Posted by
Member of the Tribe on Saturday, November 08, 2008 6:44:54 PM
The 2008 presidential election was a marketing triumph, and this is exactly
what should give us hope. Forget the $600 million to $84 million campaign finance disparity (and put aside the questionable source of much of the $600 million). Forget the ACORN voters, served up courtesy of tax deductible contributions as well as "redistributions" from the "rich" (i.e., productive taxpayers). Forget that the media devoted more resources to digging up dirt on Sarah Palin in 2 months (and Joe the Plumber in 2 weeks) than they devoted to fact checking the president-elect in 2 years. And defer (at least for a couple of paragraphs) the role of mainstream media bias. Among many other things, the election of Barack (can we use his middle name yet?) Obama was a testimony to the power of marketing.
BHO ran hard away from his past and his base. He
ran past the center to the right as a tax cutter, oil driller, pro-Israel,
anti-gay marriage fiscal conservative. He denounced Reverend Wright and
found Bill Ayers' actions (the ones occurring before Obama was born)
"repugnant." He said he would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. If his poverty stricken illegal alien aunt was violating
immigration laws, than she should be treated "like any other person"
because "we are a nation of laws." Economically disadvantaged African Americans should take more
individual responsibility for their lives. He came out foursquare
against "those who would divide us by race." A regular Reagan clone!
And, other than selecting the one ray of sunshine in his otherwise
gloomy campaign for his VP, McCain certainly didn't help himself by
muddying his message. He blamed the inevitable burst of the Democrats'
multi-billion dollar subsidized mortgage welfare program on "greedy
Wall Street fat cats." He wanted mass amnesty for illegal aliens and
more government intervention to address the indisputable "man made
global warming." He called for more government bailouts and more
regulation to protect us from "Wall Street greed." Not exactly a
focused marketing message for a Republican!
Media bias? Just because 95 percent of the media self-identify and vote
as liberal Democrats? Who says they can't put that aside and call it
fair & square, like they learned in journalism school? Could you
honestly say you knew for whom Keith Olbermann, Katie Couric or Chris
("chills running down my spine") Matthews was voting? And how can
anyone selectively cite ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MS-DNC, taxpayer-funded
PBS, Newsweek, Time, the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times,
just about every broadcast and cable station and just about every major
newspaper and newsmagazine - when Fox News consistently gives Hannity
more time than Colmes? To say the mainstream media was "in the tank"
for Obama is as unfair as accusing announcer Johhny Most of "homering"
for the Boston Celtics.
So, unlike my fellow selfish, un-neighborly, big oil, Wall Street "fat
cat" Bible & gun totin' bitter McCain voters, I am not despairing.
No, it's not just because this country was great enough to survive
Jimmy Carter. It's because the number one marketing rule is: marketing
must reflect reality (i.e., there must be a "there" there). So the good
news is perhaps our President-elect has really divorced himself from
Ayers, Alinsky, Farrakhan, Wright, Phleger, Khalidi and his other
mentors, spiritual leaders, advisors, financial backers (and financial
beneficiaries) who believe that the United States is a hateful, racist,
greedy country and the source of the world's evil. Perhaps he has seen
the light and become a born-again post-racial unifier (and Reagan
clone). If that is true, we may have ushered in a new day of post
racial-divisions and post politics of victimization, less big
government intrusion, lower taxes, energy independence and true
empowerment for the economic underclasses.
And if the Obama campaign brilliantly applied nearly all the rules of
marketing - rules #2 through 687 - while ignoring the first, well, the
American people don't like to be hoodwinked