Newsom, Biden, and the Doors of Perception

“You know, if you just did a better job you wouldn’t have to hire me to fix your image,” said the public relations exec to the new client.

That quote is beyond apocryphal as no PR person – typically an amoral widget in a larger machine –  has ever said that.  

But just because no one has ever said that does not mean it isn’t true.

Take Joe Biden.  For the past year or so, the multitudes in the press have been dutifully regurgitating the White House line that everything is great, especially the economy, so people really – if they thought about and weren’t reactionary bumpkins angry that a loaf of bread costs one whole measly dollar (peasants!) more than it did last week – should be praising Biden ad nauseum.

If the public understood the facts in their entirety and did not pick one or two blips (so eggs doubled in price – go vegan, you cretin) and were not swayed by vile misinformation then Biden would be an easy 10 points ahead of Trump right now.

If MAGA fascists would just open their brains – wake up to the real truth, as it were – they would see the error of their untrusting ways and join the team.

Of course, if Biden were doing a better job as president he may be comfortably ahead but that has, is, will, and can not happen.

And because of the media knows that, the nation is instead showered with “you regular people are not qualified to understand economics” headlines in the Washington Post like this: “Biden’s Economy Is Great Everywhere Except in the Polls.”

CBS got in on the act recently, with this “news item” that said the public’s “(B)eliefs are in direct contrast with the data, which shows the economy is not in a recession and has continued to see GDP growth over the last several years… The White House has tried several strategies to tout what has been a strong economy by historical standards under President Joe Biden’s watch, but that messaging is not sinking in with voters.”

They even quote an expert:  “It’s got to be frustrating for the president because I’m sure he’s looking at these economic indicators going, ‘what’s going on? We’re in a good spot.’”

The campaign’s frustration is solely with the messaging, the communication strategy appearing not to be effective – they do not seem to realize that, no, it’s not the message, it’s the failure behind it.

It is a truism that when companies or governments start focusing almost exclusively on the “message” they tend to forget about everything else, especially why they ended up in a position that the message meant that much.

“You don’t need to be better – you just need to more effectively tell people how great you already are.”

Now that is a sentence said by PR folks a nearly infinite number of times.

In what can only be described as a funhouse mirror version of Biden’s perception issues, we have California Gov. Gavin Newsom

The state is an unarguable mess.  Crime, homelessness, cost of living, certifiably fappy “green” standards choking what little life there is out of the economy, a massive budget deficit, tens of billions owed, projects like high speed rail that only exist to feed political friends, astonishingly brazen corruption, and the flat-out dangerous encouragement of transgenderism are all rampant, can all be seen by the naked eye, and are not really defended, even by the collaborationist California press corps.

It could be argued that Newsom is a worse governor than Biden is a president, but at the very least they are equally horrible.

So why do people take Newsom seriously?

Unlike whining about bad messaging, Newsom takes a very different tack:  deceptive depiction and mephitic misdirection.

Gavin has figured out to simply not talk about, not acknowledge, not publicly dwell on the problems; he simply ignores them and announces a new front in the culture wars and everything else fades into the background.

This works, in part, for Newsom because the issues he touts and leads are, at their heart, very emotional subjects.  People can argue about “housing first” homelessness policy, or where to cut the budget, but most people don’t get terribly emotional about that kind of thing.  Bring up woke idiocy, abortion, the trans cult, etc. and people do get emotional and that basal connection then tends to shift everything else automatically to the back burner.

And politicians beyond Gavin know this, hence “stunt bills” in the legislature and sounding off on issues that really have no impact on running an efficient government.

That – and his good looks, so I’m told – is why Newsom is a no-stick governor and could be a no-stick presidential candidate. Issue too hard and/or embarrassing to talk about?  Then don’t bother and be safe in the knowledge that the collaborationist press corps will not push the issue.

And if Newsom does – God forbid – end up in the White House that level of distraction will grow exponentially. For what that could look like, just glance across the northern border to the once great nation of Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a coward, a grifter, very very much not as smart as he thinks, and a so woke progressive apostle that he has introduced legislation that will make the possibility that a person will probably in the future commit a hate crime on the internet enough for an immediate and actual arrest.

But Trudeau is fortunate that the Canadian media, for the most part and almost every “major” outlet, would out California’s Demoblob worship to shame

And it really helps that the largest media outfit in the country – the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) – is literally owned by the government and gets 70% of its revenue from the people proposing bills like Trudeau’s “Online Harms Act.”

NPR is almost as much in the tank for the establishment as the CBC is and NPR would love to have that kind of public money but that is, as yet, a line to be crossed (that also means that the NPR do what they do on purpose without being owned directly by the feds – that’s almost scarier.)

What little opposition media exists in Canada does try to hold the CBC accountable but it never seems to matter – if there is Liberal government in power the CBC is all in and, when that government is threatened as with the trucker “Freedom Convoy” the CBC is there to help, providing part of the impetus for Trudeau to block access to shut down a pair of internet crowdfunding efforts.   

That level of  bias  is something that Gavin is used to and he is  counting on for any national campaign.  

Like Newsom, Trudeau is a vapid, entitled, beta male pretty boy groomed for a political life by very powerful friends.    

Unlike Biden, they don’t have to worry about messaging because being someone else’s’ messenger has been the point of their whole lives.