Obama’s ‘New Foundation’ gives way – maybe to a catchier catchphrase

Reporting from Washington —  Lyndon B. Johnson envisioned a Great Society. Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a New Deal. President Obama is building a New Foundation — or at least he was.

The catchphrase that Obama used in his inaugural address to describe his vision for the American economy looks to have been retired. In its place is the forward-looking exhortation, “Win the future.”

Obama rolled out the new slogan at a routine visit to a community college in Winston-Salem, N.C., in December, an off-Broadway tryout of sorts. He mentioned it again in his weekly radio address on Jan. 22. Then came the unveiling on the biggest stage possible: the State of the Union address.

The final score at evening’s end: nine references to winning the future; goose egg for New Foundation.

When it works, a pithy presidential slogan is a powerful tool, helping distill complex policies in ways the public can easily grasp. If nothing else, it should be memorable.

But New Foundation never seeped into the popular culture.

“You don’t know what that is,” said Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist. “You need another phrase to explain what the New Foundation is for. But everyone can kind of understand what winning the future means.”

Obama’s last reference to the New Foundation came Oct. 9, according to records kept by the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara. It’s doubtful the old line will be missed.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, a presidential biographer, said: “It reminds me of the old days when women wore foundation garments — girdles. So when he said, New Foundation, I thought, ‘Oh, my God! Those girdles!’ ”

Before it disappeared from the presidential lexicon, though, New Foundation got quite a workout.

Obama invoked it 100 times as president, according to the Presidency Project’s records. He used it at campaign stops and fundraising events and in weekly radio addresses.

In an appearance at Georgetown University in April 2009, he built an entire speech around the concept.

Obama came up with the phrase. An aide said that while editing the inaugural address, Obama suggested it as a way to capture his vision for where he wanted to take the country.

As it turns out, he wasn’t the first to president to give New Foundation a whirl. Jimmy Carter mentioned the term six times in his State of the Union speech in January 1979, saying “we are building a new foundation for a peaceful and a prosperous world.”

“Doonesbury” then got into the act, lampooning Carter. The popular cartoon strip showed a picture of the White House below a caption that read: “The contractors are here to start work on the ‘new foundation.’ ” “Good! Send ‘em in!”

Girdles, unsteady houses — the phrase evokes images that neither Carter nor Obama intended.

Robert Schlesinger, author of “White House Ghosts,” a book about the history of presidential speechwriting, said that Carter aides were casting about for a catchphrase akin to John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier or LBJ’s Great Society. After rolling out the phrase at the State of the Union address, Carter promptly dropped it, Schlesinger said.

Given Carter’s record as a one-term president who presided over high unemployment and an energy crisis, Schlesinger said he was surprised Obama would echo what he called “a Carter-ism.”

“They have enough bright people in the White House to come up with a different formulation — especially since this isn’t a ‘Wow, knock ‘em over!’ ” kind of phrase, he said.

Now it seems the new formulation is in place.

Speaking to Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly in a pre-Super Bowl interview Sunday, Obama talked about how Americans were disillusioned with the bickering in Washington over the last two years.

Elaborating, he said, “They don’t like the process, and they felt that our focus wasn’t on what they’re focused on, which is how to win the future.”

peter.nicholas@latimes.com