As promised in our last post, we now turn our PR analysis on President Obama’s recent declaration to dump “dumb” regulations from our federal codes. Such calls to cut cumbersome or silly federal rules are often associated with Republican and conservative political circles, but we don’t have to go too far back to recall former Vice President Gore’s big PR push on the same front. (In fact, Gore’s effort was far funnier, highlighted by an appearance on David Letterman.)
As we use this blog to discuss media aesthetic, let’s look under the hood with Obama’s new pet project. Will it fundamentally alter the landscape of American business? No. Will it balance our federal budget? Nope. How about create some jobs? Not even.
So what this amounts to is needless attention to toothless regulations that, at best, have extremely negligible impact on American society.
For an Administration that prides itself on substance, PR stunts like this are little more than a sugar high for random talking heads, with no benefit beyond that. When you’ve got the most powerful bully pulpit in the world, even slight PR missteps like this can cause great embarrassment, no matter how well-intentioned.
Grade: C-. Obama, you’ve got SOTU tonight – let’s hope you do a better communications job with the speech than with this “dumb” effort.
