Growing up, there were a few shows that I watched every week whose one-liners remain in my regular lexicon 20 years later. One of those shows was “Cheers.”
On one episode of “Cheers,” Norm Peterson discovered that the bar’s management was changing. He reacted by asking, “Will it raise the price of beer?”
At the end of the day, all Norm really cared about was how his pocketbook would be affected.
We are all just like Norm. When it comes to management changes and policies going on in D.C., all we really care about is the bottom line.
Obama is enjoying a bit of a bump right now in the polls thanks to the death of Osama bin Laden. His team is busy releasing images and speeches that paint Obama as a strong commander in chief, in hopes of grabbing back some of that all-important independent support.
Ultimately, it won’t matter.
People will realize that we are still at war. They will notice that the gas they put in their tanks has not magically gone down in price. They will see that the markets have not jumped up, but unemployment has.
Obama better enjoy the jump he has gotten (notably from acting more conservative), because it won’t last for long. At the end of the day, everyone just wants to know if it will raise the price of beer — or lower the price of gas.
It won’t.
We are a nation of short attention spans. Is anyone still paying attention to the events in Libya? What is the latest in Egypt? Do you know what’s going on in Iraq?
I didn’t think so.
But there are some things that people are constantly being reminded of: that gas and food prices keep rising and that their paychecks aren’t getting any bigger (if they have paychecks at all).
Unless the president and his branding team figure out a way to have a video of Obama announcing that bin Laden is dead on gas pump televisions for the next 18 months or put the picture of Obama watching the video of the raid on cereal boxes, this is not going to make a big difference in 2012.
At the end of the day, we all just want to know: Will it raise the price of beer?
Anna Good is a talk radio producer and personality who is currently producing the Mike Slater Show on 760 KFMB in San Diego. She has produced for other known hosts including the nationally-syndicated Roger Hedgecock Show and has also been seen on ABC World News.
