Yes We Brand (but no, we shouldn’t)
OK, I love the next president plenty, I was quite fervent during the election about my support for him, and I’m impressed with how he’s handling the transition so far. But this rubs me the wrong way:
Really? A fleece? Or even if it was a skateboard or a set of pots and pans or a video game, let me be clear: Marketing your individual brand as part of an election is absolutely fine, obviously. But once you are actually elected, you need to retire that shit.
By assuming the office of president, you become a public entity. Obviously, you’re still an individual, and obviously, it’s hoped (by the people who voted for you, at least) that you’ll exemplify the qualities espoused by your personal brand. But as far as marketing—and the symbolism inherent in it—goes, your duty as president is to represent the office, and by extension the country, at the expense of that personal brand.
Whatever the mundane realities of Obama’s victory, the symbolic point of it is not that he is so great, but that the United States of America are so great. (And for all its not-insubstantial failings, the U.S. really is great.) To continue to promote the Obama name and logo as opposed to the office and the country’s own symbols hews awfully close to that cult-of-personality hooey his opponents kept bringing up during the race.
