The Branding of Obama

And one of the things that came up in the conversation is, if you think about it, the challenge for someone named Barack Hussein Obama is that he’s such an unprecedented figure in American politics—so much so that everything he’s trying to do is, in a way, trying to make him look smoother and more normal.

I think it’s much more incontrovertible that he’s actually using the seamlessness of this branding to convey a candidacy that’s not a dangerous, revolutionary, risk-everything proposition—but as something that is well-managed and has everything under control.

– Michael Beirut