Obama, Fox, branding, Haiti, polling and race

Fantastic article in The Guardian from Naomi Klein this week, I learnt a lot.

So what's happened to brand Obama? He is not polling well. Look, he was never going to live up to that hype. Campaigning is about dreams, government is about compromise. But look at what he's actually done: pretty much gotten out of Iraq, closed Guantanamo and pushed America close to universal healthcare. Not only that, he's pulled the rest of the world back on board, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in the process. What did you want from the first year?

So the polls are not amazing. Unsurprisingly, Obama has slowly lost popularity as the reality sets in: that he alone cannot end wars, reverse economic trends and create the world's greatest healthcare system in the face of extreme opposition. This app from Fox let's you compare Obama and Bush, and you can see exactly the same slide under Bush - until 9/11. I'd say this suggests the best thing that could happen for Obama's popularity is another major terrorist event, but I suspect that it would be interpreted as somewhat his doing (that even happened to Bush, and no-one thought he was a Muslim and an illegal immigrant, as around a quarter of American's think of Obama). I imagine a huge invasion of another country - some more 'us' and 'them' politics as practised so well by Bush - would win him a couple of red votes, but most of those voters would never vote Obama because of his race and his party. I still think Obama, though not the superhero he may appear in our wildest fantasies, is doing an incredible job, and I can't think of a better first year in office of any politician.

O and just to balance that praise for Fox News, here's an article where "'Critics' Decry Decision to Halt Deportations of Haitian Illegal Immigrants". A nice example there of using the 'someone else' (and we're not saying they're right, but we are saying that they are experts, and we are putting them as leader) is saying something that *someone else wants you to believe* is extreme and ridiculous - we're just saying' method of endorsing-without-being-accountable-for a position.

"The paradox of the first black president is that it is not nearly enough for him to be merely the first black president."

Robert E. Pierre and Jon Jeter