The Obama Era (Mediated #4)

The Obama Era


As I was looking for an article about the voter apathy for the midterm elections, I came across an older blog post from December 2012 titled,"The Obama Era: A new age in American Politics". As I read the title I wondered about a comment that was presented in our discussion last Tuesday night after the presentations. After bringing up a picture of President Obama onto the screen, I believe our instructor said that this man was misunderstood and underestimated in the impact that he has made for America. There was no explanation that night, so I have wondered since that night what was meant. As I read the article, and even though it is old, I felt like I could understand what had been implied by the comment.

I realize that I am looking at this story in hind-sight, which is not fair to the author because I know the end story. For this very reason, I thought that this would be a good challenge to dissect this argument and to also learn more of a perspective that I had not looked from before.

The argument of this article is that with two consecutive election wins by Obama, he has changed the face of politics for those groups of people who have not felt like they had a say or felt like they could participate before. The author further argues that as a new face in politics, he has changed the status quo from the stereotypical white bald man running for office. He did this by being able to relate to the every day kind of person. This in turn will continue to promote and energize enthusiasm in a portion of the population that has until now felt ostracized from the political realm.

The author then continued his argument in a very cogent way by furnishing the facts and figures of the election turnout numbers from the 2012 election. No other president in history had turned out such a diverse group of voters. Through his great victories he had been credited for opening the door for other minority leaders to step into the roles of political leadership where they could then make decisions representing their own social class.

Up to this point in the article, I could agree and follow the premise. I do think that Obama has changed the face of politics in our country. I think that he has opened doors. But, I believe the fallacy in the argument is to think that it was all him and him alone.

The dynamics of our society have been in flux since the mid '90's with the "dot com" era and then social media craze. These technological advances have created a journalist out of every person with a smart phone. This information age has allowed anyone to find the truth if they are willing to look hard enough for it.

I think that President Obama has changed the face of politics, but it was not because he is so relatable to the people (We know that now with his recent approval record) , it was because he could relate to the technology. The technology is then what related and energized the people.

This article was written soon after the 2012 election and I am sure that the author was still excited about the big win for his candidate that would explain the large amounts of emotion and bits of bias in his writing. I also believe that there were many other important issues that energized voters in that election as well as the large amounts of media coverage and ad campaigns for it.

The face of politics will forever be changed for those who are willing to make the changes with technology that will support them.