Politico asked this question today: “What if George W. Bush had done that?”  The post chronicled a list of actions (and lack of action) for which for former President was excoriated, but the for which the current President avoided criticism.

In the post, “Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?  And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?”

The answer offered is “context is everything.”

Last year, in the trade publication, PR Week and prompted by the nomination battle between Senators Obama and Clinton, I suggested that communications had become all about context.

The article requires a subscription, so here are the essential parts:

“More than frequency, authenticity, and empathy, effective communications must be built on credible context.

“When Hillary Clinton said she would end the war in Iraq, her commitment was undercut by prior actions, such as her votes on the original Iraq war resolution and the labeling of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as ‘terrorists.’ The market-tested message of ending the war, delivered consistently, might have been the truth, but voters came to hear it as non-credible and inconsistent.

“These forces came into play to the benefit of John McCain. At a meeting in the Rose Garden with President Bush, McCain’s visible discomfort reinforced his credible context as a maverick. In contrast, voters found the ‘conversions’ of his competitors far less credible.

“Manage these risks and the results are powerful. Barack Obama took those lessons and made them his own. He began by being adamant about ending the war. Before even entering the US Senate, he had publicly opposed the Iraq war resolution. Voters saw this as credible context for his position; when he opposed the Iran vote, it added to his support - even though he skipped the actual vote.”

Amidst the snark of Politico’s story is an object lesson for any candidate, company or institution seeking to earn your (or my) vote, purchase or contribution.  Success is not a snappy turn of phrase, it requires a consistent commitment.b

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Plug the word “context” into the Google News search box today and you’ll get 33,495 results.  This is a serious uptick — 15 percent — since the last time we looked.  That is good news.

Some of the total is driven by the fight between Juan Manuel Marquez and Floyd Mayweather in Las Vegas.  More was due to the renewed attempts by the Obama Administration to instigate peace in the Middle East and initiate health care reform.

My favorite story may be the one from the Motley Fool which looks at whether the much reported “housing recovery” is hype or reality.  Here is the story, in context.

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Plug the word “context” into the Google News search box today and you’ll get 32,769 results.  This is a continued uptick, 7 percent over a week ago.

The totals continue to be led by coverage of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor as we get close to the Senate vote on her confirmation.   The man who nominated her, President Barack Obama, is a close second.  Driven by the persistence of the “birthers” who claim the President is really foreign-born and the noisier arguments over health care reform.

One interesting note is that the concept of context is moving off-shore.  In New Zealand, it is reported that the unemployment figures are not as bad as they seem.  They need to be seen in context.  This is no sleight-of-hand, but a realization that information isn’t insight until it is seen in context.

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The current “noise” about whether President Obama was really born in the United States may seem a view from the lunatic fringe, but we have long been captive to various urban myths, like the Satanic symbolism in a corporate logo or spider eggs in bubble gum.  It makes one wonder, how come?

In an interview this month on NPR, Princeton neuroscience professor Sam Wang, co-author of  “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life,” offered three reasons why we might believe things that just aren’t true.

According to Professor Wang, we know things — like the capital of Wisconsin — but we don’t always remember where we first heard it.  “As we recall things,” he said,”it’s currently believed that we rewrite them a little bit so that we gradually separate a fact from context.”  He called it “source amnesia.”

And when we begin not with fact — Madison! — but with fiction, things can roll down hill even faster.  There is “biased assimilation” which causes us to accept statements, true or not, that align with beliefs and “we tend to question or be more critical or even reject statements that don’t fit with our beliefs.”

Getting people — as voters, consumers or parents — to act differently may not only be about the facts they are given, but the way they get them and how those facts are reinforced.

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Word came today via blog and cable news that Republicans have determined President Obama to be vulnerable on the subject of deficits. The current conventional wisdom is that the President’s popularity — at 67 percent — seems to leave little room to maneuver, but 51 percent of us don’t like how much he’s spending and 48 percent think him wrong on the size of the debt that spending has incurred.   And from that platform the opposition can make its case  — or so goes the thinking.

No one in this current economy can be happy with debt.  But put in context, the responsibility for the burden might be seen to be on another’s foot.

Under former President George W. Bush, the national debt hit $10.6 trillion.  Under President Obama, the debt now totals $11.4 trillion.  Massive and an increase of $800,000,000; a lot of zeros.

What that means is for every dollar of debt we owe, we owe $.93 to Bush policies and $.07 to what Obama hath wrought.  In this light, one could argue that the Republicans are clinging to a very slender reed, indeed.

It is all in the way you look at it — and present it.  But then we’ve known that since 1954 when “How to Lie with Statistics” first hit the shelves.  Of course, in 1954, the national debt was “just” $280 billion or 2.5 percent of today’s total.

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When President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated John McHugh, a Republican Member of the House of Representatives from upstate New York, as Secretary of the Army, it was a continuation of a non-partisan approach to government.  Most recently it was Jon Huntsman, Republican governor of Utah, being named ambassador to China and earlier it was naming Republican Ray LaHood as Transportation Secretary.

The reaction to these moves continues to be influenced by the view of politics as the zero-sum game (”I can only win if you lose”) it has been for the last 25 years.  In short, the conventional wisdom goes, the President is naming Republicans to undermine their electoral opportunities.  Sigh.

For many voters, partisan politics has raised passions, but it has been less effective in problem-solving.  If what we have been doing hasn’t worked and our problems have gotten bigger (the troika of the economy, health care and energy seem to be well-understood), why not try something new?

Elected officials and the media continue to handicap the next election because each views election as the ultimate goal of campaigns.  In this way, governing is portrayed merely part of the campaign.  What Obama seems to be motivated by is flipping that equation.  The ultimate goal of campaigns is governing.    And who better to make the case than a President with little legacy baggage?

The President’s approval ratings suggest we voters are well ahead of other elected officials and reporters on all this.  Perhaps they should pop in a DVD of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.    Mr. Spock quotes a Vulcan saying in that film: “Only Nixon could go to China.”  With the benefit of a context built on change, perhaps it will one day be said, “Only Obama could persist.”

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