Politics, Elections, and Perception

Most of the time, we deal with media in a passive role. You don't know it yet, but you're being entertained by my words (albeit in a more informative role I'm sure). This shapes your beliefs in not so obvious ways, and more importantly, your perceptions. In reading the daily news something caught my eye, Presidential hopeful and political newbie Senator Barack Obama made front page news on CNN by just announcing a daring plan thats almost been a democratic standard. Universal Healthcare within six years. Something more interesting was said though not two paragraphs later: its being the 2008 Democratic Primary theme. What I mean is that every canidate believes and wants to implement this Universal Healthcare. Hilary has been a strong supporter and is also making it a central theme, and every single canidate suppports it while not making it front and center of their issues. But what gets me is that the only one with the picture on the website is Obama himself.

The entire article not only focuses on Obama and spends more print talking about his views, but speaks his plan like its something new. With good reason. while he stated its a Democratic main issue along with Universal Education and that Democrats "need to cling to the core values that make us Democrats, the belief in universal health care, the belief in universal education, and then we should be agnostic in terms of how to achieve those values."
By making it his central issue, other canidates have to follow suit and support it because they know what the media knows. And that is Obama is popular, and its growing quickly. Once Hilary's announcement loses its sensationalism, Obama will be continuing to get free publicity by just making these sort of little announcements, sort of how an incumbent President can get their name out weeks in and out before an election. The caption under this image says it all: "Sen. Barak Obama has staked a position in a field that has been dominated by a chief rival for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination -- health care."

No matter what happens, its a good cause to champion and more importantly even if Obama loses the primaries, those things will be implemented in office soley because its now become "an issue". While its not so interesting that the media is once again making sensational something unsensational, I'm interested in their choice and its impact on the other canidates. §