The Public Relations Battle About the U.S. Debt Limit

Economic policy rarely makes news.

Even rarer are the times that a complicated financial issue dominates news coverage, day after day, week after week.

The public relations battle over raising the U.S. debt limit is one of those rare times.

President Barack Obama's efforts to move public opinion about the debt limit is a classic case of using the mass media and the tools of public relations in an attempt to change public policy.

I didn't expect Obama's efforts to educate and motivate the public to get anywhere.

Trying to move public opinion about complicated economic policy is incredibly tough.

This is why so much of politics is dominated by lightning-rod social issues like the death penalty, abortion and gay marriage.

The truth is that 99.9 percent of governing has nothing to do with social issues. Governing a country, a state or even a city is almost entirely about boring, nuts-and-bolts things. High-school graduation rates. Preventing crime. Fixing pot holes.

It's hard to get people to pay attention to complex financial policy. Would you rather hear about treasury bonds and breaking the buck, or would you want to hear about the man who tried to shove a shaving-cream pie in Rupert Murdoch's face as he testified before the British Parliament?

Despite the odds, Obama's persistent efforts paid off.

Way back in May, a poll by Gallup (May 5-8) had these results among all American's surveyed:

In favor of raising the debt limit: 19 percent
Opposed to raising the debt limit: 47 percent
Don't know enough to say: 34 percent

Now, those are terrible numbers. You'd have to convince almost every undecided voter -- the 34 percent who don't know enough to say -- to break 50 percent. Tough to do.

The numbers are even worse when you look at the cross-tabs (demographic breakdowns). Here are the cross-tabs for Republican voters:

In favor of raising the debt limit: 8 percent
Opposed to raising the debt limit: 70 percent
Don't know enough to say: 21 percent

From a political and communications standpoint, House Republicans were justified in taking such a strong stance beginning in May, since their base was adamantly opposed to raising the debt limit.

GOP presidential candidates cemented opposition by talking even tougher than lawmakers. This is because their target audience was different. Primary voters are a small subset of Republicans, and they tend to be the most rock-ribbed conservatives of all.

Complicated matters more: many lawmakers were sending message to stakeholder groups, including pressure groups and Tea Party organizations which were paying close attention to the issue. A great number of lawmakers had signed pledges to never raise the debt limit without a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.

A poll by CNN/ORC International (July 18-20) showed the sea change in attitudes.

Obama's public-relations campaign had persuaded many Americans that something needed to be done about the debt limit, that horrible economic consequences would happen if lawmakers did nothing and that Republicans were to blame for refusing to make a deal.

The problem for the GOP in this public relations war is they're almost in a no-win situation. This new poll shows that nearly two thirds of Americans     think Republicans in Congress have not acted responsibly and that 51 percent would blame Republican lawmakers for a failure to raise the debt limit.

In the new poll:
Not raising the debt limit would cause a crisis: 18 percent
Not raising the debt limit would cause major problems for America: 43 percent
Not raising the debt limit would cause only minor problems: 30 percent
Not raising the debt limit would cause no problems at all: 6 percent

More bad news: 64 percent of Americans polled said they wanted a deal with a balance of spending cut and tax hikes, as opposed to the GOP stance of cuts only.

Despite those bad numbers, it's not easy for the GOP to agree to a deal, because their hard-core supporters still strongly oppose it. You might make independents and Democrats happy, but anger your best supporters, who don't think anything truly bad will happen if you don't raise the debt limit and are opposed to a balanced deal.
 
It's an interesting public debate and different than a campaign, where you've got a mix of PR and advertising and an election where you can analyze results down to the zip code and precinct.

This is battle for hearts and minds that will play out in the House and Senate before August 2 -- but will have repercussions for lawmakers and presidential candidates when the serious campaigning starts next year, and it's proof that despite the supposedly short attention spans of the press and public, you can educate and motivate average people to care about complicated fiscal policy.