Obama Needs a Narrative

November 1, 2009

It’s not often that I agree with Thomas Friedman. But he’s dead right in his column today: Obama needs a narrative. Friedman writes:

He has not tied all his programs into a single narrative that shows the links between his health care, banking, economic, climate, energy, education and foreign policies. Such a narrative would enable each issue and each constituency to reinforce the other and evoke the kind of popular excitement that got him elected.

Without it, though, the president’s eloquence, his unique ability to inspire people to get out of their seats and work for him, has been muted or lost in a thicket of technocratic details. His daring but discrete policies are starting to feel like a work plan that we have to slog through, and endlessly compromise over, just to finish for finishing’s sake — not because they are all building blocks of a great national project.

I’m afraid, though, that the White House’s crack team of communicators just can’t pull it off.  His speechwriters, maybe. But I’ve met a lot of political operatives here in D.C.–and creativity is not the name of the game in this town. Sure, the White House team is brilliant– but it’s all about spin and responsiveness and staying on message. Sweeping narratives are not D.C.’s style.

So I propose this: President Obama needs to hire some fiction writers, playwrights, and poets to shape his legislative agenda into a sweeping and inspiring narrative. Who better to craft an arc, to take the health care fight and the economic mess and the stimulus–and cut there, fold here, twist there until a tight, tied-together storyline emerges?

Polls show Americans are still behind Obama, the man. But Obama, the program? It may take some creative writing to bring more Americans around to supporting all of it–and to understanding that it is a program, a bold plan, an attempt to rebuild this nation and reemerge from the crisis with a renewed sense of optimism, faith, and courage. It would be a colossal undertaking; it would be a new kind of branding, a comprehensive storytelling project and advertising campaign all in one.

But I bet I could find quite a few writers who’d be willing to take it on.