Obama Returns to Grass Roots for Reform
White House Using Internet Campaigns to Try to Influence Health-Care Debate

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 5, 2009

As public skepticism mounts about President Obama's plans to overhaul the nation's health-care system, the political team that got him elected is returning to the online world of grass-roots activism in an attempt to reclaim control of the debate.

White House officials have begun a two-pronged Internet campaign, geared toward reenergizing Web-savvy allies who backed Obama last year and whose support will be critical in getting the health-care initiative through Congress. Meanwhile, the president tried to rally Senate Democrats over a seafood lunch Tuesday in the State Dining Room.

The new engagement by the White House comes at a time when Democratic lawmakers are fielding attacks on talk radio, in cyberspace and at appearances in their home districts.

In a new blog and video titled "Facts Are Stubborn Things," White House aides detail "disinformation" and "very deceiving headlines out there" on health-care reform. The message, e-mailed to tens of thousands of supporters, also encourages viewers to report anything "fishy."

Responding to a headline and video posted on the Drudge Report Web site, administration spokeswoman Linda Douglass says in the video: "They're taking sentences and phrases out of context and cobbling them together to leave a very false impression."

Obama appears in a separate, six-minute video on the WhiteHouse.gov Web site, recounting some of the personal stories of average Americans who "end up being a powerful motivator for me when we try to move this health agenda forward." Later this week, the administration plans to unveil a new Web site dedicated to rebutting criticism of far-reaching health-care legislation.

"They got caught up in the act of governing, and what health-care reform needs right now is the kind of campaign that only President Obama and his team can deliver," said Democratic consultant Steve McMahon.

"They've been caught slow," said Harvard University pollster Robert Blendon, who has tracked attitudes about health care for decades. "If you're not quick, your opponents get there first."

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has labored for months to forge a bipartisan bill, and he said the intensifying attacks are threatening to pollute that effort.

"It's hard when you have people like John Boehner saying you've got to shred the president's health-care plan over August, and you get these very shrill partisan statements from the other side," Baucus said, referring to comments last week by the House minority leader.

During the luncheon, Obama characterized enactment of a landmark health-care bill as one of the most important things the senators could do in their careers, according to one aide in the room. Baucus said that a bipartisan bill remains Obama's "predilection" but that the president expressed concerns about whether the goal is attainable.

Obama "wants results," he said. "He's not going to just keep negotiating something that's not getting anywhere. But that's a judgment call.

"I think we're getting somewhere," Baucus added. "I've got faith. . . . We've all said we want to give him a bill he can sign by the end of the year, and that's our goal. This is only August."

Blendon and other analysts say the Republican Party apparatus has been more agile in sowing doubts about legislation that would affect more than one-sixth of the nation's economy.

Confusion about proposed changes to the Medicare program, abortion coverage and the cost of covering up to 50 million uninsured Americans has not been effectively addressed by Obama and Democrats, he said.

"The president's focus was so much on 'bending the curve' and the impact on the economy," Blendon said, referring to Obama's two early arguments in favor of reform. "People in Topeka don't talk about bending curves; they talk about what's going to happen to their premiums."

White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said the Obama team is reprising a strategy that served it well through the protracted presidential campaign, responding to attacks in the same medium in real time.

"If it's a video attack, it's always best to respond with a video so people can line them up side-by-side easily on Web sites and blogs," he said. During the campaign, "hundreds of thousands" of supporters distributed the Obama materials to networks of friends and family members, Pfeiffer said.

It is less clear whether the tools of an election campaign aimed at selling one man will be as effective in governing in a complex world.

Conservative activists, though relatively small in number, have disrupted events held by Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter in his home state of Pennsylvania and by House Democrats in Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin and Ohio. Some have been organized by the group Conservatives for Patients' Rights, whose public relations team helped mastermind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks against Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in his failed 2004 presidential bid.

"The lesson of the Swift Boats was that you have to come out forcefully against anything that's not true and correct the record," said Democratic communications strategist Phil Singer. "The Obama team took the same approach during the campaign when people would go out and make spurious suggestions" about topics such as Obama's religion or place of birth.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we see" online testimonials, blog posts, Twitter messages, YouTube videos by Cabinet secretaries and "countless other vehicles that can help make the case for reform in a proactive fashion," Singer said.

Jeff Jarvis, director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, said the White House video on YouTube that rebuts inaccuracies is important and effective.

Performing a "fact-check" role "adds value," he said. But he called the Obama video, which has the president describing his daily ritual of reading 10 letters from average Americans each day, "overproduced."

During the campaign, the Obama team "did these more intimate, personal videos, and they've kind of stopped," Jarvis said.

Staff writers Michael A. Fletcher and Shailagh Murray contributed to this report.