Former Republican Congressman Bob Barr’s presidential bid as the Libertarian Party’s standard-bearer has been characterized as a golden opportunity for the Libertarians to win hearts and minds as never before. So many factors are working in their favor: a growing number of voters identifying themselves as independent of the two main parties, the huge popularity of Ron Paul’s libertarian-leaning message, widespread anti-war sentiment, and now the horrendous amount of taxpayer money being poured into saving financial institutions that are failing due to sloppy, greed-based decisions.
On top of it all, Bob Barr owns a PR agency in Washington DC, for goodness sakes. If anyone can make a go of it, he can.
But based on the most recent press release from the Barr campaign, either Bob’s asleep at the wheel, or simply doesn’t know how to leverage a good messaging opportunity. The release is his campaign’s response to the waste of taxpayer money and intervention into free markets; bread-and-butter stuff for Libertarians. But instead of staking out a strong, principled position, this horrible piece of media relations begins its slog through the swamp of muddled messaging and ineffectiveness right off the bat, with the headline: “Another Federal Bailout: ‘I told you so’ says Bob Barr.”
Since when does somebody aspiring to be presidential say “I told you so?” When voters consider who should run the country’s executive branch, they don’t want someone whose response to a financial crisis is a playground rejoinder not heard since we were in third grade.
The press release continues its alienating romp with its very first words. Bob quotes Dick Nixon as saying “We’re all Keynesians now,” and then has to explain what that means. Helpful hint: if you have to explain your own quote, you shouldn’t use it. And why is THAT the first words of the release? The lead of a press release is supposed to summarize the entire release in a snappy, powerful sentence that hits your key messages right away. The lead of this release makes even me say, “Huh?” And I’m well-versed in libertarian thought; imagine a neophyte who’s looking for an alternative to the Ds and the Rs. There is nothing there to woo him or her.
The remainder of the press release – and I use the term loosely, because it conforms to no journalistic format I’ve ever seen – is a string of quotes from Barr that outline how badly in debt the U.S. government is, and how his administration would be very fiscally conservative. Now, arguably, the mistakes in this release – sloppy organization, esoteric references, an anemic lead – could be forgiven if the message were clear somewhere in the text. But that’s not the case. The message seems to be that Bob wouldn’t allow these kinds of bailouts, and that the full pain of bad decisions would have to be borne by those who earned them.
That’s fine. I’m sure there are those who agree with that. But the core of politics – from the voter’s perspective – is what’s in it for me? How is my life going to be improved through Bob’s philosophy of letting market corrections run their courses? This release tells everyone what’s wrong, without telling us why it’s wrong, and why it would be right to let Lehman, AIG etc. fail.
In short, all he’s offering is a philosophy that tells us we must suffer for the cure, without telling us what the cure is. There’s nothing but austerity and criticism in that release, with no emphasis on his vision for America… nothing positive for people to grasp. That’s a fatal flaw during an election year, and political suicide during an economic downturn.
There never was much hope for the Bob Barr campaign to win the presidency, but there at least was the hope that he could leverage disaffection with the dominant parties to introduce independents to the Libertarian vision of America, laying the groundwork for increasing success in future elections. If this is the best a high-powered PR consultant can do, though, they might as well forget it.
