It’s extremely unlikely that Barack Obama and his campaign will get in legal trouble for featuring a
revised version of the presidential seal. But like Michael Dukakis riding in a tank or John Kerry declaring that he voted for war funding before he voted against it, we may have just witnessed one of those unexpected moments that, in retrospect, comes to define one of the candidate’s unflattering traits.
The decision to create the “
Seal of Obamerica” seems like an almost deliberate response to Peggy Noonan’s
column about the difference between “Old America” and “New America,” and how each party’s candidate embodies one of the two. When President Bush speaks, the Obama campaign doesn’t just want to change the rhetoric, the policies, and the man behind the lectern; apparently the seal seems a bit stodgy and old-fashioned for their tastes as well.
In November, we’ll be hard-pressed to find a voter who says they voted for McCain because some Obama staffer thought it would be a good idea to redesign the presidential seal, just as no one is going to vote against Obama because some overzealous volunteer made two women in
headscarves move further away so they would be outside camera angles. (Of course, a third
example of this,“we need more white people! we need more white people!” will be a bigger story, because it will be a recurring pattern instead of one or two instances of bad judgment.)
But the fact that the someone on the campaign said some variation of, “Hey, let’s have Obama speak with his own redesigned version of the seal,” and that either no one objected or the objections were overruled — may become a symbol of hubris and disconnect on par with the candidate’s litany of what motivates “bitter” small town voters during a fundraiser on Billionaire’s Row in San Francisco earlier this year.
The Obama camp uses the word “change” more frequently than commas and perhaps in that constant repeating of the mantra they occasionally miss that a country yearning for change wants
improvement, not change for the sake of change. What exactly was wrong with the presidential seal? The idea that a candidate and the people around him should deem it lacking, and that an upgrade would be an all-blue version that incorporates his campaign logo into the seal is… strange. The idea that no grownup was around to shake a head and say, ‘you don’t change the seal of the office you seek while on the campaign trail’ furrows the brow. Perhaps most perplexingly, why use the Latin “yes we can” as a replacement for “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of Many, One)? Wasn’t this campaign pledging to unite the country? Didn’t this guy wow the political world with a debut speech that called for “no red states or blue states, but red white and blue states?”
The old vs. new theme in this year’s matchup sometimes seems reminiscent of Apple Computer’s often hilarious “Mac vs. PC” ads.
While funny and likable as far as television commercials go, they didn’t necessarily translate into higher sales at first. Slate’s ad analyst Seth Stevenson
hit on the problem:
My problem with these ads begins with the casting. As the Mac character, Justin Long (who was in the forgettable movie Dodgeball and the forgettabler TV show Ed) is just the sort of unshaven, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster we've always imagined when picturing a Mac enthusiast. He's perfect. Too perfect. It's like Apple is parodying its own image while also cementing it. If the idea was to reach out to new types of consumers (the kind who aren't already evangelizing for Macs), they ought to have used a different type of actor.
Meanwhile, the PC is played by John Hodgman—contributor to The Daily Show and This American Life, host of an amusing lecture series, and all-around dry-wit extraordinaire. Even as he plays the chump in these Apple spots, his humor and likability are evident. (Look at that hilariously perfect pratfall he pulls off in the spot titled "Viruses.") The ads pose a seemingly obvious question—would you rather be the laid-back young dude or the portly old dweeb?—but I found myself consistently giving the "wrong" answer: I'd much sooner associate myself with Hodgman than with Long.
Obviously, we’re supposed to want to
be the Mac guy, but I suspect a lot of consumers laugh because they
relate to the PC — the world is changing too fast for him to keep up, he’s so far from cutting edge that by the time he tries something it’s obsolete, the cool crowd looks down on him, and some snot-nosed twenty-something who thinks he knows everything is ready to take his job. There’s something Charlie Brownish about the PC — he tries hard, but it never seems to work out quite right. Of course, Charlie Brown is one of the most popular characters in the world.
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