The White House Public Relations Machine

As we all know, last week the Supreme Court heard arguments on the President Obama's healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act.  Due to the unprecedented importance of this case, the news media have spent a lot of time analyzing the Court, the case, and even the specific questions the justices asked during oral argument.  Legal analysts have even gone so far as to predict the outcome of the case based on the questions asked by Justice Kennedy, the so-called "swing vote" on the Court, and Chief Justice John Roberts.  While I think this type of analysis based on the justices questions may be misplaced, there is no doubt that it is important to analyze the Court's reaction to this particular case.

Just today, President Obama weighed in on the debate.  The President offered a strong defense for his healthcare law, going so far as to say that he was sure the Court was going to uphold the law.  Obama even took a shot at the justices by saying it would be unprecedented to a group of unelected justices to overrule the will of a large majority of the Congress, which represents the people.  

These comments by the President are a perfect example of how the President, and the White House, can shape the media message that is being presented.  Instead of focusing on the law itself, and the constitutional challenges to it, this article talks about how the President believes that the justices would be out of line to overrule it.  As was mentioned in class recently, the President has an awesome ability to shape the media and spin news stories in a way favorable to his administration and policy goals.  This article shows how the President is indeed able to do this.  The Court does not have the ability to shape the media message like the executive does and the President is taking advantage of his ability to shape the media message.  In this way, the President may have an ability to change the conversation about the healthcare law in order to shed a favorable light on his administration.  This article confirms that the White House is indeed an extremely powerful public relations machine that is able to spin the media message.

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