President's Forum 11/18/08

This week's President Forum Series speaker was journalist Susan Page from USA Today. As an experienced journalist, she closely followed the election. She gave her opinion and analysis of what worked best for Obama and ultimately led to his success. A lot of the key points she was addressing were topics of discussion in our class. Two winning factors for Barack Obama were reaching out to the youth vote and Hispanics. The youth vote is nothing new to our discussions, however I did not realize the great affect of the Hispanic vote. Obama's campaign reached across racial boundaries that have never been breached before among blacks. These racial boundaries would not dare be crossed by past presidents. I question where we will be going in the future and what it means for race? The forum was very much interactive as Susan invited a lot of questions from the audience. One particular question drew attention to Obama's representation as some sort of celebrity rock star. Throughout the campaigning period Obama's face was pictured on several different mediums. Clothing such as t-shirts, pins, stickers, banners, etc. Specifically t-shirts were wide spread among the youth and portrayed Obama as some sort of global celebrity. This face value image proved to be very successful in his ultimate clinching of the presidency.