stephanie
01-14-2007, 04:45 PM
:uhoh:
By Philip Sherwell in New York, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:30am GMT 14/01/2007
Many Democrats are already eyeing him as perhaps their best hope for the White House in the 2008 presidential election campaign.
Barack Obama: 'A new Jack or Bobby Kennedy'
Now Barack Obama, the charismatic senator with near rock-star status, has won glowing praise from another, more unlikely source.
Frank Luntz, the communications strategist who has helped mastermind a string of victories for the rival Republican party, has singled him out as the politician whose oratory puts him in pole position for next year's presidential election.
"His whole message is one of hope and opportunity," Mr Luntz told The Sunday Telegraph. "He comes across as a real person, and 'real' is in for 2008."
According to Mr Luntz - whose recognition of David Cameron's appeal was a pivotal moment in the last Conservative leadership contest - Mr Obama's oratory skills contrasts sharply with the Republicans' "pathetic" utterances, which helped to consign them to defeat in November's congressional elections.
advertisementIn a book published last week, Mr Luntz predicts that the party of Ronald Reagan, who was known as the "Great Communicator", will also lose the White House next year unless its leaders raise their game to challenge fresh voices like that of Mr Obama.
Mr Luntz highlights Sen Obama's inspiring speech to the 2004 Democrat convention - in which he talked of coaching Little League baseball, having gay friends, worshipping God and pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes - as a striking example of his unifying communication skills.
"I was in the hall when he gave that speech and I heard a future president," says Mr Luntz. "Here was the American dream embodied in a young man running for Senate, a new Jack or Bobby Kennedy."
The pollster has a long track record of identifying the phrases that make or break political and corporate campaigns. In 1994, he helped craft the "Contract with America", which paved the way for 12 years of Republican domination of Congress, replacing neutral terms such as "estate tax" with the politically-charged "death tax" in order to stage a vote-winning campaign against it.
So when he makes such observations, American politicians listen. In his book, Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear, he identifies Mr Obama as the "verbal opposite" of fellow senator Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democrat 2008 nomination.
"She's all about 'Us versus them', but he's much more a uniter than a divider," he says. "He's the most aspirational presidential candidate since Bobby Kennedy in 1968."
Mr Obama, who is 45 and has two young daughters, is blessed with the sort of gripping personal story that plays well in US politics: he is the Hawaiian-born son of a black Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas and was brought up for four years in Indonesia. He has admitted that he went off the rails as a young man, using cocaine and marijuana, and he still has a little-publicised smoking habit (of tobacco).
Such honesty will play to his advantage, rather than come back to haunt him, Mr Luntz believes. "It shows he's real," he said. "If he can frame his image as an American success story who overcame incredible odds, then that plays very well for him."
His "human" side received further exposure last week when America's best-selling magazine, People, ran a photograph of him emerging from the Pacific in surfer trunks during his recent family holiday in Hawaii.
The "Beach Babes" spread placed him in illustrious company, alongside the likes of Penélope Cruz and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Although Sen Obama feigned embarrassment when asked about the picture, this confirmation that he is still photogenic when less than fully clothed is unlikely to harm his reputation.
Mr Luntz does identify an "Achilles heel" in Mr Obama's CV: he is a youthful politician with no experience of government. The pollster believes such inexperience showed last week when, after Mr Bush's Iraq speech, Mr Obama said, "We're not going to baby-sit a civil war."
Mr Luntz commented: "The image of 'baby-sitting' lacks the gravitas that a conflict that has taken thousands of American lives, and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, deserves."
But Mr Obama's status as a Capitol Hill neophyte - he has served two years in the Senate - could play well at a time when "Washington" is a dirty word for many Americans.
For now, Mr Obama continues to say that he will decide "soon" whether to join the presidential race. But he gave a hint of how his thoughts were progressing when he attended a black economic summit in New York last week, and said he owed the host, the Rev Jesse Jackson, "a great debt" for paving the way with his White House runs in 1984 and 1988.
Mr Obama is the only black politician seriously considering making a run in 2008.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/14/wdemo14.xml
By Philip Sherwell in New York, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:30am GMT 14/01/2007
Many Democrats are already eyeing him as perhaps their best hope for the White House in the 2008 presidential election campaign.
Barack Obama: 'A new Jack or Bobby Kennedy'
Now Barack Obama, the charismatic senator with near rock-star status, has won glowing praise from another, more unlikely source.
Frank Luntz, the communications strategist who has helped mastermind a string of victories for the rival Republican party, has singled him out as the politician whose oratory puts him in pole position for next year's presidential election.
"His whole message is one of hope and opportunity," Mr Luntz told The Sunday Telegraph. "He comes across as a real person, and 'real' is in for 2008."
According to Mr Luntz - whose recognition of David Cameron's appeal was a pivotal moment in the last Conservative leadership contest - Mr Obama's oratory skills contrasts sharply with the Republicans' "pathetic" utterances, which helped to consign them to defeat in November's congressional elections.
advertisementIn a book published last week, Mr Luntz predicts that the party of Ronald Reagan, who was known as the "Great Communicator", will also lose the White House next year unless its leaders raise their game to challenge fresh voices like that of Mr Obama.
Mr Luntz highlights Sen Obama's inspiring speech to the 2004 Democrat convention - in which he talked of coaching Little League baseball, having gay friends, worshipping God and pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes - as a striking example of his unifying communication skills.
"I was in the hall when he gave that speech and I heard a future president," says Mr Luntz. "Here was the American dream embodied in a young man running for Senate, a new Jack or Bobby Kennedy."
The pollster has a long track record of identifying the phrases that make or break political and corporate campaigns. In 1994, he helped craft the "Contract with America", which paved the way for 12 years of Republican domination of Congress, replacing neutral terms such as "estate tax" with the politically-charged "death tax" in order to stage a vote-winning campaign against it.
So when he makes such observations, American politicians listen. In his book, Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear, he identifies Mr Obama as the "verbal opposite" of fellow senator Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democrat 2008 nomination.
"She's all about 'Us versus them', but he's much more a uniter than a divider," he says. "He's the most aspirational presidential candidate since Bobby Kennedy in 1968."
Mr Obama, who is 45 and has two young daughters, is blessed with the sort of gripping personal story that plays well in US politics: he is the Hawaiian-born son of a black Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas and was brought up for four years in Indonesia. He has admitted that he went off the rails as a young man, using cocaine and marijuana, and he still has a little-publicised smoking habit (of tobacco).
Such honesty will play to his advantage, rather than come back to haunt him, Mr Luntz believes. "It shows he's real," he said. "If he can frame his image as an American success story who overcame incredible odds, then that plays very well for him."
His "human" side received further exposure last week when America's best-selling magazine, People, ran a photograph of him emerging from the Pacific in surfer trunks during his recent family holiday in Hawaii.
The "Beach Babes" spread placed him in illustrious company, alongside the likes of Penélope Cruz and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Although Sen Obama feigned embarrassment when asked about the picture, this confirmation that he is still photogenic when less than fully clothed is unlikely to harm his reputation.
Mr Luntz does identify an "Achilles heel" in Mr Obama's CV: he is a youthful politician with no experience of government. The pollster believes such inexperience showed last week when, after Mr Bush's Iraq speech, Mr Obama said, "We're not going to baby-sit a civil war."
Mr Luntz commented: "The image of 'baby-sitting' lacks the gravitas that a conflict that has taken thousands of American lives, and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, deserves."
But Mr Obama's status as a Capitol Hill neophyte - he has served two years in the Senate - could play well at a time when "Washington" is a dirty word for many Americans.
For now, Mr Obama continues to say that he will decide "soon" whether to join the presidential race. But he gave a hint of how his thoughts were progressing when he attended a black economic summit in New York last week, and said he owed the host, the Rev Jesse Jackson, "a great debt" for paving the way with his White House runs in 1984 and 1988.
Mr Obama is the only black politician seriously considering making a run in 2008.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/14/wdemo14.xml