Communications

MEMO

FROM: Sean Spicer, RNC Communications Director

TO: Interested Parties

RE: Weekend Messaging Memo

At an L.A. fundraiser Wednesday, President Obama channeled Mario Cuomo: “Campaigning is poetry and governance is prose.” America has “been slogging through ‘prose’ for the last three years,” he said “and sometimes that gets people discouraged. Because people, they like poetry.”

To be sure, the “prose” that is the Obama presidency reads like a bad novel whose end cannot come soon enough. But this election, even his “poetry” is uninspiring. And donors aren’t buying it: fundraising has been lackluster when you consider the number of Obama fundraisers. 

Maybe that’s why Democrats, led by Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, are backpedaling so furiously on the “billion dollar campaign” narrative. In early 2011, though, Democratic operatives were eagerly pushing the story that the Obama campaign would raise $1 billion.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the fundraisers. Obama couldn’t get the support he expected—though not for lack of trying. 

President Obama held more fundraisers in the year before an election than did any of his last five predecessors, and he’s since been fundraising at break-neck speed in 2012. Today, he will attend his 91st fundraiser since announcing his campaign for reelection. 

This week, he was courting Hollywood, rubbing elbows with the likes of George Clooney, Jack Black, and the Foo Fighters, while the glitterati lined the campaign coffers. Yet even star power has its limits. The ticket price of many of these exclusive high-dollar fundraisers is $35,800, with $30,800 of that going to the Democratic National Committee. So, the DNC should be swimming in cash, right?

Hardly. In four out of the last five months, the RNC outraised the DNC. In the fourth quarter, the RNC outraised the DNC. And the RNC and the Republican candidates outraised the DNC and Barack Obama. Moreover, December was the first cash-positive month for the DNC since June.

On Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle profiled one dissatisfied donor who “for decades has ranked as one of the Democratic Party’s most generous backers” but is now “keeping her checkbook closed.” The reason? “He’s got to be a leader,” she said.

Typically, he who has the White House has the fundraising advantage, and in the end, the Obama campaign will still likely outraise and outspend the Republicans. But Democrats’ rocky start suggests the public dissatisfaction with the president has spread to his big-money backers. It’s not terribly surprising. It’s difficult to bash Wall Street “fat cats” by day and glad-hand them by night.

More broadly, that very disconnect between rhetoric and reality has defined Barack Obama. His campaign promised jobs and economic growth, but his presidency produced unemployment and economic stagnation. His campaign promised responsible government; his presidency produced debt and cronyism. His campaign promised post-partisan “hope and change.” His presidency produced hyper-partisan business-as-usual.

That’s much bigger than the difference between poetry and prose. It’s more than just a stylistic difference. It’s a substantive difference. 

Obama’s problem is that he has failed to govern with the same success or dedication with which he campaigned—and now it’s costing him. The problem isn’t just that “the people…like poetry.” The problem is that Barack Obama never mastered the prose of governance. He, too, prefers the poetry.

But Americans don’t want another verse. We’re looking for a new chapter.

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