Obama's everywhere, rallying support for his stimulus plan

WASHINGTON — It is still a week before he takes office, yet President-elect Obama is everywhere: on the Sunday talk shows, on radio and YouTube, on Capitol Hill, drawing on the techniques he employed during the campaign and lessons from predecessors as he seeks to shape public attitudes toward the economic downturn.

His aides said Obama had studied the way Franklin D. Roosevelt approached the first 100 days of his presidency, and in particular had seized on the notion of Roosevelt having a "conversation with the American public" to try to prepare it for a difficult time.

Obama's aides said he had used the transition to study how Roosevelt had communicated with the American public in trying to inform and reassure an anxious public. They said he had read a book on that period, "The Defining Moment," by Jonathan Alter.

Obama has sought to strike a balance: emphasizing the depth of the problem, to create a sense of political urgency for Congress to act quickly, while not being so pessimistic that he could further destabilize the jittery financial markets or deplete the sense of energy and hope accompanying his election.

Yet even as the president-elect looks to the past — he said Sunday that he had been reading Lincoln in preparation for his inaugural address — he and his team are mobilizing to use the most up-to-date techniques to communicate with the public and rally support.

His aides said they would begin sending to supporters and posting on YouTube videotapes of economic experts in the administration — like Lawrence Summers, who will be director of the National Economic Council — talking in detail about Obama's economic proposals. That is following up on a technique they used the first time to explain a complicated economic report this weekend. (His advisers said they had found in the campaign that using experts, even those not widely known, rather than employing familiar political faces in these types of videos, was far more effective in engaging grass-roots supporters.)

At the same time, the incoming administration is preparing to release more reports that will set out in specific numbers the goals for the huge spending Obama is proposing. The details include things like how many classrooms will be modernized, one aide said.

Obama's aides said they were keenly aware of how President Bush, in their view, had failed to explain the bailout plans he sanctioned last year or how they would benefit ordinary people, and as a result saw public opinion turn quickly against them. Obama's effort to avoid repeating that mistake was on display on Sunday morning when he made the case for his economic-stimulus plan — saying it was essential to arrest and reverse a rapidly deteriorating economic situation — for 30 minutes with George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" on ABC.

"It's going to take some time to fix it," Obama said, adding: "But what we tried to do was put forward a plan that says, let's act boldly, let's act swiftly. Let's not only provide a jump-start to the economy and immediately or save 3 million jobs, but let's also put a down payment on some of the structural problems that we have in our economy."

Obama's aides said that for next three weeks, he would pack his schedule with interviews, speeches, news conferences and limited travel to try to rally public support behind the effort. The overall political goal, aides said, was to ensure that Obama's economic recovery program was approved quickly by a substantial bipartisan vote in Congress, while at the same time playing down public hopes about how quickly it might work.

Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, said: "We're going to continue to make the choice clear. One course is do nothing and continue to shed millions of jobs and the other course is to begin to invest in creating 3.5 million jobs and American competitiveness. And to do it as quickly as possible."

There is little doubt on either side of the aisle that Obama can get Congress to pass a stimulus bill. The question is whether he can create one that can draw enough Republican votes to give the parties shared ownership of a plan, providing a basis for cooperation on other big issues, like health care and global warming — and reducing the partisan recriminations should the plan fail to live up to its promise.

But Obama's team will still be able to call on Washington's partisan political machinery if necessary.

Brad Woodhouse, who was a senior Democratic Party strategist in the campaign, has assembled a group of 25 organizations — including unions like the Service Employees International Union and grass-roots groups like MoveOn.org and ACORN — to build public and congressional support for Obama's economic package.

Woodhouse said the group was raising money for television ads that will pressure local lawmakers to support the plan. He said he had consulted with several of Obama's senior strategists.

"We're doing this with the notion that if we can help in any way, even at the margins, to make this any easier on Obama it will preserve some of his political capital," Woodhouse said.