Welcome

Welcome to 44thPOTUS. On this blog I am looking to piece together a few coherent strands from this extraordinary race, and point you towards some of the reasons why we are at this moment in history.

I will look back on the election season and look forward to the priorities of the 44th President of the United States. I will analyse the issues, the money, the media, the distractions, and mostly the strategies of both campaigns.

Thursday 23 October 2008

Morning in America


During the 1984 US presidential campaign, Ronal Reagan released this now famous ad, Morning in America [http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-IBF8nwSY]

In Obama's logo we ceaselessly see the new dawn that Reagan implied. Obama, seeing it for the first time, refused to clear it, saying it was "too corporate." He was persuaded otherwise. It is no accident that it looks like the sunrise, and it, early on in the campaign, gave us a sign that Obama wanted to reach into the red states and challenge the ingrained notion that elections are won or lost by a handful of states - mainly Florida and Ohio - and attempt the landslides that Reagan enjoyed. In 1980 Reagan won by 489 electoral votes against Carter's 49. In 1984 he won against Mondale 525 - 13! Considering Clinton beat Dole in 1996 379 - 159 and Bush beat Kerry 286 - 252, Reagan's victories point to a country unified. There are of course multiple reasons for this, but one of them was optimism - that Reaganesque quality - the idea that America's best days are ahead of them. This quality has been there from the very beginning with Obama. It is encapsulated perfectly in his logo.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Pretty damn awesome design if you ever began to try thinking of a striking new logo based on simple, readable elements. Every thought which appears has been done before.