It's interesting that the only anger I seem to have generated on my admittedly less than enthusiastic endorsement of John Edwards is around this sentence:
the embarassingly entitled “Club Obama” event
It's the part that Baruth highlighted (although I don't think he was mad, just amused), and was a peripheral comment at best. Still, it was not my intention to offend people with the line – which I seem to have done, although in complete earnest-honesty, I don't quite understand why. But given that I did, I thought it best to explain what I was thinking.
A big part of me cringed when I saw the odd way, in the throes of the Dean for President phenomenon, the Governor seemed to start losing control of his actual image. There were the peripheral events like the Lolapalooza-sounding “Sleepless Summer Tour” and all the ways that his name started being used almost as though he were some sort of product, like a hot new car or a brand of beer. “Deaniacs,” “Generation Dean,” “Dean Bran Flakes.”
Okay, maybe not the last one, but you get the idea…
The fact is that the imageering kept from overshadowing the Dean campaign itself because Dean was always saying things of substance – often things that would get him into trouble, in fact, but it helped to insure that content was always at the core of the campaign. Obama's campaign is different. Ask any 10 Dean supporters around primary time what they liked about Dean, and you were likely to hear something about Iraq in very nearly 100% of the replies. Ask Obama supporters what they like about him in 10 words or less and you're likely to hear something along the lines of what Treasurer Jeb Spaulding said in the Herald/Argus:
“I really think he represents the American dream. He has a very culturally diverse background,”
Right off the bat, many Obama supporters start from a place of image, rather than policy. What people see when they look at him. What they read into his background, and what they perceive “the American Dream” to be, from their own ideological vantage. And that makes the commodofication of his candidacy a far more dangerous thing, in my opinion, than it was for Dean, because the imageering already is an overwhelming part of his presentation from the get-go.
Now I'm as big on marketing and branding as the next guy. You want stuff with your candidate on it, and going catchy is a great idea. Heck, just the name “Dean for America” was itself a branding slogan of sorts, and a smart one. But how far is too far? At what point does marketing our candidates cross the line into treating them like a commodity? Like a new soft drink? When that line is crossed, what does it say about us as a culture? What is the public debate path that we're on, and does going too far down it in one campaign perpetuate the problem overall?
I'm not sure exactly where the line is, but I know when it gets crossed you'll find the marketing itself starting to shove out the content – the policies and particularized visioneering that should be – by all rights – what a mature electorate bases their decision on. There just becomes less and less actual time for both, and when that tension squeezes out the content, I think we all lose. It's also an obvious way for a candidate who wants to avoid being pinned down on precisely who and what he or she represents to avoid having to be.
However it happens – either by accident or design – it's something I find at once frightening, disheartening and when it comes from my political “team”, yes – I find it embarassing as well. Maybe it's not happening so much as I'm afraid its happening. The name “club Obama” definitely punched that button with me, but again, I didn't think a public cringe at the title would be so extraordinarily disturbing. My bad.
What do you all think?
