PrintSeptember 2, 2010
Obama's Evolving Image
An image, as any PR pro can tell you, has a life of its own. It can be manipulated and shaped to an extent, but only to an extent. Once past a difficult-to-define but easily recognized point, it is what it is and can be adjusted only on the margins. This is as true of presidents as anyone else. Consider Franklin D. Roosevelt. Whatever you might think of his policies, the image is clarity itself. Cheerful, insouciant, debonair, a man of great optimism and good will, if confined to his own terms. A man whose personality so overcame his disability as to render it irrelevant. Under the conditions of the Depression, any other son of the upper classes sporting a pince-nez and a cigarette holder would have been run out of town on a rail. Not Roosevelt -- they simply added to his charm, a charm as evident today in his photos as it was during his lifetime. That charm never failed him -- except in the case of Stalin, who was, of course, immune to anything human. Despite the efforts -- efforts...(Read Full Article)
