Cheesecake politics

Obama's recent 'cheesy' rally in support of US Senator Jon Ossoff's re-election campaign in Morrow, Georgia. — AFP

LAST Saturday, at a campaign rally in Cleveland, Ohio, former US president Barack Obama took aim at the renovations to the White House under US President Donald Trump. “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” he said. “Just gold everywhere.”

(The Cheesecake Factory is an American casual dining chain known for its vast menus and lavish décor, while Saddam was known for his gilded palaces.)

Trump was quick to return fire, focusing on the Cheesecake Factory, and the Cheesecake Factory alone. He defended the chain as “a very successful company” and accused Obama of not liking “successful companies”.

The White House piled on. It shared a mock Cheesecake Factory menu, streamed an hours-long YouTube video featuring an AI-generated cartoon of Trump outside a Cheesecake Factory, and had US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hold a press conference at an actual outlet in Washington.

Obama kept the feud going on Wednesday, at a rally in Georgia. As a father of two daughters, he said, he had “lived” at places like Chuck E. Cheese and The Cheesecake Factory for about a decade.

At that same rally, Obama went on a scathing attack about how Trump and his allies were obsessing over this Cheesecake Factory thing while completely ignoring vital issues like the soaring cost of living, increasing gas prices, healthcare, and so on.

He also joked that Trump did not care about the Saddam comparison, only about the Cheesecake Factory thing.

This has become an interesting comparative case study in strategic communication in politics.

If you listen carefully to the arguments, do your research, and pay close attention to the facts, I would imagine most would sympathise with Obama’s perspective here.

The question is: do people listen, research, and pay attention?

If they don’t, which of these two headlines is more likely to stick?

“Obama compares White House redecoration to Saddam Hussein opening a Cheesecake Factory.”

“Elitist Obama makes fun of beloved Cheesecake Factory.”

Who gets the cheesecake and icing too? — Youtube screencapture

It somewhat pains me to say it, but if it was my political career on the line, I’d bet on the second one sticking more effectively in people’s heads.

To be honest, I reached this conclusion before even really listening to most of the attacks from the Trump side.

I consume mostly leftist media, so I guesstimated the general shape of those attacks just from Obama’s response, and from The Daily Show making fun of Republicans and Fox News for their attacks about the Cheesecake Factory.

The gist of the counterattack from the left-centred around the absurdity of focusing on something like The Cheesecake Factory at a time when so many serious issues were at stake.

Make no mistake, I agree 100% that there are more important issues at stake for Americans.

All the words about cost of living, healthcare, and so on are in my mind 100 per cent the truly important “real issues”.

But are the real issues the ones that grab attention?

To expand on this question a bit, let’s take a swing into Malaysia.

Recently, Rafizi Ramli made a scathing attack on the government over the Zetrix AI Bhd controversy. The company, formerly known as MyEG Services Bhd, has seen its share price collapse since Aug 28, and Transport Minister Anthony Loke has said Zetrix and MyEG failed to remit RM314mil in government revenue collections.

I believe Zetrix is an important issue. There are serious questions of governance and possible financial wrongdoing that need serious attention.

My question, though, is: is Rafizi’s attack on this politically effective?

While of course he is doing what opposition politicians are theoretically tasked with doing, will it really score significant political mileage for him?

I think one reason the answer is “probably not” is because it does not bring much that is new or memorable to the table – not in the way he did it, at least.

Rafizi made his bones hitting hard on scandals like the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) way back in 2011, at a time when it was still pretty taboo and challenging to speak up so openly and accuse government ministers of such corruption.

Since then, what was once taboo and groundbreaking has become a little bit... “boring” might be the most brutally honest way to describe it.

Malaysians are no stranger to political controversies like these. We’ve had NFC, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) fiasco, and of course, the mother of them all, the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal.

So yes, of course the Zetrix controversy deserves scathing scrutiny. Of course, massive losses of public money need unrelenting investigation.

But are people going to react to Rafizi’s cookie-cutter attacks the same way they reacted to NFC or 1MDB back then?

I think the equally honest answer is again: probably not.

Firstly, stories of such corporate corruption has sadly just become par for the course. Most often, things only stick in people’s minds when there is a vivid, visceral flashpoint – an instant image association.

For NFC, there was an image that did exactly that – cows living in luxury condominiums.

The association of the then minister related to the case with cows stuck particularly hard. It can be argued that her political career never recovered.

This issue of the Cheesecake Factory is similar. When Obama first used it in an offhand way, many things, ideas, and concepts were involved – the White House, Saddam Hussein, gold, and then, The Cheesecake Factory.

The Trump camp whittled it down to: Elitist Obama hates The Cheesecake Factory.

The next general election is not too far away for us Malaysians. Aspiring politicians might do well to take heed of these lessons.

Even when talking about seriously important issues like cost of living, we need to always find ways to make things visceral and memorable.

One image that remains from as far back as 2008 was that of Joe the Plumber, used by then Republican presidential candidate John McCain to attack, once again, Obama, who was then the Democratic candidate.

The Malaysian equivalent comes from a slightly unlikely source – Mak Cik Kiah, invented by then prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin in 2020 to explain his Prihatin stimulus package.

It wasn’t a particularly good example, and it didn’t come from a particularly good prime minister, but I’ll be the first to admit: I still remember the name.

The takeaway here is that if you want a message to stick, you have to find a way to feel real, solid, and relatable.

Some Americans will be too young to remember much about Saddam Hussein, but almost all will know what a Cheesecake Factory is like.

Ask a regular Malaysian what or who Zetrix is, and they’re not likely to have the faintest idea. But almost all would have encountered someone like a Mak Cik Kiah selling pisang goreng by the roadside.

So, when it comes to designing your political messaging – real facts and real issues matter, but they will fade into obscurity unless you find just the right way to package them.

Nathaniel Tan is a strategic communications consultant who likes no-bake peach cheesecake. He tweets @NatAsasi and can be reached at nat@engage.my. The views expressed here are solely his own.

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奥巴马近日在佐治亚州莫罗市为美国参议员乔恩·奥索夫的连任竞选举行了一场“俗气”的集会。——法新社

上周六，在俄亥俄州克利夫兰市的一次竞选集会上，美国前总统巴拉克·奥巴马抨击了美国总统唐纳德·特朗普对白宫的翻修工程。他说：“他把白宫弄得像萨达姆·侯赛因开了家芝士蛋糕工厂一样，到处都是金子。”

（芝士蛋糕工厂是一家美国休闲餐饮连锁店，以其丰富的菜单和奢华的装潢而闻名；而萨达姆则以其金碧辉煌的宫殿而闻名。）

特朗普迅速反击，矛头只指向芝士蛋糕工厂（Cheesecake Factory）。他为这家连锁餐厅辩护，称其为“一家非常成功的公司”，并指责奥巴马不喜欢“成功的公司”。

白宫也加入了这场闹剧。他们分享了一份模仿芝士蛋糕工厂的菜单，在YouTube上播放了一段长达数小时的视频，视频中用人工智能生成了特朗普在芝士蛋糕工厂外的卡通形象，并安排美国财政部长斯科特·贝森特在华盛顿一家真实的餐厅举行了新闻发布会。

奥巴马周三在佐治亚州的一次集会上继续挑起争端。他说，作为两个女儿的父亲，他曾在像Chuck E. Cheese和The Cheesecake Factory这样的地方“生活”了大约十年。

在同一场集会上，奥巴马猛烈抨击特朗普及其盟友痴迷于芝士蛋糕工厂事件，却完全忽视了生活成本飙升、汽油价格上涨、医疗保健等重要问题。

他还开玩笑说，特朗普并不在意与萨达姆的比较，他只在意芝士蛋糕工厂那件事。

这已成为政治战略传播领域一个有趣的比较案例研究。

如果你认真听取论点，做好调查研究，并密切关注事实，我想大多数人都会同情奥巴马的观点。

问题是：人们会倾听、调查和关注吗？

如果他们不这样做，这两个标题哪个更有可能被广泛接受？

“奥巴马将白宫重新装修比作萨达姆·侯赛因开设芝士蛋糕工厂。”

“精英奥巴马嘲笑深受喜爱的芝士蛋糕工厂。”

谁也能分到芝士蛋糕和糖霜？——YouTube 截图

虽然我有点不情愿这么说，但如果我的政治生涯受到威胁，我会赌第二个选项更能有效地留在人们的脑海中。

说实话，我甚至在真正听取特朗普一方的大部分攻击之前就已经得出这个结论了。

我主要接触左翼媒体，所以我仅凭奥巴马的回应以及《每日秀》对共和党人和福克斯新闻攻击芝士蛋糕工厂的嘲讽，就大致估计出了这些攻击的大致情况。

左翼反击的要点在于，在如此多严肃问题岌岌可危之际，关注像芝士蛋糕工厂这样的事情是荒谬的。

毫无疑问，我百分之百同意，对美国人来说，还有更重要的问题需要解决。

在我看来，所有关于生活成本、医疗保健等等的言论，百分之百都是真正重要的“实际问题”。

但真正重要的问题，往往是那些引人注目的问题吗？

为了更详细地探讨这个问题，让我们把目光转向马来西亚。

近日，拉菲兹·拉姆利(Rafizi Ramli)就Zetrix AI Bhd事件猛烈抨击政府。这家前身为MyEG Services Bhd的公司自8月28日以来股价暴跌，交通部长陆兆福(Anthony Loke)表示，Zetrix和MyEG未能上缴3.14亿令吉的政府税收。

我认为Zetrix事件是一个重要问题。它存在严重的公司治理问题以及可能存在的财务违规行为，这些问题需要认真对待。

不过，我的问题是：拉菲齐对此事的攻击在政治上是否有效？

虽然他所做的正是反对派政治家理论上应该做的事情，但这真的能为他赢得重要的政治利益吗？

我认为答案是“可能不会”的原因之一是，它并没有带来多少新颖或令人难忘的东西——至少在他所做的方式上没有。

早在 2011 年，拉菲兹就因猛烈抨击国家饲养场公司 (NFC) 等丑闻而声名鹊起。当时，公开指责政府部长腐败仍然是一个相当禁忌且具有挑战性的事情。

自那以后，曾经的禁忌和开创性的事情变得有点……“无聊”，这或许是最残酷、最诚实的形容方式。

马来西亚人对这类政治争议并不陌生。我们经历过NFC事件、濒海战斗舰（LCS）惨败，当然还有所有争议之母——一马发展有限公司（1MDB）丑闻。

所以，Zetrix丑闻当然应该受到严厉的审查。当然，巨额公共资金损失需要进行不懈的调查。

但人们对拉菲兹千篇一律的攻击会像当年对NFC或1MDB那样做出反应吗？

我认为同样诚实的答案是：可能不会。

首先，令人遗憾的是，此类企业腐败事件如今已司空见惯。大多数情况下，只有当出现生动、触目惊心的事件——瞬间产生画面联想——时，人们才会记住这些事情。

对于 NFC 来说，有一张图片完美地诠释了这一点——奶牛住在豪华公寓里。

这位当时的部长与这起牛案的关联尤其令人难以释怀。可以说，她的政治生涯从此一蹶不振。

关于芝士蛋糕工厂的这件事也类似。奥巴马最初随意提到它时，牵涉到很多事物、想法和概念——白宫、萨达姆·侯赛因、黄金，然后才是芝士蛋糕工厂。

特朗普阵营将矛头指向了：精英主义的奥巴马讨厌芝士蛋糕工厂。

对我们马来西亚人来说，下届大选已经不远了。有志从政者最好认真吸取这些教训。

即使是在谈论生活成本等严肃的重要问题时，我们也需要想方设法让事情变得生动形象、令人难忘。

2008 年至今，仍有一张“水管工乔”的形象被当时的共和党总统候选人约翰·麦凯恩用来攻击当时的民主党候选人奥巴马。

马来西亚的对应概念来自一个略显意外的来源——Mak Cik Kiah，这是时任首相丹斯里慕尤丁·亚辛在 2020 年为了解释其“关怀人民经济刺激计划”（Prihatin）而创造出来的。

这虽然不是一个特别好的例子，而且出自一位特别优秀的首相之口，但我必须承认：我仍然记得这个名字。

这里要强调的是，如果你想让信息深入人心，你必须找到一种感觉真实、可靠且能引起共鸣的方式。

有些美国人年纪太小，可能对萨达姆·侯赛因没什么印象，但几乎所有人都知道芝士蛋糕工厂是什么样的。

如果你问一个普通的马来西亚人Zetrix是什么或是谁，他们很可能一头雾水。但几乎所有人都见过像Mak Cik Kiah那样在路边卖炸香蕉的人。

所以，在设计你的政治宣传信息时——真实的事实和真实的问题固然重要，但除非你找到合适的包装方式，否则它们终将被淹没。

Nathaniel Tan是一位战略传播顾问，喜欢免烤桃子芝士蛋糕。他的推特账号是@NatAsasi，邮箱是nat@engage.my。本文观点仅代表他个人立场。

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