President Obama’s faded 2008 banner of “change” and “hope” is making a comeback on the campaign trail even as the Obama-Biden re-election campaign desperately seeks a new political slogan. Over the past week, both Vice President Biden and first lady Michelle Obama resurrected the 2008 campaign rallying cry, though in muted tones, to suggest that if the president is given another four years in office the promise will belatedly come true.
It’s part of an Obama-Biden bid to piggyback off the slowly improving economy with a campaign story line that while the president’s earlier stimulus and other spending didn’t immediately improve the lives of Americans, it appears to be taking root now. “Now that the economy is starting to improve, they can take credit for at least getting it going,” said an adviser.
That’s exactly what Obama’s surrogates are doing. “What we did actually is working; not enough, but a very, very significant march to total recovery,” Biden told Democratic activists in New Hampshire. He then delivered the 2008 kicker: “We’re beginning to restore hope.”
Change was handled by the first lady. Discussing her husband’s vision for a second term while in Ohio last week, she said, “this journey is going to be long, and there will be plenty of twists and turns along the way.” Then she raised the 2008 campaign catchword. “The reality is that change is slow. Real change never happens all at once.”
Obama also used the “change we can believe in” mantra in heralding her husband’s successes, asking, “Will we continue all the change we’ve begun and the progress we’ve made, or will we allow everything we’ve fought for to just slip away?”
Not so fast, said the GOP, ready to strike back at the old theme should the campaign stick with it. “When Obama told us that he was bringing change, nobody thought he meant that’s all we’d have left in our pockets,” said Sean Spicer, communications director of the Republican National Committee.
Slave fireplaces unearthed near the White House
The ongoing historical dig at the Stephen Decatur House across Lafayette Square from the White House has unearthed two fireplaces used in slave quarters in the early 1800s. “It confirms what a clear and close presence slavery was in this White House neighborhood,” said Katherine Malone-France of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which controls the house with the White House Historical Association.
The excavation of the slave quarters, which run along H Street between Connecticut Avenue and 17th Street, has moved into high gear after being ignored through the whole civil rights era. “This remarkable building has told us so much,” she said, “and will tell us more.”
Mainstream media scream: Schieffer to Christie
Our weekly look at the loudest screech from the mainstream media features “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer talking up President Obama’s re-election to Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. “How do you go after Barack Obama, though, right now? I mean, the stock market is up. It looks like the unemployment is going down. David Axelrod in his campaign said the other day Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. It’s going to be a tough job for you, is it not?”
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our pick this way: “Schieffer’s befuddlement over how anyone could see any shortcomings with Obama’s record sadly reflects how out of touch the Washington press corps is with much of America. Things may be getting a little less bad, but that hardly vindicates Obama.”
Rating: Two of five screams
Paul Bedard, The Examiner’s Washington Secrets columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears each weekday in the Politics section and on washingtonexaminer.com.
