In politics, you’re either on-message or you’re losing. Let’s get to it.
Welcome to On Message, a weekly look at where the battle lines are drawn and who is winning the war of words.
This week… Nice Pictures.
A winning political message isn’t always about the words you say. While great headlines that put you in the best light (or your opponent in a bad one) are great… and long, glowing reports of the importance of your work are dandy… oftentimes the best thing you can ever hope for is a great image.
Do them right and you can show how much you care or how strong of a leader you are… like when President George W. Bush went to Ground Zero after 9/11.
Do them wrong and you end up looking like you are pretending to be a grown up like Mike Dukakis pretending to drive a tank.
Sincerity matters and once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
Not to say that it’s alway a matter of disguising insincerity.
Take for example, Governor Spencer Cox. Back on January 13, the governor announced a program to help businesses adopt a school to help the private sector support education.
About two weeks later, with many schools struggling to find substitute teachers during the Omicron outbreak, the governor announced a program to give state employees up to 30 hours of paid leave to teach in schools. Both of those generated some coverage, but didn’t drive a news cycle or anything.
But as soon as I read that press release, I knew what was coming next.
You guessed it, this week, Governor Cox and the First Lady each spent time as substitute teachers – the Gov teaching 8th grade history.
In a way the earlier press releases couldn’t, adding the visual of the governor in the classroom, struggling to keep the attention of a bunch of 13 and 14 year old kids does more good for him than the total of everything he’s done or tried to do to this point.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and they are right if you can capture in a single image the story you are trying to tell.
Effective photo ops can show leadership and strength or they can show compassion and effort. **What matters most is that the cameras catch you being sincere.**
That’s it for this week.
More On Message in the next issue of the Utah Political Underground.
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