Newtown Updated: Obama wins the public debate but loses the Senate vote. NRA wins the battle but may yet lose the war

By Charles Hayslett

CEO, Hayslett Group

                In the wake of the U.S. Senate’s failure last week to pass an expanded background check law, I’ve been looking for an opportunity (and the time) to update my running commentary on the way the gun control debate has unfolded since Newtown. 

                This is one time I’m glad I dragged my feet, because it’s only in the last 24 hours that I’ve seen a couple of pieces of commentary that I think are useful, and they speak to two of the five topics I said would be important to watch in this debate.  The first is sustained political leadership.  I wrote following the Sandy Hook massacre that President Obama would have to put the issue front and center and keep it there, and initially it looked like that was happening. 

                But after the Senate failed last week to muster the 60 votes necessary to keep Manchin-Toomey moving forward, the country rightly asked who dropped the ball.  In Sunday’s New York Times, Maureen Dowd gave us the right answer with a scalding column that fairly placed the blame at the president’s feet.

                “It’s unbelievable,” she wrote, “that with 90 percent of Americans on his side, (Obama) could get only 54 votes in the Senate. It was a glaring example of his weakness in using leverage to get what he wants. No one on Capitol Hill is scared of him.”

                But if Obama was unable to channel an inner LBJ and strong-arm 60 votes out of the Senate, that doesn’t mean the fight is over or that the issue is settled.  Indeed, other powerful actors – New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords – look like they’re in it for the long haul, and there were a handful of comments on today’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC that seemed salient, maybe even prescient.

                U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania), who ordinarily opposes gun control measures but flipped after Newtown, had this to say: “I do think the next election, the next election cycle, will create a dynamic we’ve never seen.  You won’t have a one-sided argument.  You’re going to have funded television ads, you’re going to have funded campaigns against candidates, and that will change the dynamic as much as the tragedy and the intensity of the moment.”

                That same exchange on “Morning Joe” generated a couple of comments that go to one of the other issues I identified in my original Newtown blog in December: How the NRA and its allies respond.

                This from program co-host Joe Scarborough, a former pro-gun GOP congressman from Florida: “By the way, this is going to be a perfect case study 10 years from now.  You overreach.  You go all in on an issue you should probably let go pass.  Sometimes you’ve got to let issues pass … you’ve got to choose your fights.  And the NRA didn’t do it, and they lied, time and time and time again.  And it’s not just 90 percent of Americans that they offended, they offended … a majority of members of the NRA.”

                To which Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Morning Joe regular, added:  “We’ll look back on it one day and people will question whether the slippery slope fit into the wedge argument, which basically informs everything the NRA does.  Whether that was the right strategy, or whether it would have been smarter to say, look, we agree to this kind of gun control, but that’s where the ceiling is.  Whether that in the long run would have been a smarter tactic, because ultimately by basically saying any gun control is unacceptable they could lose control over the debate, and if and when that day happens they may rue their strategy of their all or nothing approach.”

                

Spitting in the eyes of Yankees

By Charles Hayslett

CEO, Hayslett Group

Somewhere in Jackson, Miss., today there’s a PR manager for the state government who’s banging her head against a wall and seriously considering having a stiff drink before lunch.  That’s a fairly common professional response mechanism after you’ve spent the first few hours of your work day responding to media calls asking you to explain your client’s latest bone-headed stunt.

            The client, in this case, is the Mississippi state legislature and the bone-headed stunt was the passage of a so-called “anti-Bloomberg” law prohibiting local governments from regulating the marketing or sale of sodas and fast-foods.  The law, which Governor Phil Bryant is expected to sign, was a reaction to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to outlaw the sale of supersized soft drinks as a public health strategy to curb obesity and slow the rise of healthcare costs in his city.

            The result was a media bonanza for Mississippi, and not in a good way.  NPR apparently set off the deluge with a story headlined “Soda Wars Backlash: Mississippi Passes 'Anti-Bloomberg' Bill”.  The International Business Times followed suit with “Mississippi, Most Obese State In Nation, Passes 'Anti-Bloomberg' Law Against Food Regulation”.  CNN, National Review, Fox News and others quickly chimed in.  “Mississippi comes to defense of large sodas with ‘anti-Bloomberg’ bill,” added The Washington Post. 

            I’ll have to confess that I’m conflicted about how to come at this subject.

            First, I’m a communications professional.  I look at this and see one more self-inflicted wound on an already badly damaged brand.  Tell me how this helps the state of Mississippi in any way whatsoever.  What public interest was served?  What public good was done?  Aside from the substantive issue, the bill’s passage tells you there’s nobody in a position of power in Mississippi who gave a single thought to the bill’s impact on public opinion beyond the state line.  In most states (including, I would like to think, Georgia), this is the kind of legislation a sentient governor or moderately alert House speaker would have shuttled off to a study committee, never to be heard of again.

            Second, as part of my work, I spend a lot of time working on healthcare issues and public health in particular.  Here in Georgia, we manage the Partner Up! for Public Health campaign, funded by Healthcare Georgia Foundation, and as part of that work we focus on a variety of public health challenges, including obesity.  Make no mistake about it.  Obesity is a bona fide public health crisis in this country and especially in the South, including Georgia; Mississippi may be the fattest state in the country, but Georgia isn’t doing much better.  If this anti-Bloomberg law was a public relations disaster for Mississippi, it may prove over the long haul to be an even bigger public health debacle.

            Third, I am, to boot, a native Mississippian.  I have been gone a long time, but there are still things I miss about home.  More often than not, though, I am left slack-jawed by political shenanigans that would be comical if they weren’t so consequential.

              So the Mississippi legislature’s passage of the anti-Bloomberg law was a triple whammy for me.  Beyond being one more embarrassment for a home state that seems to revel in them, it further damages the state’s brand (if that’s even possible) and undercuts public health efforts to encourage healthier eating habits among a population that desperately needs them. 

            Mayor Bloomberg may well have been wide of the mark in the specific way he has gone about trying to limit access to super-sized soft drinks (a New York court struck down his regulation last week), but the issue he raised is one of the most important facing our country.  Beyond the health effects on individuals who struggle with obesity, it holds profound implications for everything from our national economy to our national security.  It is the single largest driver in rising healthcare costs and has for years been recognized as an impediment to military recruiting and readiness.

            As a response to Bloomberg, the Mississippi legislature’s action was nothing more than a pointless act of raw demagoguery.  It was lousy public relations and worse public health.  Spitting in the eye of yet another Yankee no doubt satisfies some primal urge at the Mississippi state capitol, but it comes at a dear price to the reputation of the state and health of its people.

Wayne LaPierre’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad interview on Fox News

By Charles Hayslett

CEO, Hayslett Group 

In a blog a few days after Newtown, I laid out five factors to watch as a guide for judging how the ensuing debate over guns would play out.  One was how the National Rifle Association and its allies responded.  I’ve since written that the much-feared gun lobby has seemed to me to be a little off stride, but NRA President Wayne LaPierre set a new standard for disastrous interviews yesterday on Fox News.

Watch his public deveining by Chris Wallace here: http://thebea.st/Vz2Zeh

You read it here first.  One of the major casualties of this debate will be Mr. LaPierre himself.  Retirement beckons. 

Newtown, Continued

By Charles Hayslett

 CEO, Hayslett Group

It’s been right at a month since I wrote a blog about the fact that the Newtown massacre appeared to have changed the dynamics of America’s gun control debate.  In it, I identified five factors that would determine whether the altered debate might produce meaningful changes in state and national policy.

Here’s a quick update:

•       Sustained political leadership.  The question was whether President Obama and others would remain engaged and put the weight of their offices behind a legislative push.  They have.  Obama charged Vice President Biden with coming up with legislative and regulatory recommendations.  That plan will be unveiled soon, and Obama seems committed to pressing the issue with Congress and the American people.  In addition, several major Blue State governors are moving ahead with local initiatives.  So check this box.
•        Whether gun control advocates can reframe the debate.  It seems to me that’s happening.  There’s at least as much discussion about public safety as gun control, with serious attention being paid to limiting access to guns by the mentally ill and strengthening background check requirements.  New polls out today from the Washington Post and Pew Research show big jumps in public support limiting the sales of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as closing background check and gun show loopholes.  Check this box as well.
•      How quickly things happen.  American media and public attention spans are notoriously short.  One risk in this situation is that some new calamity would knock Newtown off the front page and out the public consciousness before the political and governmental policy-making sausage machinery could be cranked up.  But not even the fiscal cliff could elbow Newtown all the way off the front page, and, as referenced in the first bullet above, Obama, Biden & Co. are about to unveil their recommendations.  So check this box too.
•     How business and markets react over the medium- and long-term.  The picture on this is less clear.  After some initial indications that businesses were shying away from the assault weapon business, I haven’t noticed as much news on this, which isn’t terribly surprising; some investors and retailers may still be quietly evaluating their options.  The biggest headline on this front went to the nation’s largest gun retailer, Wal-Mart, which at first declined to meet with Biden and his panel, but then buckled.  In other developments, Newtown seems to have triggered a boom market in bullet-proof clothes for children. 
•     How the NRA and its allies respond.  I may not be the best one to gauge this, but it seems to me they’re a little off their feed.  Wayne LaPierre’s initial press conference calling for armed police in all schools played to less than universal approval, and, just today, the NRA is out with a new iPhone and iPad app that, as the New York Daily News reported, offers “kids as young as 4 a chance to fire guns at coffin-shaped targets.”  The newspaper’s headline – “NRA spits on the graves of Newtown massacre victims with release of mobile shoot-'em-up app for iPhone, iPad” – is probably not what the NRA’s PR team was hoping for.  All that said, the NRA could well be prepared to lose in the court of public opinion and count on allies in Congress to quietly throttle any major legislation. 

                Bottom line, it’s still too early to know how things will turn out, but so far proponents of meaningful change are doing more things right than wrong.  And the pro-gun crowd seems to be off stride.  Stay tuned.