After eight years under the George Bush administration many Americans were ready for a change in their government, things were looking pretty grim and the world of politics was somewhat uninspired. Enter Obama with cries of "hope" and "change" and exactly what everyone wanted to hear, and the answer to all of our problems....supposedly.
Image: http://www.djztrip.com/obama/
2. Obama accepted Big Money after making big promises not too.
During his campaign Obama made a big deal about not accepting money from corporate lobbyists or PACS. Even going so far as to challenge Hilary Clinton to do the same. Obama claimed to rely mainly on small donations from ordinary working people (Street 14). However by this time he had already raised millions and was still accepting money from contributors such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley. Some of these contributors were also involved in the sub prime mortgage crisis while providing Obama with more than $100 million before the primary season (Street 14).
CBS New Reports exposing Obama's campaign financing and where all of the money is really coming from.
Chicago Sun Times columnist Lynn Sweet found that Obama was relying heavily on wealthy and well connected Democrats. Apparently there is something called a "bundler" which is described by Sweet as "people who solicit their networks for donations". According to Sweet Obama had 138 "bundlers" who each pledged to raise at least $50,000 which most of them were able to deliver. Here is a copy of Sweet's article which goes more into who these "bundlers were. According to Street Obama relied on big money donations for his senate campaigns as well, raising 5 million dollars from just 300 donors just for the primary election. Obama also received a large donation from James S. Crown who holds a large stake in General Dynamics, during his U.S. Senate campaign (Street 15). My mom always said "once a cheater, always a cheater" I think she was referring to men, but I think it applies to politics too.
3. The Media Made Obama
During the 2008 election Obama definitely dominated the media. Everywhere you looked during the campaign Obama was there, on television, radio, and online. The majority of things you heard through the mainstream media about Obama were also positive. While everyone was ragging on Hilary because of some poor wardrobe choices Obama could do nothing to make the media turn against him.
Image: http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2008/10/obama_and_the_m_1.php
Image: http://www.msdelaleu.com/blog/?cat=834. Using Social Media will get you elected as President
The 2008 Presidential election had a lot of firsts, obviously we elected our countries first black president. One of the other firsts in the election was the use of the internet and social media during campaigning. During the campaign the Obama camp harnessed well known and popularly used social network applications to help them build a strong and engaged following.
Image: http://adlandcreative.wordpress.com/2009/12/26/social-media-2009-obama/Here is a video of Joe Trippi a well known political strategist on the use of new media in the 2008 campaigns.
Understanding the use of social media was an important part of Obama's campaign. The authors of Media and Society David Croteau & William Hoynes comment on the use of technologies and media. "Media technologies can be powerful social forces; their power lies in the ways they help organize and allow us to construct the cultural environment"(Croteau & Hoynes 307). This is exactly how Obama addressed the media, particularly social media and is one of the reasons his campaign was so successful.
5. "So what does Obama really stand for? Who cares he's attractive!" Many young voters voted blindly in 2008.
We live in an image driven world. A shift that happened originally with the creation of television and has continued to evolve with the internet. Image is important to people in today's world and is what many base assumptions on. Television commercials have become an expensive and "required" part of political campaigns. It is an easy, but expensive way to reach a lot of inattentive people and to shape their idea of what you are all about. It is also a way to turn yourself into a celebrity.
While Paul Street was interviewing students from the University of Iowa about the primaries in 2007 these are some of the responses he got from students about why they were voting for Obama. "Oh, he's just so cool. He's on television all the time and he's just really excellent. Nobody ever heard of him before and then boom - there he is, like...I can listen to him all day." and "He's really handsome" (Street 168). Obama became more of a celebrity than a politician during his campaigns and young voters who have grown up in an image driven celebrity ruled world found his celebrity status easier to connect with then actually looking at Obama and the other politicians and the issues that they stood for. Neil Postman the author of Amusing Ourselves to Death would argue that this is because of the shift our society has gone through from type to image. In his book Postman says "The media of communication available to a culture are a dominant influence on the formation of the culture's intellectual and social preoccupations" (Postman 9). The way in which presidential candidates today campaign today is much different from how it was originally done in the past. Candidates use 30 second television commercials to try and capture the attention of an overstimulated audience and to try and convince them that they are the right candidate.
image: http://kara.allthingsd.com/20081103/john-mccain-and-barack-obama-talk-tech/
It helps of course if that candidate is attractive and stands out, which was certainly the case with Obama. Not only was he a black candidate but he was young, fresh, and attractive looking to many people compared to John McCain who was obviously an older looking, less fresh and attractive man. Obama was a success in our image driven world because he was the preferred image that American voters wanted to see, it doesn't matter what his politics really are, he sounds good in his 30 second commercials and he sure looks good!
6. He's the first black President, but he's not that black.
President Barack Obama is the first black President of the United States of America. Our countries history with racism and struggle for black equality makes the election of Barack Obama as President an historical event. Even though he is black, Barack Obama does not follow in the footsteps of past presidential candidates Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who are quite loud, and what some would call radical.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton Image:http://thesmugger.com/?p=996According to Paul Street "Many whites who roll their eyes at the mention of the names of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton - former presidential candidates who behave in ways many whites find too African American - are calmed and "impressed" by the cool, underplayed blackness and ponderous quasi-academic tone of the half-white, Harvard educated Obama. Obama doesn't shout, chant, holler, or drawl. He doesn't rail against injustice, bring the parishioners to their feet, or threaten delicate white suburban and middle-class sensibilities" (Street 82). Obama was able to find a balance in order to appeal to the masses who would elect him as president whether black or white.
7. Obamacare: Easier said than done.
One of the most drastic things that Obama has done since his election is to present a bill for health care reform, to create a national health care system for the United States. Currently health care laws are legally controlled by state and are often extremely complicated. Health care costs are through the roof and many Americans are uninsured, preventing them from seeking any kind of health care because there is no way they can afford it.
Image: http://hummersandcigarettes.blogspot.com/2010/07/obamacare-s-rolls-downhill-begins.html
According to Steffie Wollhandler, MD in the American Journal of Public Health "being uninsured raises the odds of dying by 40%. Hence, lack of health insurance causes 44,798 deaths each year among the 46 million uninsured Americans" (Censored 40). It is easy to understand why a national health care system which would cover all Americans would be a positive change, it would help stop these unnecessary deaths and would improve the health of our country. However it is not that easy, and there is a lot of doubt about how effective the new health care system would really be. According to Dr. David Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard "These unnecessary deaths will continue under the new health care reform legislation. The Bill would do virtually nothing for the uninsured until 2013, and leave at least 17 million uninsured in the long run" (Censored 39).
Image: http://liberalbaptistrev.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/insurancecare-and-obamacare/Obama's health care reform plan may sound like extremely positive change for our country at first but there are a lot of details that need to be considered when you are changing such an important industry so drastically. There is also still a lot of doubt from many Americans about the governments ability to run the health care system, and whether or not we really want to put our health into their hands.
8. Obama tackles cyberspace.
In a world full of constantly changing technology it is hard to keep up. There are so many ways to communicate with people all over the world that our world has in a sense shrunk. Until now there has not been much control over the internet. There is no "gatekeeper" to decide what is appropriate to be published on the internet. It has been a free space for people all over the world to upload and download whatever information they want. The idea of cyber surveillance first came about during the Bush Administration in response to the attacks on 9/11. Obama is taking the idea of surveillance to a whole new level, giving himself almost complete control of the internet. In 2009 Senate Bill 773, the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 was proposed. "This act gives the president power to "declare a cyber security emergency" with respect to private computer networks, and to do with these networks what it deems necessary to diffuse the attack. In a national emergency, the president would also have the power to completely shut down the internet in the US" (Censored 26).
In April of 2009 the Obama administration also invoked the "states secret privilege" to keep American from suing the government for spying on them illegally (Censored 27). We have shifted from a world of privacy to a world of surveillance, nothing that is done on the internet is private from anyone, especially the government. From the looks of it Obama is slowly setting himself up to become the "gatekeeper" of the internet, with the ability to shut it all down just by touching the big red button.
9. Guantanamo Bay - Still open for business.
On January 22nd 2009 brand new President Obama issued an executive order to have Guantanamo closed within a year. Along with the closing Obama called for a review of the status of prisoners held there which required standards of treatment in accordance with the Geneva convention.
Here we are, about to enter 2011 and Guantanamo Bay is still open. In fact since Obama has been elected violence towards prisoners appears to have increased at Guantanamo. According to Ahmed Ghappour a Guantanamo lawyer his clients have reported an increase in abuse since the election of Obama, and his announcement about closing the facility (Censored 126). Obama's announcement to close Guantanamo came only days after his inauguration. It seemed like an ambitious goal, and has proved to be more difficult then Obama must have projected when he promised to close Guantanamo a year ago.
The peoples expectations of Obama were so big when he was elected it felt like he was trying to live up to them by attempting to do something drastic within the first half of his presidency. In our media driven world people crave drama and excitement, there was certainly a lot of excitement when Obama was elected, and he fueled the fire by making all sorts of promises, unfortunately the excitement seems to have died down so what will happen next? Perhaps in the future there should be more planning before big promises like the closing of Guantanamo are made.
10. The Obamas: The American Dream
Neil Postman, author of "Amusing Ourselves to Death Public Discourse in The Age of Show Business" believes that we are in the "decline of the Age of Typography and the ascendancy of the Age of Television" (Postman 8). Our society is changing, being consumed by the world of the image and fast paced world of television. "This change-over has dramatically and irreversibly shifted the content and meaning of public discourse, since two media so vastly different cannot accommodate the same ideas. As the influence of print wanes, the content of politics, religion, education, and anything else that comprises public business must change and be recast in terms that are most suitable to television" (Postman 8).
Image: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/4431014/Too-much-television-can-make-children-mentally-ill.html
Our world is changing quickly around us. Technology is changing, our way of life and social norms are changing, and I think that in a way people are looking for a way to stabilize our fast paced and quickly changing world. As I watched the election results in November of 2008, and watched the Obama family come out on stage once the announcement had been made, it struck me that they looked like a typical American family, living the typical "American Dream". Two parents, and two little girls who received a puppy upon moving into the White House, what could be more normal then that?
Image: http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/droolicious/archive/tags/dress/default.aspx?PageIndex=2It has been several administrations since there were young children and a completely stable normal family in the White House. I think that our "change-over" to a society dominated by television may have picked up on this somewhere along the line. In a time when many are struggling due to a poor economy and unstable times it is only natural to look for inspiration in our leaders. I think seeing the Obama family living the "American Dream" is one of the reasons why he was so likable to so many people during his campaign.
