you want to know the best phrases and framing — look no further than the master messenger in the Oval Office.  Be warned, though, President Obama uses … rhetoric (see “Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1“)!

Obama devoted much of his radio address today to the House clean energy and climate bill (text and audio here):

Good morning. Over the past few months, as we have put in place a plan to speed our economic recovery, I have spoken repeatedly of the need to lay a new foundation for lasting prosperity; a foundation that will support good jobs and rising incomes; a foundation for economic growth where we no longer rely on excessive debt and reckless risk – but instead on skilled workers and sound investments to lead the world in the industries of the 21st century.

He is once again hammering home the notion that what we have been doing lo these many years is simply not sustainable (see similar quotes in “Is the U.S. consumption binge over?“).  Kudos for using two rhetorical figures of speech — alliteration and assonance — in the phrase “reckless risk.”  Kudos also for heavy use of the two most important figures in that opening paragraph — metaphor and simple repetition — in the triple use of “foundation.”

Visionary leaders and speakers use metaphors, simple as that — in part because metaphors are typically visual images.

Then Obama launched into his specific remarks on the importance of the Waxman-Markey bill and how it represents a coming together of different interests for the first time in US history to address our key energy and climate challenges:

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Mark Mellman, a leading pollster for progressives since 1982, has written a must-read op-ed slamming the latest dubious messaging advice:

Some progressives seem unwilling to take yes for an answer.

Just as the long battle for public opinion on global warming is being won, along comes a well-meaning Bob Perkowitz and his ecoAmerica with a politically naïve, methodologically flawed and factually inaccurate study, which he apparently interprets as telling us that voters do not care about global warming.

He could hardly be more wrong.

In fact, most Americans believe global warming is real, is happening now and constitutes a serious threat, particularly to future generations.

Last week, I was very critical of ecoAmerica’s advice on climate messaging after sitting through the full two-hour presentation (see “Messaging 101b: EcoAmerica’s phrase ‘our deteriorating atmosphere’ isn’t going to replace ‘global warming’ — and that’s a good thing“).

Perkowitz, in the comments, questioned “What background do you have in the cognitive sciences or marketing?“  Although it is my full-time job — and has been my part-time job for nearly two decades — and although I have followed all the polling and messaging reports closely, I’m just a lowly messaging amateur.

On the other hand, Robert J. Brulle, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science, Department of Culture and Communications, Drexel University — and a widely published expert on environmental messaging — emailed me about my analysis:

I liked your blog post today.   I think we agree at about the 95% level across the board.

And now we have Mark Mellman, president of The Mellman Group, whose “current clients include the majority leaders of both the House and Senate.”  Mellman is one of the most respected pollsters and messaging gurus in the progressive world.  Here’s his take on the public view of global warming based on all the recent polling, including his own:

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If you have ideas to replace “energy efficiency,” I’d love to here them.

We are all struggling to communicate both a positive vision for a clean energy economy and the harsh reality of a Hell and High Water world where don’t act in time.  See Part 1, ‘Green’ jobs are out, ‘clean energy’ jobs are in and Part 2, EcoAmerica’s phrase ‘our deteriorating atmosphere’ isn’t going to replace ‘global warming’ — and that’s a good thing. Dave Roberts has his own take, in a post first published in Grist, which deserves reprinting for the photo alone (from minds-eye via Flickr).

I’ve spent a lot of time in the last week strolling around Paris, eating long meals at cafes, stopping in little shops, wandering through cathedrals, sitting on park benches, and generally enjoying the aesthetic pleasures of the world’s most beautiful day-to-day culture.

So it was a shock to the system to enter the cavernous Palais des Congress, with its blank-faced modernity, and sit in conference rooms listening to functionaries from government and business recite PowerPoint presentations on their five-phase action plans, three-part performance contracts, and seven-stage technology development strategies. It’s great, mind you, to see this kind of work, but the proceedings are so divorced from the city and culture around them, so devoid of poetry or vision or joy. So bloodless.

This, it seems to me, is the great shortcoming in the push for efficiency.

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In a front page article Saturday, “Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus,” the NYT opens with some mostly bad messaging advice from EcoAmerica:

The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”

The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

Yes, EcoAmerica is pushing the inapt phrase, “our deteriorating atmosphere” over “global warming” (and even over “climate change”).  And EcoAmerica recommends generally skipping or dumbing down most of the climate science message.  And EcoAmerica is pushing stuff that is just plain counterproductive — I quote now from material they handed out at a 2-hours presentation I attended last week:

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As readers know, I try to stay up-to-date on messaging, which is why I have a whole category devoted to rhetoric.

I have now sat through a couple of extended presentations about clean energy and climate messaging from people who definitely know how to do this sort of thing.  I will present some of the results in a series of posts.

One general theme emerges, I think, which is really Messaging 101:  Be specific.

“Green jobs” is not specific and requires people to fill in the blank depending on what the word “green” means to them.  For some, this apparently means “environmental jobs” as opposed to real jobs for regular folks.

“Clean energy jobs” is much better (according to multiple sources).  People have a much better notion of what clean energy is.

The same goes for “renewable energy” or “renewables.”  Interestingly, for different reasons, I had blogged a year ago that it was Time to stop using the phrase “renewable energy.”

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