Posts Tagged → Barack Obama
Time to walk and chew gum at the same time
Sitting in my hotel room in Washington DC on Wednesday evening I managed to catch a speech President Obama was making to a town hall meeting in Orange County, California. It was, as usual, an inspirational speech from an inspirational president. Within it, President Obama set out some important contrasts with how the British government is handling the current political and economic crisis.
First of all, the President began by stressing that when it comes to economic problems and mistakes made in how to handle them he stressed that ‘the buck stops here’. The specific issue he was referring to was about bonuses paid to AIG executives. Of course, the Obama administration isn’t really to blame for the bonus payments – any more than Gordon Brown is responsible for big bonuses paid to bad bankers – but President Obama didn’t try to shift responsibility he took it. He knows that that’s what leaders do. The town hall meeting lapped it up. This is what Gordon Brown should have done to defuse the apology issue: to take responsibility for the situation rather than try to shuffle off the blame to others. By doing so, Obama looks in control, rather than the victim of events.
Secondly, the President made a vitally important point about priorities. He said that whilst he was facing criticism for dealing with more than one problem at a time, he believes that it is vital to address the economic crisis and to reform healthcare, improve schools, reduce reliance on carbon fuel and win the war in Afghanistan. He said that he wouldn’t choose between dealing with the economic crisis and reforming public services because people didn’t get to choose between dealing with their personal economic circumstances and the quality of the schools their children use and the healthcare they rely upon. It was, he said, time to chew gum and walk at the same time.
This is absolutely the right analysis and one which the Labour government would do well to emulate. As I have said here before, the government’s standing with the electorate is suffering from its failure to set out a radical and challenging reform programme for health, schools, energy and the wider public services. The Labour government too often looks like it has forgotten how to be radical reformers; that the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time is beyond them. 
If Labour is to have any chance of winning the next election it is vital that Gordon Brown and the Labour government learns some lessons from how President Obama is communicating on the economic crisis: taking personal responsibility even when it isn’t his fault; and making radical public service reforms even whilst dealing with the economic crisis. Labour has to show it can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Can the G20 really relaunch Gordon Brown?
There are some international summits which have a long lasting impact and which almost define the most important moments and crises in the most difficult times. A few spring to mind: President Nixon and Chairman Mao in 1972; Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986; the Belfast meeting in 1998 which produced the Good Friday Agreement; the European summit at Maastricht.
Barack Obama even claimed during the presidential elections that the Kennedy/Khrushchev summit in Vienna in 1961 was an important milestone on the way to ending the Cold War – not even JFK would have claimed that though!
But I suspect the summit which key advisers in No 10 Downing Street – perhaps even Gordon Brown himself – have in mind at the moment, as they plan the G20 in London, is the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in 2005, chaired by Tony Blair, which made crucial agreements on aid to Africa and climate change. As John Kirton, the director of the Toronto University G8 research group said at the time, “this is the single most successful summit in the thirty year history of this event.”
One of the reasons for this is that a key adviser to Tony Blair who played a major personal role in helping to secure the success of Gleneagles for the then Prime Minister was Justin Forsyth who is now Director of Strategic Communications for Gordon Brown. If anyone can help to make the G20 a success for GB (in both senses) it will be Justin.
There is though another reason. There have been a number of stories – some just blather from commentators, some badly briefed from Downing Street – suggesting that the G20 meeting can somehow be a relaunch for Gordon Brown’s premiership.
Superficially, this might seem like a reasonable ambition. Afterall, there will be lots of pictures of Gordon welcoming World leaders to London (including President Obama) and chairing the conference. Surely, the smiles and the seriousness of the situation can help improve the prime minister’s standing in the country?
There will be those, some now disgracefully enjoying their ministerial cars, who plotted the September 2006 coup against Blair who will remember that their plans were knocked off course for a year earlier because of the success of the G8 summit.
There will be those who really do believe that the meeting can have a beneficial impact on the global economy and that GB will get some credit for it.
And then there are those who simply believe this is the last throw of the dice for this government and if they come up with snake-eyes rather than double-six well so be it.
I am sceptical about the extent to which summits change the perceptions of publics about their leaders. The massive backroom effort that will go into writing and agreeing the communique following the G20 (and there will be a ‘global deal’ of some sort because diplomacy is actually about being a bit diplomatic and it is bad form to slap the host’s political face whilst you are still enjoying his hospitality) will go un-noticed by most of the public. The glad-handing and smiles for the camera are water off a duck’s back to all but the political commentariat. Politicians meet, they talk, they smile and they stand in a group for a photo – that will probably be the most most members of the public see of the G20.
We can hope that the impact on the global economy is more profound and more long-lasting. That the G20 stands for something more than anti-market rhetoric and produces more than hot air and high hopes.
But the impact that will matter in the short term in the UK will be the media’s reaction to the G20. They have the power to make this make-or-break summit or to break it – and the prospects of Gordon Brown and the Labour Government with it.
If they are over-spun, over-hyped or over-looked at any point then their verdict will be harsh and they will write that the fate of the Prime Minister is sealed.
Personally, I do not believe that failure at the G20 can hurt Gordon Brown’s premiership any more than success can help him. It is not that the die is cast but that the failure to show real ambition for radical reforms in standards for schools and performance in hospitals daily hampers Labour’s ability to make the case for its own re-election. The public will look at the G20 summit and say to themselves, “that’s what politicians’ lives are about – meeting and talking” and then they will go back to their own lives lived as patients and parents, neighbours and carers and wonder just how relevant is the G20 afterall?
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