In the Caucas blog at the New York Times, Matt Bai argues that Bill Clinton may have given the Obama campaign some bad advice. He convinced them to stop painting Romney as a "flip-flopper" and instead label him an "extreme conservative." This label isn't sticking, Bai argues, because Romney isn't an extreme conservative.
The bottom line here is that one can over-think this whole notion of framing your opponent. Ninety-nine times out of 100, the line of attack that works best is the one that really rings true. In the case of Mr. Romney, whatever his stated positions may be, the idea that he’s a far-right ideologue, a kind of Rush Limbaugh with better suits and frosty hair, just doesn’t feel especially persuasive.
I'm not sure that Bai gets it right. Obama, at least during the debates, has been trying to frame Romney as a boardroom stiff, who is out of touch with regular Americans. Maybe they need to do a better job pushing that message, because I think that the Rich Stiff frame is very powerful.
Apt. 11d 
“Maybe they need to do a better job pushing that message, because I think that the Rich Stiff frame is very powerful.”
A rich stiff who helps people move while fairly seriously injured, visits a dying kid and writes his will, gives away huge amounts of income and shuts down his office to track down a colleague’s runaway child. Well, I guess there are different kinds of rich stiffs.
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A framing device is a political tool in campaigns. It’s a simple, two-dimensional characterization that attempted to create an image in the voter’s mind. Most voters aren’t voting based on a nuisanced look at campaign promises or policy proposals. They vote based on a snapshot impression of a person.
All campaigns try to create framing devices – a positive one for their candidate and a negative one for their opponent.
Romney’s framing device for himself is that he’s the Business Guy who knows how to create jobs. He’s framing Obama as Someone Who Tried and Failed.
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Amy, one of the best things Biden said in the VP debate, for me, was that he truly believes that Romney cares deeply about individual people, but that R doesn’t seem to care deeply about large groups of people, but instead paints them with broad generalizations. I think that rings very true in this case.
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“A rich stiff who helps people move while fairly seriously injured, visits a dying kid and writes his will, gives away huge amounts of income and shuts down his office to track down a colleague’s runaway child. Well, I guess there are different kinds of rich stiffs.”
To piggyback on what Jackie said, the kid he helped was a fellow Mormon (as was the family whose kids he promised college educations, or whatever). The runaway child was that of a colleague. He donates 10% of his income to his church.
Mitt Romney helps people in his tribe. I have no sense he cares about people outside his tribe.
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I really can’t get over Romney’s switch on health care coverage. It makes no sense at all as anything but the worst kind of opportunism. The guts of the Massachusetts plan aren’t appreciably different Obama’s plan, but Romney decided (felt forced?) to run on flat out opposition to the plan without proposing any realistic alternative.
Anyway, count me as “team flip-flopper”. Romney-Care type plans and the EITC stood as proof against the “Republicans hate the poor” charge. With those, it was still plausible to argue that the plan was to encourage and reward work. Romney came down hard against the first and has implicitly gone against the second (the 47% thing). How are you supposed to tell somebody poor to work harder when it won’t get them healthcare and you’ll criticize them for taking the tax incentive very wisely placed to make it possible to work?
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A private equity guy who’s out of touch with average Americans will not be successful. Successful private equity firms make companies more profitable by cutting costs and positioning their products well in the market–i.e., increasing their appeal to their customers.
Don’t forget that a huge percentage of American parents encourage their children to choose a business major. (Just over 20%. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/education/edlife/edl-17business-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)
Every one of those parents would jump for joy if their child were hired by any of Bain’s companies. They know how competitive, sharp, hard-working, and insightful the winning applicants are.
The frame of “rich stiff” may help to solidify the base. As a matter of fact, many of the Obama team’s efforts have seemed aimed at securing their base. They shouldn’t have to worry about the anti-capitalist vote at this point in time.
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Don’t forget that a huge percentage of American parents encourage their children to choose a business major.
That’s kind of alarming. I always figured majoring in business (as an undergraduate) was like majoring in communications. You know, what football players and women who go to college only to find husbands major in.
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Romney was an English major, fwiw.
“I always figured majoring in business (as an undergraduate) was like majoring in communications. You know, what football players and women who go to college only to find husbands major in.”
I really think things are changing. I think people who are going to school to please their parents are going into business majors. Kids who have some sort of vision for their future get more specific. We don’t have an undefined business major, but marketing and management majors are kind of the generic business majors. We have an international business major that really attracts the hardcore ambitious kids.
At Cornell, the athlete major was usually Ag Ec (agricultural economics): Ag school (state school, lower admission standards) and economics for “business.” But I really do think that way of approaching college is on the wane.
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Marketing is probably an actual major. It’s what people do when they have a tendency toward evil and are too risk adverse to go into actual crime. I don’t understand what a management major would study.
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Ironically, I bet Bain et al. hires philosophy and English majors, not business ones. Part of this is a class thing, because top schools don’t offer ‘business’ majors, but they do offer lots of liberal arts choices. Being a business major seems like the sort of thing parents who’ve never gone to college think will get their kids jobs, when actually it won’t.
With Romney, from seeing him interact with people I get a bit of the sense that he’s kind of a thin-skinned bully, but he might actually be very personable and nice to his friends and family and not great in front of the camera. Unfortunately, unless he’s planning on personally helping everyone in the US who needs help, I want a president who puts policies in place that helps all Americans, not just his friends and immediate inferiors. In other words, what Jackie/Biden said.
Finally, I don’t get the logic of finance people, by nature of ‘cutting costs’ (i.e. usually laying off lots of people), are automatically in touch with the masses. There’s an extensive literature in business research on the massive principle/agent problems of private equity wrt companies they restructure, in that successful restructuring usually requires a LT strategy incompatible with the business model of PE firms, which is one of short term profits. Bankruptcy isn’t a problem for firms who’ve paid themselves huge fees and salaries or CEOs with golden parachutes.
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MH — your comment about marketing made my day. I feel that way towards mommy-bloggers who have gone the marketing route (aka shilling for companies so they can get free stuff).
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