This weekend saw the long-awaited arrival of Oprah on the campaign trail for Sen. Barack Obama.
“Think about where you’d be in your life if waited when people told you to,” she told a South Carolina crowd of over 20,000 in the University of South Carolina football stadium, in reference to assessments of Obama that focus on his relative lack of experience. She received similar enthusiasm in Iowa and New Hampshire campaign stops.
Oprah’s value, most political analysts agree, is a unique ability to draw attention to the candidate. Beyond that, Obama will rise or fall on his ability to convince voters of his ability and ideas. In South Carolina, it worked well, as Oprah connected well with fellow native Southerners, and Obama reminded his audience he was “Fired up. Ready to Go.”
The Boston Globe article describing the events had an interesting perspective:
“The events put Obama side-by-side with an African-American figure who already is what he aspires to be: a strong black leader who also manages to transcend race, and who has attained power by finding a new approach to negotiating an entrenched system. And just as Oprah has created a media empire by focusing on the universal - love, spirituality, and overcoming obstacles - Obama hopes to win the presidency by creating a new “politics of hope” by “restoring our sense of common purpose.”
“I think there is a philosophical and ideological perspective that draws them together,” said Susan Carroll, senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “It’s not necessarily liberal or conservative; it’s really, ‘This is a new way of thinking.’”
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Her advice concerns the need to create a brand versus the reality for many 