Obama vs. Romney: Presidential Campaign Branding

By Heather Turner

Branding undoubtedly plays a role in influencing voter perceptions of Presidential candidates. Ultimately, voter reactions to campaign images is subjective. That being said, if the election was solely based on image and branding, then President Barack Obama, is clearly winning.

Mitt Romney's camp is incredibly lacking in artistic or mind-blowing campaign posters (my search for iconic Romney art didn't go well). Rather, many of the images associated with Romney's campaign have typically been mashups, created by satirists and pretty much anyone with a sense of humor and Photoshop. In this way, Romney's campaign has been its own worst enemy and despite six years of preparing to run for the office of the Presidency, Team Romney still can't seem to inspire an image that is anywhere near as rhetorically powerful as this:

 coulda been 

a tramp stamp

Even when reproduced as a tattoo on a random appendage for some (probably drunken) reason, it is instantly recognizable as a rendition of the "Hope" poster designed by artist Shepard Fairey. Fairey's poster was adopted by Team Obama after the independently produced stencil portrait became viral. At the same time, to Conservatives, elements of Obama's branding, including the Fairey stencil, confirmed their perceptions of Obama being communistic and even a messianic figure of sorts to the political left wing.

The 2008 election set a high bar for image and branding excellency, as the most viral presidential candidate was also the one who got elected. In fact, Obama's election brought on a period of extreme "Baracksploitation," in which the President's image was applied to pretty much anything, from sushi, to t-shirts, to action figures, to hash bricks. The 2012 election was already going to be an uphill battle for anyone running against our resident Presidential icon.

However, whether or not a candidate's campaign "get it right" with their branding, candidates of both parties adopt rhetoric that draws from ubiquitous American national myths concerning 'God and country' to appeal to the electorate, as crafting a clear moral agenda is also a major aspect of Presidential branding. The national myths invoked by the previous four presidents reflects the complex historic and nationalistic, yet pseudo-religious identity of America.


Read the rest at Spin and the Media.

Binders full of women, empty of ideas

By Nathan Rothwell

Romney's gone viral (again). Just not in the way he wants.

Those in the market of turning soundbites into Internet memes were not disappointed by last night’s presidential debate.

President Obama and Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, squared off in a town-hall style debate on Tuesday where they fielded questions from the audience. Both were asked by a young woman how their respective administrations would tackle inequalities in the workplace – specifically, the fact that women on average make only 72% of what their male counterparts earn.

Both candidates gave wildly different answers. For his part, President Obama mentioned the very first bill he signed into law upon becoming President in 2009; the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which gives women full opportunity to sue their employers if they experience undue discrimination. As Obama explained, before the Act passed women who were being unfairly paid had only 180 days to discover the discrimination and file a lawsuit. Even if they had no way of discovering the discrimination until after this 180-day period, they were out of luck. The Act signed by Obama allowed for a new 180-day period to begin each time a woman received a paycheck that unfairly paid her lower wages based solely on her gender. 

While Obama directly answered the question of unequal pay by referencing the Lilly Ledbetter Act, Romney dodged it almost entirely when given a chance to respond. Instead, he revealed that he initially couldn’t find enough capable women to serve in his Cabinet upon becoming governor of Massachusetts in 2003, and in doing so coined the phrase “binders full of women”:

“…I said, ‘Well gosh, can’t we find some women that are also qualified? And so we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.”

As the New Yorker put it, Romney’s “binders full of women” phrase provoked instant fascination with debate-watchers nationwide. Facebook groups, Tumblrs, and Twitter accounts devoted to Romney’s inartful phrase captured the attention of thousands, and could very well spell doom for Romney in the polls. Yet as much fun as it is to poke fun at the imagery, Romney’s answer should sound alarms among voters for two important reasons.

Blog Roundup!: Presidential Debate Style

It has hardly been two days since the first debate between President Barack Obama and Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, yet the blogosphere and the news media are still analyzing and criticizing the event. The word is, Buzzfeed declared Romney the winner before the debate was even over - and the general consensus since has been that Romney won the debate.

However, as Mediamatters points out, an equally valid interpretation is that Jim Lehrer lost the debate.

Nevertheless, as Truthdig notes, the debate was definitely more style over substance.

Maddow also breaks down the numbers, further soothing the worries of Obama supporters who may be frustrated at the rather abrupt and widespread conclusion that he lost, to show that incumbents usually do lose the first debate.

Democracy Now! provided an alternative debate for third party candidates on Wednesday.

And besides Buzzfeed apparently calling the debate for Romney before halftime, it also declared "silly memes" the winner of the night. 

Did Election Season really just end before a single debate?

By Nathan Rothwell

Fuck it. I'm just gonna vote for Hypnotoad.

I was already planning to write a piece on how the Romney campaign had become so desperate following the big party conventions, they were literally heaving Hail Marys. Hoping to seize on the debacle at the DNC where the word "god" was removed from the party platform and then reinserted, Romney seemed to bizarrely suggest that the word might also disappear from our coins if he's not elected, saying "I will not take God out of our platform. I will not take God off our coins. And I will not take God out of my heart."

And even though Romney pledged to refrain from politics for a day to honor the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, his unofficial surrogates over at Fox & Friends kept up the motif by attacking Obama for not including the word "god" in his proclamation commemorating the solemn anniversary. To provide a little context, President Bush also did not use the word in any of his similar proclamations in 2006, 2007, or 2008. This of course was met with silence from Fox News, so it's really hard for the champions of "Fair and Balanced" to wash off the stink of selective outrage in this case.

From the moment Republicans decided to center their convention around a quote from the President that was deliberately and almost gleefully taken out of context, it had become painfully clear that the Romney/Ryan ticket was growing desperate. Their further attempts to paint Romney as a man of piety and President Obama as a godless socialist moved them into almost comical desperation. But with Romney's mindless criticism of Obama following the tragic attacks on the U.S. embassies in Libya and Egypt yesterday, the campaign may have very well driven off the proverbial cliff, and all before a single presidential debate could even take place.

Friendly Reminder: Mitt Romney Still Hasn't Released His Tax Returns

By Nathan Rothwell

Just 58 days remain until Election Day, and Mitt Romney still has not released any complete copies of his tax returns for review by the American people. He remains the only presidential nominee not to release several years' worth of tax returns since his father George Romney made the practice an unofficial requirement for running for president back in 1968. For those returns he did release (2010 and 2011), the former was incomplete; the latter only an estimate.

Many have speculated why Romney feels he is exempt from a practice his own father devised to promote transparency in politics. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid believes Romney hasn't paid taxes for a decade; others have speculated that Romney participated in a 2009 IRS tax amnesty program designed to quietly punish wealthy taxpayers who attempted to stash money overseas. Still others have guessed that Romney doesn't want fellow Mormons to know his true income, due to the fact that he failed (at least in 2010) to follow through on his commitment to tithe 10% of his income to the Mormon Church. Whatever the reason might be, we can safely assume (as George Will put it) that the political costs of releasing his tax returns must outweigh the negative press he's received from turning his returns into the figurative skeleton in his closet.

Perhaps Romney assumes the issue will go away, and voters will decide his record as an American taxpayer is no longer relevant; but with each passing day, it seems the questions over his taxes become more and more relevant.

On today's edition of This Week, George Stephanopoulos grilled Romney's running mate Paul Ryan over how Republicans would be able to reduce the deficit while establishing tax cuts even larger than the reckless cuts brought to us by the Bush Administration (which many believe is the single-biggest contributor to the federal deficit). The Romney/Ryan ticket claims the answer lies in closing tax loopholes, but Ryan dodged Stephanapoulos' repeated inquiries about which specific loopholes would be eliminated. What little Ryan offered, however, was interesting:

DNC coverage Democracy Now! style

The GOP's Last Gasp: The "Independent" Voter

By Nathan Rothwell 

As the Republican National Convention convenes this week to officially nominate Mitt Romney for president, the GOP is desperate to reclaim the narrative from the potential devastation of Tropical Storm Isaac and the definite devastation of party castout Todd Akin. Governor Bob McDonnell, head of the GOP Platform Committee, spent time on This Week with George Stephanopoulos to drive home a new narrative: Mitt Romney is the new best pal of independent voters.

After attempting to lay the blame for the U.S. credit rating downgrade on President Obama, McDonnell had this to say:

“So on the things that really matter to voters, George, I think the records are stark, and I think that’s why independent voters have a ten-point margin in favor of Mitt Romney right now.”

Such a claim seems dubious. And according to Politifact, the poll McDonnell referenced comes from (surprise!) a Fox News poll. Recent CNN and Gallup polls, however, show a Romney lead among independents closer to the 3-4% range.

In my opinion, if Republicans are willing to exaggerate how well Romney is doing among independent voters, that narrative must mean something to them. Yet this seems like a fool’s errand. I would argue that these independents Romney seems so desperate to court don’t actually exist – or at least, the GOP doesn’t quite understand what an independent voter actually looks like.

Musicians to GOP: Stop using our music!

By Nathan Rothwell

A brief history of GOP musical fails.

Dee Snider joins the growing list of musicians who are not taking it.

Those of you who were around for the summer of 1984 probably remember Bruce Springsteen being a huge part of it. Seven songs from his Born in the U.S.A. album would rank on Billboard’s “Top Ten” hit singles list, a record that still stands today. None of those seven, however, were as iconic and controversial as the album’s title track. While the lyrics tell the story of a working-class American in the midst of a spiritual crisis after surviving the horrors of the Vietnam War, the song’s famous and catchy chorus caused many casual listeners to misinterpret the song as a patriotic anthem.

President Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign was definitely guilty of making that mistake. Reagan and other conservatives praised the song for confirming the values they promoted, while of course paying little heed to lamentations of the song’s protagonist; a man deeply troubled by a government that “put a rifle in my hand, sent me off to the foreign land, to go and kill the yellow man.” The Reagan campaign would go on to seek official endorsement from Springsteen, but anyone who knows Springsteen well can tell you how that turned out.

And so, unofficially, began an era of a strange relationship between music and Republican political campaigns. While Reagan never actually used any of Springsteen’s music at any of his campaign events, other Republicans would later make such attempts with the music of other artists. There have been more than two dozen documented instances since 2008 of a Republican using a band’s song at a campaign event, only to later receive a request from that band to stop using their music. Most likely, every one of those requests read something like the one Dee Snider of Twisted Sister used when he found out VP candidate Paul Ryan was using “We’re Not Gonna Take It” at one of his events:

"I emphatically denounce Paul Ryan's use of my band Twisted Sister's song 'We're Not Gonna Take It' in any capacity," Snider said in a statement. "There is almost nothing he stands for that I agree with - except the use of P90X."

To paint a better picture of just how curious the music choices have been for the GOP, I refer you to the following list (h/t to Redditor Alyeska2112, who came up with this list and even more examples):

Santorum Suspends Campaign

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum announced he was suspending his campaign at a press conference in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His exit from the campaign all but assures that Mitt Romney will be challenging Barack Obama for the presidency in November.

It's unclear why he picked today as the day to step aside, although a look at the polls in his home state offer a clue. According to Public Policy Polling, Romney was leading Santorum in the polls among likely Pennsylvania voters by a score of 42 to 37 percent. Many people argued that Romney's campaign would not survive if he could not win his home state of Michigan, so perhaps Santorum saw the doom facing his own political future if he couldn't win in Pennsylvania.

Why Santorum is Good?: "Rick McDumbF*** just gave everyone the enigma machine!"

The Daily Show breaks down Conservative rhetoric.

Hard to believe this is the last in the 20 episode running series called the Republican Primary Debates. And still, they get weirder yet, especially with Sen. Rick Santorum (PA) as one of the more frightening front runners. It's also pretty amusing to see Conservative media react to Santorum going full blown FOX pundit (even when he's not in a primary debate). No! Santorum, you're only supposed to imply these things. I personally think it's a great service to voters to have the social conservative GOP agenda spelled out loud and clear. Whether we all like it or not, that's where this election season is going.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2012 - Rick Santorum's Conservative Rhetoric
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

**apologies to those trying to watch this outside of America. You can still view this episode at Channel 4OD 
for UK, and various sites that I will not name that mirror the episodes for those of you outside of US and UK.

Religious Beliefs Should Remain Private

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and current Republican candidate for President in 2012 is a charlatan and a swindler. 

He was a supporter of women’s rights when he was running for governor of one of America’s more liberal states, then ever-so-conveniently changed his mind years later in order to boost his social conservative credentials. He’s worth more than $260 million dollars, yet tells unemployed voters he sympathizes with their plight because he’s also “unemployed” (while running for President is hardly a money-earning endeavor, he’s still doing so by choice). Romney also once infamously asserted that his sons’ service to his failed presidential campaign in 2008 was a more important task than the service of those in the U.S. military.

However, rather than focus on these and other examples of his chicanery, prominent media figures have instead elected to unfairly attack his religious beliefs. So as much as it pains me to do it, I believe Romney deserves some defense here.

Romney is a Mormon, one of the newer and fastest-growing sects of Christianity. Even though Mormonism dates back nearly 200 years and has always professed itself as part of the umbrella of Christianity, some (such as Baptist minister and Rick Perry supporter Robert Jeffress) have obnoxiously proclaimed that Romney should not be considered a candidate for President because he’s not a “real” Christian.