Common Purpose: Another Cog in Obama's PR Machine

Ben Smith reports on the Common Purpose Project, a new group formed to enforce message discipline among liberal organizations supporting the Obama Administration. It meets every Tuesday and brings together liberal organizations including major unions and MoveOn.org. The group has an overlapping membership with a daily phone conference run by John Podesta's think tank Center for American Progress and David Brock's Media Matters, the organizations behind Progressive Media, another part of pro-Obama PR and strategy coordination. "Unlike those other groups, however, the Common Purpose meeting has involved a White House official, communications director Ellen Moran, two sources familiar with the meeting said. It's aimed, said one, at 'providing a way for the White House to manage its relationships with some of these independent groups.' The group's founder, political consultant and former Gephardt aide Erik Smith, described it in general terms after others had confirmed its existence. ... Its political director is another former Obama aide, Miti Sathe. Part of the group's role is to enforce a kind of message discipline" and it "shares some aspects with Grover Norquist's long-running Wednesday Meeting of conservative activists, but is more focused on messaging day-to-day politics and doesn't include journalists and academics."