More — more! We need to see more of him using his brain and words to govern, not just to give speeches. That’s who we elected, that’s who I, for one, was looking for: a leader who would engage intellectually with the great problems and opportunities of the day.

Who’s next: the Democratic Causus? That would be a great one. Then, let’s talk con-law with the Supremes!

I’m not a big believer in the so-called objectivity of the mainstream media, but for years Dobbs has even crossed that line and used his show, ostensibly about business and finance news, to spout his wingnut opinions. Because CNN’s ratings suck so bad, the bigwigs there had little choice but to live with it, because Dobbs was one of their original and top personalities.

He crossed the point of no return when he insisted on keeping the Obama birth certificate story alive on his CNN show, even after the network itself fully debunked the story.

Good riddance to a flaccid corporate cheerleader and megaphone for racism.

There are exceptions, however, and one of them is when you are POTUS — President of these United States. Then, you can decide it’s time to call out FOX News.

As a staunch and proud Obama supporter, I’m very glad they have decided to take on FOX news. They saw that other media were starting to follow FOX’s lead, and it was important for them to fight back.

When is it ok to take on the media? When you have leverage. Generally, news subjects have very little real leverage, particularly after a story has run. You can use online tools to fight back, posting rebuttal information, for instance, but then you risk adding fuel to the fire.

When you’re POTUS, you have lots of leverage. So it makes sense for them to use it.

And so it was today, when the New York Times ran five nearly identical pictures on its front page of Obama giving health care reform interviews on five Sunday talk shows, accompanying a story about the PR strategy. This follows other recent stories about Obama’s PR offensive, which once again obscures any messages he is trying to get across.

The New York Times cleverly pointed out [and showed in pictures] that Obama didn’t even move from his seat for the interviews, which were obviously done back-to-back in a fancy White House room. The same backdrop, down the potted plant, appears in all the pictures. Can’t you guys even get that right?

This isn’t like those Hollywood star interviews, where the out-of-town reporters all get five minutes with the star hyping a new movie. In those cases, the poster for the movie is always the background — get it? In this case, maybe you could have held the interviews in the White House health clinic at least. Sheesh.

I continue to be amazed at how poorly the Obama communications team has handled the health care reform issue. They let the opposition build up steam and credibility, while doing a poor job building their own momentum and credibility. Granted, the president has communications tools that far outstrip the opposition, so they can still rally from behind, but to me as a comms professional, the message I get is this: they’re amateurs.

One of the highest visibility departments that got this treatment, right from the start, was the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which is legally charged with upholding anti-discrimination laws such as the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Act. These laws have been controversial from the start because they empower the formerly powerless, and the right-leaning Reagan and his cohorts certainly didn’t want that to happen, at least not too fast. Even Bill Clinton was unable to truly reverse the tide swept in by Reaganism.

So it was a joy to open my New York Times this morning to the headline, “White House to Shift Efforts on Civil Rights.” The gist of the story:

The Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly.

Can I just say: Yeah!!

When Reagan was elected, I was 22. Now I’m 50. I’ve waited that long for the Civil Rights Division to be restored to its rightful role of upholding, rather than watering down, some of the most important laws of this country.

But never fear, the Republicans aren’t done yet — they’re blocking the nomination of the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, who runs the division. One of the effects of that is to slow down the replacement of anti-civil rights Bush appointees with lawyers who will actually enforce the laws.

But there’s a serious grain of reality in these man-on-the-street insights. Eight months ago, Obama’s PR machine had created a feel-good climate in which you would not have heard a Vegas taxi driver disparaging the President-elect. Now, everyone’s a critic. Why? Because, in my opinion, the Obama people haven’t done as good a PR job as they could and should selling this health care plan to the American people.

This should be a no-brainer — the facts are on their side. But Obama seems unable to close the deal. In this case, he seems incapable of clearly articulating in plain, clear and compelling lanugage how this plan will reform the health care system so more Americans get better and cheaper care.

I’m not clear on the politics of the situation — maybe he knows that the Democratic majorities will give him a good enough bill to sign and so he doesn’t need public opinion to be on his side. But I can’t see where appearing weak and defensive on this critical issue could serve either his current cause or future causes.

Maybe the guy is human after all.

In the mainstream, there’s probably no more “prominent” spokesman for white supremacy than Pat Buchanan. I put prominent in quotes because the man is self-appointed, having never won election to anything.

In a recent appearance on the Rachel Maddow show, where he is a regular contributor, Buchanan once again spouted his white supremacy, non-white inferiority line of “reasoning” during a discussion of Sonya Sotomayor, and as usual, played fast and loose with the facts. While Maddow let him get away with it during the original segment, she took him to task in a follow-up segment, and in the process, gave the most eloquent and forceful endorsement of anti-racism I’ve ever heard on national TV.

This is a big subject, but let me summarize, because this is important to me:

• White supremacy means a world dominated by people who pass as white, and seeing the world through the lens of white peoples’ experiences and standards
• There’s a world of non-white people out there, and they have been systematically discriminated against by white people (don’t believe me — read some of these links)
• People like Pat Buchanan are completely bought into defending white supremacy and white privilege
• There is very little in the mainstream media as yet about combating racism and white supremacy, but I’m happy to say that in my personal/religious life, I’m deep at work on it.

I can’t do Maddow’s takedown justice by quoting her. You just have to watch it for yourself.

BTW, the relevance to PR: This country will be majority non-white in my children’s lifetime. If your comms aren’t changing to reflect this reality, you’re falling behind.

This was always the first problem with this misbegotten phrase — that it sounded all puffy and strong but it was about as strong as a souffle — that is, easily popped. Because “terror” is a common noun, like “poverty” or “unhappiness.” It’s simply way too vague, which of course has been the problem since the U.S. began using its military to fight this “war.” What does it mean to “win” this war? What forces are needed? Who do you fight when you fight “terror?”

The answers to these questions are still important and largely unanswered, but at least we aren’t tied down by the phrase and its unfortunate acronym, GWOT. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday that the administration was no longer using the phrase.

Aside from my personal and political distaste for the term, I bring it up here in a PR blog because of the importance of  word choice and names. Labels are how we categorize things in our world, to fit them into a simple construct so that we can effectively communicate with each other. They are by nature both limiting and defining.

We as communicators have a powerful opportunity to set agendas and influence decisions when we choose words and name things. Don’t take this power for granted. And when you need to change the subject or give people something new to think about, consider a name or wording change.

The government has an allotment of $100,000 per new prez for redecorating, but they aren’t using that, nor are they tapping the privately funded White House Historical Association, nor are they getting private donors to foot the bill. Just paying for it out of pocket like the rest of us.

This is a very, very classy and smart PR move. At a time of economic crisis and with an opposition that has nothing to offer except character assassination, taking this one off the table is a great move.

So Obama tops my 2009 Comms Wish List. Here are my five wishes for 2009:

1. That Obama’s powerful rhetoric and use of language begins to spur a rise across the nation in literacy, and in the business world, that more comms professionals are inspired to raise the quality of their language and communications skills in their business communications
2. That the economic downturn is less severe and less widespread than feared, because often, comms and marketing are among the first cutbacks
3. A corollary to the above: that there are lots of examples of top managers deciding to maintain or even increase their comms and marketing budgets this year because they realize, correctly, that now is the time to boost communications spending, not cut it
4. That I start to see more PR practitioners embrace, really embrace the power of social media and new online technologies to spread their message, instead of just putting out an old-fashioned press release and then praying for traditional media pick up.
5. Here’s my curveball: that I see lots of goofy and inane PR and marketing stunts that defy logic and provide juicy fodder for bloggers like me!