Guardian (UK): "Perhaps I should join the cult" [View All]

[bidenista]

Buzzmachine.com's Jeff Jarvis, writing in the UK's Guardian, has some remarks about the Obama "movement":

Perhaps I should join the cult

Jeff Jarvis
February 6, 2008 6:10 PM

The contrast in Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's campaigns - and their voters - is starkly illustrated in their Super Tuesday speeches. Obama is the orator, Clinton the manager. Obama's crowd behaves like a devoted cult. Clinton's like a well-behaved class. Obama has succeeded - with considerable help from the media - at portraying his campaign as a movement, while Clinton's is, well, a campaign.

My problem with his campaign is also illustrated in this speech. Though he catalogues his issues - Iraq, health care, the standard list - his message is made up of little more than stock marketing taglines. He's not so much running for office as branding himself.

Listen to last night's medley of his greatest hits: "Our time has come... Our movement is real... Change is coming to America... We are more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and always will be the United States of America... This time can be different.... Not this time. Not this year.... This time we have to seize the moment.... This fall, we owe the American people a real choice.... We have to choose between change and more of the same, we have to choose between looking backwards and looking forward. We have to choose between our future and our past.... We can do this... We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.... Yes we can.... Yes we can...." Cue crowd chanting: "Yes we can..."

His supporters, including many New York friends of mine, buy his image and believe he is less political and that he is indeed different. I think he's more political and his campaign is the greatest example of the selling of the president I've yet seen. To state it harshly, I say that relying on these stock phrases - believing that we are going to swallow empty oratory about "change" punctuated with chants of "yes we can" - is a cynical political act...

More: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeff_jarvis/2008/02/the_power_of_oratory.html

Edited to add:

Here's a cute visual aid...