Schwarzenegger: Failure of feds' bailout deal was lousy marketing

Fresh from wrestling alligators a bruising budget battle, California's governor turned his gaze to the budget mess in Washington. Seems the devil wasn't in the details of that massive $700-billion bailout bill, but in how the backers went about selling it. Our own Evan Halper has the details:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger offered some advice to Congress during a morning press conference in Silicon Valley today: Go back to school and learn a thing or two about pitching the product. Schwarzenegger, relentless pitchman, unabashed self-promoter and  proud recipient of a B.A. in marketing, joins several others in concluding the bailout stalled for lack of a decent sales strategy. 

"They all should take Marketing 101," he said. "Go back to school so we can start all over with this whole thing. ...

"What was wrong right from the beginning was the way it was marketed. You can’t talk about a Wall Street bailout. I mean, no one in America is interested in bailing out Wall Street. Those are the guys that are making billions of dollars. Who is going to help that? …

"I don’t know why those very experienced people in Washington who are so smart go and sell it the wrong way to people of America. I don’t understand that. I think that no matter what you talk about, if it is art or it is a sport or it is a product or it is high tech or whatever -- or if it is policy --  you’ve got to sell it the right way. You can have the best idea in the world, but if you don’t know how to market it and sell it, you have nothing."

It's nice to see Schwarzenegger agreeing with our own David Colker and Tom Hamburger, who wrote Wednesday about how the authors of the bailout completely blew the marketing of the deal. And I can't help wonder just what sort of "marketing" the Gov's going to use to get through the state budget battle next year.

--Veronique de Turenne

Photo credit: Getty Images

Comments

[Nancy Weldon]

Governor, you have managed your own state poorly. I hate to remind you of a very foolish decision this state made. What is that? It's the California stem Cell Initiative. It mandates " the sale of $3 billion in state bonds to fund stem cell research, an amount that, according to California's Legislative Analyst, will cost the state's citizens $6 billion once interest is figured in.”
(from http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=231)
Now California wants a $7 Billion dollar loan from the federal government.
I don’t think so. To save yourselves from a possible disease far in the future in a "science" not even proven in the animal model, you have now put at risk your teachers, your schools, and the safety of your citizens. A little humble turn from a bad policy must be taken and corrective action in the form of a recall.