Top Ten Barack Obama Revelations

#1: Pot of Gold

Many people don't realize that much of the Obama campaign was attributed to a series of lucky breaks for Barack Obama. His story began back in the Senate race for Illinois in 2004, where his Republican opponent was emersed in a sex scandal. We all know how well these turn out for politicians, so he eventually withdrew from the race. This left the Illinois Republican Party responsible for finding someone to run in the election very late in the game.

According to Paul Street in his book "Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics," the new Republican in the race for Senate was especially unpopular. "To make things even easier for Obama, the Illinois Republican Party took more than a month to find a replacement, and they exhibited the incredibly poor judgment to import the bizarre perennial candidate Alan Keyes from Maryland" (Street, Introduction xxiv).

Image: www.life.com

Obama with his opponent Alan Keyes debating during the 2004 Senate race in Illinois

Not surprisingly, Obama won the race by a landslide. Some would say that Obama wouldn't be where he is today if the Illinois Senate race had a viable opponent. Paul Street quoted a political scientist named Ron Walters, who believes that this is the beginning of the Obama Brand. "You could argue that if the Republicans had had a viable candidate, there would be no Barack.

This video shows Alan Keyes struggling to support his opinion about gay marriage during the 2004 Illinois Senate debate, illustrating why he is unpopular.

Next of the list of good fortune for the Obama Brand is his short political presence. He had the advantage of not being in the U.S. Senate during to the vote to authorize the Bush invasion of Iraq. This was something that his similar democratic opponents couldn't say. Both John Edwards and Hillary Clinton voted in favor if the Iraq invasion, something that would haunt their campaign in the future.

#2: Identity Crisis

President Obama is the first African American president. Many people who voted in the 2008 elections are happy to be a part of this milestone in the history of the United States.

However, this blinded people from some of the realities behind him as a candidate. His campaign was heavily focused on "change" and "progression" something that many people were just associating with his face.

Even though he didn't exactly use his ethnic background in a direct way to benefit his campaign (i.e. "The Race Card") , he knew that this is how people can easily associate him as an individual, a person and a candidate with the "change" he was promoting in his campaign.

Image: scrapetv.com

Obama using "Change" as a primary driver for his campaign.

Paul Street agrees with this in his book "Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics". "Meanwhile, as Obama and his advisers certainly know, Obama's black identity has proved enormously important in helping him both as a Senator and candidate to seem more progressive and change-oriented than he really is....It has made voters more reluctant than they might have been otherwise (if Obama was white) to take a deep and honest look at his accommodation with dominant domestic and imperial hierarchies and doctrines. In these ways, race has mattered a great deal indeed in the making of the Obama phenomenon and the tone that is took on as the campaign season developed" (Street 81).

#3: No Wealthy Child Left Behind

Image: barackobamacharter.org

Under the support of the President Obama's education policy, private charter schools are becoming more common throughout the country. Barack Obama Charter Schools were the backbone of the administration's education reform during his campaign, but they are actually increasing many racial and financial divides. Charter schools are causing re-segregation because they often leave public schools under-funded by taking their high achieving minority students and leaving the rest behind.

This is illustrated in Censored 2010. "Charter schools are often accused on "cherry picking students" to build higher test scores, leaving low income and difficult to teach students in inadequately funded public systems" (Harris, et al P. 103).

Not only are the public schools and lower achieving students at risk, but the teachers are too. Charter schools eliminate teacher unions and they tie the teachers salary to student performance. It's not difficult to see why this doesn't work. Teacher are then forced to teach to the test, the only method student performance evaluation. Because of this, students lack education that provokes more important aspects of learning that extend beyond the tests.

"The Obama education policy hardly differs from the Bush administration's policy of hitching student and teacher performance to what in the educational community and beyond call inauthentic assessments, which force teachers to teach to the test and do little to encourage critical thinking or collaborative problem solving" (Harris, et al P. 106).

#4: Star Status

It's no secret that Obama received more favorable media coverage than any other candidate during the 2008 Presidential Election. Paul Street said this in many different ways in his book "Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics." "Obama received by far the most favorable coverage of any presidential candidate in the first five months of the presidential primary campaign" (Street P. 62).

This is not anything new. But the basis of this revelation is more of the content of the media coverage. It seems as though the intent of the news and other mainstream media is becoming more entertaining than anything else.

People seemed to be less interested in media about questioning policy and more interested in less pertinent information to the political process. There were more stories about the personal information and their campaign status then of actual issues. "Questions of policy accounted for just 15 percent of the stories..." (Street p.62).

This video by CNN shows how ridiculous things can get at media organizations. But this is exactly the kind of reports that are incorporated into the irrelevant and entertainment factors that most stories about Obama possess.

This illustrates a point made by Neil Postman in his book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death". Mass media such as television promotes entertainment over everything else. "Television speaks in only one persistent voice-the voice of entertainment" (Postman P.80).

#5: Campaigning 2.0

President Obama was one of the first candidates to harness the power of the Internet for his campaign. In fact, this might have been even more effective than using traditional mass media for simple advertisments.

Barack Obama's YouTube channel has almost 2000 videos, some of them with millions of views. There are speeches, excerpts from TV appearances and advertisements.

Obama on Ellen has been seen by over 10 million people.

Other short advertisements have stack up about 1 million views.

This publicity can be more effective than television advertising. YouTube is free and can provide to a target audience. However, television ads have the ability to reach out to individuals who don't specifically seek the information.

#6: Weapons or Welfare

Image: www.infiniteunknown.net

Something that echoed through the mass media was Obama's heath care reform. This was a widely discussed issue where many individuals voiced their opinions both for and against the program.

Now lets compare this to Obama's decision to increase military spending. It's not a widely discussed topic, among the media, my college courses and with others in general, despite the fact that no one really knows exactly what is happening to the money. Why does Obama's decision to increase our defense fund get pushed to the back burner, while other issues such as heath care that can benefit us directly are challenged to the point where no progress is made?

According to Censored 2010, much more of our tax mula goes towards military spending than a new healthcare system. "A single future weapons system is now estimated to cost the American taxpayer almost one-third of what the Obama administration's health care plan is expected to cost over a decade" (Lipinski, et al P. 68).

Of course, one of the top results about U.S. military spending is not from a U.S. news source, but rather an English-speaking Russian news network.

#7: My Homeboy

Image: nysun.com

The 2008 presidential election was my first opportunity to vote, as I was just turning 18 years old. The campus of Champlain College was filled with excitement as volunteers were franticly trying to get everyone registered to vote. I took advantage of this opportunity because I was excited to be a part of this election.

I remember sitting in Champlain's IDX Student Life Center and watching Obama's acceptance speech on a huge projector with more students than I have ever seen the lounge. I was happy to have voted, feeling like I actually did contribute.

Obama did something amazing for the American people. Despite much controversy about his practices discussed in Paul Street's book, "Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics," Obama was able to get people exited about politics. This is something that I have never experienced before and many others in their teens and 20's probably agree.

Paul Street even said it himself. “The Obama experience has encouraged and extraordinary amount of new popular engagement in the political process, sparking millions of Americans to overcome their endemic disgust with politics and their sense of powerlessness with the U.S. sociopolitical order (Street 204).

#8: Creative Campaigning

Along with the use of Web 2.0 as illustrated in revelation #5, Obama made good use of marketing to sell himself to the American people during his campaign. His visually appealing logo established the image people associate with the Obama, creating the Obama Brand. I'm sure the vast amount of graphic design students at Champlain College would agree.

But first, let's take a look at the 2004 election between George W. Bush and John Kerry. These campaign posters aren't especially unique. In fact, they use the same color scheme, flag images and white text.

Images: http://ronwade.freeservers.com/

The next election would be a lot different. If political campaign signs are going to be littering street corners all over the country, as least make them more visually appealing! Obama makes use of a logo.

Image: dmbosstone.com

Throughout the mass media and other distributive marketing media such as stickers, signs and posters, everyone relates this logo to Barack Obama. This campaign embraces the fact that media appearance is one of the most important factors for success.

In "Media Society" by David Croteau and William Hoynes, "At its simplest level, we see the importance of media in the fact that style and appearance greatly enhance a candidate's change of success" (P. 233).

# 9: The True Cost of Campaign

In "Barack Obama the Future of American Politics", Paul Street discussed Obama's campaign funding practices during his race for the Senate in 2004. "Nearly half of more that $5 million Obama raised for his 2004 Senate primary came from just 300 donors" (Street P. 15).

So this raises an interesting question. Where exactly did the money come from for his presidential election? Despite all of the favorable news coverage for Obama, I did find this CBS news story questioning his campaign finances.

CBS reported that Obama received more money than any other candidate from "unidentified donors." Despite a quote from Obama in the video "90 percent of our contributions come from small donors," this CBS report is obviously skeptical of his sources.

#10: The New Dog

Image: New York Times

President Obama may not have been a typical president as far as his race and age are concerned. However, there is nothing that screams American more than a family man. And that is what Obama is, and this is comforting to people all over the country.

One of the primary themes in Paul Street's book "Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics" was the overall notion that Obama is not really quite as different as many Americans perceived from his campaign. And this is the basis for my final Barack Obama revelation.

It's disappointing to come to this conclusion, but Obama really isn't that different from other politicians. His relationship to big business resulted in the bailout of large financial institutions, we are still in Iraq and the government is still split down the middle from partisan gridlock.

Although much of my opinion is based on the mass media, it's clear that there is a lot of information we still don't know about the overall performance of our president. As illustrated in Censored 2010 there are many stories that don't make it to the news headlines

The First Dog is named Bo. He is a Portuguese water dog, a gift from the Kennedys.

Image: New York Times