Social Media POTUS

"The media is the message," so saith Marshall McLuhan. And President Obama gets the message. He now has a staff of around twenty dweebs who keep his image flooding all the social media platforms in order to connect with those who rely on this new communication technology to get their news and opinion ... see: New York Times Story. These message multipliers allow the POTUS (President of the United States) to reach, through stealthy surrogates, a far larger audience for his agenda. Even though he rarely performs these postings, they are made to appear so ... and this lends a super-human panache to our president.

Is this fair? In our new gimmicky world ...  unconstrained by a sense of proportion or priorities ... of course it is fair. NFL teams now charge our government millions to pay tribute, during their half-time shows to our fallen military men and women ... see: Huffington Post Article. So, if nothing is really now what it appears to be ... and our president doesn't write the Teleprompter speeches he performs ...why shouldn't his postings on social media also be an artifice?

Mr. Cool

The then Senator Obama once told Harry Reid that his "gift" was being able to read from a teleprompter so easily.  That certainly is true, but he has a much larger asset ... and that is his "coolness".  Marshall McLuhan once prophetically observed that television is a cool medium.  And President Obama fits this medium like a chamois glove.  He even strides "cool."  I seldom can watch him perform on television without singing to myself that old 1959 Coasters' song Charlie Brown:

Who walks in the classroom, cool and slow
Who calls the English teacher, Daddy-O      (see: All Lyrics)

So, in the upcoming Presidential election, Obama (I like to call him The Barry to reprise that other cool media character, The Donald), has the natural advantage in the upcoming debates.  Neither Rick Santorum nor Mitt Romney nor Newt Gingrich are particularly cool personalities ... Romney is cooler than the other two, but still boiling hot compared to The Barry.  What does this suggest?  To me, it implies that, if the election is determined on emotion (as it was in 2008), Obama will win in a walk.  However, if the U.S. electorate chooses to view things this fall with a preponderance of logic, then Obama will loose in a landslide.  It should turn out to be a classic battle between the head and the heart.

And what will determine the mood of electorate then?  My guess would be the degree of angst (created by the world situation) that is roiling the voters ... the hotter things are, the less well "coolness" will play.