Obama and Ahmadinejad

I wonder if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has an early copy of Bob
Woodward’s new book.

The bearded one has been on a successful public-relations tour before his
United Nations speech tomorrow. Before leaving for the Big Apple, he released one
of the American hikers his government has been holding hostage and hosted NBC’s
Andrea Mitchell in Tehran for an interview last week. He starred in hilarious
home-erotic tribute from comedian Andy Samberg on “Saturday Night Live” over
the weekend and chided the United States for moving forward on the execution of
a female murderer. He got Esquire
magazine to run an article titled “5 Reasons Ahmadinejad Might Just Be Good for
the World.” And he has done a bunch of other interviews, trying to put himself
in a more positive light.


This, my friends, is called strategic communications.

Mr. Obama and his team could learn something from the guy we like to call
“crazy.”

Ahmadinejad reportedly is in tough shape back home. The Iranian people are
getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. Their economy is a mess. A
bunch of Iranians are still sore about how their president stole the last
election (in fact, two high-ranking diplomats just defected to show their
displeasure). They are tired of being isolated. And none of Mahmoud’s campaign
promises have been kept. So coming to New York is a welcome reprieve for the
Holocaust-denier extraordinaire.

Obama’s public-relations team set up a town hall meeting with CNBC, which made
a star out of an African-American businesswoman and Obama voter who said that
defending this president exhausts her. The event may have been packed with
folks who voted for Obama two years ago, but they aren’t going to vote for him
again.

Obama’s team also fell victim to the charm of Bob Woodward. The president and
his squad, according to the excerpts I read, look divided, distracted and
disappointing.

Woodward quotes Obama as saying “we can survive a terrorist attack,” a
statement that, while it may be true, is not something that voters want to hear
40-some days before an election. Woodward also claims that Obama’s strategic
vision in Afghanistan is much different from that of his top military experts. Where
the generals want to win the war, Obama wants to win reelection. The Post writes, “Obama told Woodward in the July interview
that he didn’t think about the Afghan war in the ‘classic’ terms of the United
States winning or losing. ‘I think about it more in terms of: Do you
successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger
rather than weaker at the end,’ he said.”

But according to The New York Times,
he later said: “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.” So while he won’t
think of the war in terms of winning or losing, he does think that way when it
comes to his own political future.

The book is chock-full of other tidbits. David Axelrod doesn’t trust Hillary
Clinton. Joe Biden thinks that Richard Holbrooke is “the most egotistical
bastard I’ve ever met,” apparently confirming that Biden has never met himself.
David Petraeus has minimal high regard for Axelrod, a “complete spin doctor,”
according to the book.

In the good-news department (unless you are a left-winger), Obama has kept in
place or expanded 14 intelligence orders issued by President George W. Bush
providing the legal basis for CIA worldwide covert operations. Maybe Bush
wasn’t that dumb after all.

The striking thing about this book is how dysfunctional the Obama team looks
from the inside. History will give them a lot of credit for running a top-notch
presidential campaign in 2008, but campaigning is much different from governing.

Their failures aren’t just about public relations. Their policies are bad, too.
But on the PR front, they can learn something from Tehran’s bearded wonder. He
may be crazy, but at least Mr. Ahmadinejad can execute a strategic
communications plan.

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