Politcal blog #3

The extent of the media coverage I encountered during election day were the election results on CNN's website and the speeches after Obama was announced the victor. I was on CNN's website periodically throughout the day checking on who had won what states. It was very easy to check, they presented the information very well.It was interesting that one could check on the exact percentages of each state. It was also easy to see who had won which state and which ones were still undecided. They updated the information so often I was able to see each candidates electoral vote amounts growing. I can't really say they had a bias in either direction because it's information you can't sway.

It was interesting then to see the speeches afterward. I thought Obama's was really uplifting. The was a real hopeful air about the whole speech, all the talk of change in America for the good was brought to a head in this, now we just need to see if it will happen. That's one thing that was in the media a lot. Obama's whole image was shaped to be that of and outsider (to a certain degree) who wants to come in and clean up the stale, stalled regime that was under Bush. He was very charismatic in the way he used the media. More than often, if I was hearing bad things about a candidate it was about McCain.

Which brings me to McCain. I don't think he used the media, or was able to use the media nearly as well as Obama did. McCain's imaged to me, throughout the entire election process was that of an old man who wasn't going to change anything. After eight years of Bush that's exactly what most people did not want. It doesn't matter if McCain would have lived up to this image or not, he could not compete with Obama's slogan of change. Another rather unattractive aspect of McCain's campaign that I observed a bit later in the election process were his ads against Obama. They seemed a bit dirtier than the anti-McCain ads. Some try to make him look like a terrorist, like this one, which I'm not sure if was aired or not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppQszYT3djE . McCain seemed a little desperate towards the end of the election, which makes it a little funny that he seemed to do such an about-face when his losing speech time came around. Of course he would have to seem like a gracious loser who has a lot of faith in the new president, it is just interesting to observe the quick change.

All in all, Obama was obviously able to use the media to his advantage much more than McCain was able to. With that, I'm not really surprised Obama won, nobody wanted four more years of Bush.