Obama: The James Dean of Professional Politics
By Sydney | Related entries in 2008 Election, Elections, General Politics, NewsI am signed up for all of the presidential candidate’s e-mail listservs which both keeps me informed and makes me feel like a good person when I get a personalized e-mail from all the candidates asking for my help with something (recently for Hillary Clinton, it was picking her campaign song!). I got a great e-mail from the Obama campaign the other day:
Dear John,
Barack has been traveling across the country asking people to speak out and let their Senators know that it’s time to end the Iraq war.
One Republican colleague has already called this “not Senatorial”. But this isn’t about Washington etiquette, it’s about bringing our troops home…
No one of us can do it alone, and it’s not going to happen tomorrow. But a movement to create the kind of change we need starts with you.
The e-mail was titled “Not Playing by the Rules” and I swear i had to read it 5 or 6 times to make sure they didn’t spell “playing” as “playin’” I guess I understand the emphasis in the Obama campaign on being a Washington outsider, using his inexperience to his advantage, but is there a point where this sort of thing goes overboard?
One Republican colleague has already called this “not Senatorial”. But this isn’t about Washington etiquette
I’m not even really sure what that means, or what Obama did that was “not Senatorial” but I’m afraid the next e-mail is going to have a picture of Obama in a leather biker jacket with a pack of Newports. I like it when candidates don’t “play by the rules” but when they revel in that fact they are usually sacrificing a little bit of their street cred. Barack Obama is a Columbia and Harvard educated Senator, it’s a pretty big leap to make him seen as an anti-establishment James Dean-esque outsider.
David Axelrod, one of Obama’s chief political advisers has spent so much time crafting Obama’s image as an insurgency candidate that it sometimes rings false when I get e-mails entitled “Not Playing by the Rules.” The Obama campaign is no less calculated than the Clinton campaign, it’s just calculated to seem uncalculated with his tie-less blazer and seemingly off-the-cuff remarks.
The New York Times wrote an article about Axelrod’s involvement in the Obama campaign a while ago:
Axelrod says viewers are more likely to be arrested by shots that look rough, like “a hybrid, part political commercial, part news.â€Â? He found a grainy, C-Span-style shot of Obama talking about homelessness on the floor of the State Senate, which Axelrod now uses to establish Obama’s prior political experience. The consultant picked out a lingering, distant shot of Obama walking down a sunny southern Illinois road with his long arm around an older, short white farmer. He says this was intended to convey his candidate’s ease with conversation, his cross-cultural capability… When you finish watching the video, you don’t have a particularly good sense of Obama as a politician (you might be able to say that he’s for change), but there is an intimacy â€â€? you have been drowned in his life, and you feel as if you know him.
Unless he’s going to hold up a fruit stand or he learns to sing and dance and joins the Jets or Sharks, I have a difficult time buying the credo that Obama is not “playing by the rules.”
(crossposted from RealityCheck08)
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 19th, 2007 and is filed under 2008 Election, Elections, General Politics, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 19th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Huh?
Maybe if you paid a bit more attention to the subjects that you write about, you would know that Sen. Grassley has criticized Obama for making appearances in Iowa in which he criticizes, and thus puts pressure on home-state senators, arguing that they should get on board with Dem attempts to end the war. Grassley claims that this is a violation of Senate traditions.
So no. Obama is not posturing as a political James Dean, he is dealing with the issues and arguments that are in play in the political world of today. And you, it seems, are just being lazy, and trying to build a catchy post off your own ignorance. Bad show.
May 19th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Actually Grassley did say Obama was not be senatorial. I’m sure that struck Obama as somewhat funny. don’t see what the problem is with it.
or with the video Axlerod did.
Are we being a bit nitpicky??? Or just cranky?
May 20th, 2007 at 11:15 am
I understand the context of the remarks, Grassley said it after Obama publicly urged him to back a timetable for withdrawal in Iowa. Grassley said that Obama lacked “political class” and the full quote was “It’s not senatorial and if you can’t be senatorial, how can you be presidential?” But that is hardly the point. The point is that the Obama campaign took the Grassley quote and used it to make Obama seem anti-establishment.
Yes, Obama is Senatorial and yes, he is running an incredibly organized and structured campaign. I’m just wondering what rules Obama is not playing by. I have no problem with candidates who don’t play by the rules, I would just rather see it in his actions than cheesy e-mails from his campaign staff.
April 19th, 2008 at 6:19 am
A rebel with a cause…
http://politicalgrafitti.blogspot.com/2008/04/barack-obama-evokes-james-deans-cool.html