President Obama Is Huge on Twitter

Rory Cooper / May 20, 2011

The Obama White House has a warped messaging strategy. In this week’s Time Magazine, Obama’s senior advisor and former campaign manager David Plouffe celebrates the president as a sort-of entertainer-in-chief, rather than a serious leader.

Plouffe tells Time that when President Obama recently spoke about immigration at the Texas border and said off-script of those who want greater border security: “Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat,” this was a messaging victory.

According to Plouffe, the messaging “victory” is apparently measured by the amount of times that line was repeated on Twitter, regardless of how it was accepted. Not many communications strategists would see such a negatively-received off-the-cuff remark as a success, but Plouffe does. (more…)