Humanizing the President

The NPR Broadcast I'll be talking about can be found here:

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/11/160898373/inside-obamas-decisions-from-libya-to-lunch

This broadcast touches upon President Obama's behavior hidden between his big meetings and decisions. While those decisions and meetings are what are commonly broadcasted and what we see, I find the other aspects of the President's life to also be interesting.

The primary reason for this is that every single politician that made a speech during either the RNC or the DNC made sure to feature their life story. Usually toward the beginning of their speech, some left it for later. But their attempt to connect to their audience is blatant and, for me, wholly unbelievable. 

When Michelle Obama talks about how Barack's car had a huge whole in the floor or Anne Romney talks about how Mitt was shy and such, I'm completely uninterested. These are fairly private moments about people who I don't really know or care that much about in terms of who they are. I do care about their policy decisions and what could influence that, but I don't expect them to be like me. When my friends describe their private moments, if they were to do it as blatantly as those politicians, I'd be bored out of my mind.

This changes when you have someone observing these politicians outside of their habitat. That is why I find this NPR broadcast to be more interesting. It offers a peek into the President's life when no one is looking that hard. The broadcast itself seems to be a bit trimmed from the one I heard on the radio, so I apologize if I reference anything seemingly omitted from the broadcast.

Essentially, this is very a broadcast which humanizes Obama. It does this much better than any other method used so far. For example, at one point the author, Michael Lewis, is invited by Obama to his "favorite place in the White House," which turns out to be the Truman Balcony. This balcony is found in the private area reserved for the President's family. The description Lewis gives of Obama being nervous at the fact that he is basically bringing a stranger home is incredibly humanizing. It is a very real, human problem.

That is one example of many featured in the broadcast and in Lewis's article. This broadcast also lends itself especially to the ethos aspect of the pistes. Seeing Obama as just some guy truly equalizes the President in a way seeing him talk on TV could never do.

Lewis' article in Vanity Fair can be found here:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/09/barack-obama-michael-lewis#slide=1