Thaindian News

Washington, May 16 (ANI): President Barack Obama has coined an expression to encapsulate his ambitious program to pull the country out of the deepest recession, overhaul energy, education and health care, in the same way one of his predecessors Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the 1930s.

While Roosevelt promoted “The New Deal”, Obama has come out with the expression “New Foundation” .

“New Foundation” might not come tripping off the tongue quite as easily as the “New Deal”, as it has twice as many syllables.

“Every administration seeks to brand itself, and “New Foundation” certainly captures the recovery and rebuilding project on the president’s hands,” said Joel P. Johnson, a White House counselor under President Bill Clinton.

“But only history decides whether or not it sticks or whether or not an era can be defined in a phrase. If he produces results, then New Foundation could be one for the books. If not … ,” he added.

Obama introduced the phrase during his inaugural address in January, but it took months before White House officials decided to emphasize the phrase in a sustained way.

Since his speech at Georgetown University on April 14, Obama has included the phrase in 15 public addresses.

The signal that his advisers wanted to establish it as a formal rubric came last month on the night of his most recent prime-time news conference, when prepared introductory remarks released by the White House capitalized the phrase as New Foundation.

While White House officials did not respond to inquiries on the phrase, John D. Podesta, who ran Obama’s transition and still advises him informally, said it made it “easy to understand why three big reform projects - health, energy and education - are part of a coherent overall economic strategy for sustainable equitable growth.”

Stanley B. Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said it described both the status of the country Obama inherited as well as where he wanted to take it.

Such slogans used to be common even before Roosevelt introduced his “New Deal for the American people” in accepting the Democratic nomination in 1932. Theodore Roosevelt had promised a Square Deal, and Woodrow Wilson a New Freedom; later, Harry S. Truman promised a Fair Deal, John F. Kennedy a New Frontier and Lyndon B. Johnson a Great Society.

Clinton called for a New Covenant in a series of speeches at Georgetown in 1991 as he ran for president, but pollsters turned thumbs down and he largely dropped it. George W. Bush championed an Ownership Society when he ran for re-election in 2004, but that also made little public impression. (ANI)