Obama and the re-branding of America

Andrew Sullivan's lengthy profile of Barack Obama is now accessible on the The Atlantic's website. It's an interesting read, though I found myself disagreeing with a lot of it. One passage, however, struck me as being particularly persuasive, and it echoes sentiments that I've expressed previously on this blog. Sullivan writes:

What does he offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.

Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.

I know there are a lot of people out there who think that there is something improper or unseemly about analyzing the issue in this way, that we should confine our analysis of the candidates to their qualifications and their views on various issues. After all, it wouldn't be fair to John Edwards or Hillary Clinton, who obviously cannot transform themselves into minorities with Muslim-sounding names.

But I think that fundamentally misapprehends the nature of presidential politics. This isn't a meritocracy. If it was, then none of the top-tier candidates in either party (except perhaps McCain) would be top-tier candidates. There are plenty of more qualified politicians out there. The reality is that all sorts of factors that have little to do with experience or ideology are nonetheless relevant to selecting a president. The president isn't just the leader of our country, he (or she) is the face of the country, the spokesperson for Brand U.S.A.

It is therefore absolutely legitimate (vital even) to think about how that person will be perceived by the rest of the world. The answer to this question bears directly on our national interests.

And I think Sullivan is absolutely right on this score. The election of Obama as president would, overnight, dramatically improve the image of the United States abroad, and his name, face, and background could provide us, in a way that no other president could, with an opportunity to make some real inroads in the primary ideological struggle of the 21st century. For many reasons, it would be much harder to vilify an Obama-led America than a Bush-led America (and, to a lesser degree, a Clinton or Edwards-led America).

That's a real asset that Obama brings to the table, and I think it is something voters should consider when making their decision (it's not the only relevant consideration, of course, but it's an important one).