For many U.S. citizens, as revealed through the presidential election campaigns and outcome, President elect Barack Obama’s inauguration speech this Tuesday will set the tone for four years of hoped for change. Throughout Obama’s campaign, his message has sought to define an America through the needs, hopes and dreams of its citizens. He seeks to define the way things are by who we are. The exigencies of “real” American people are supposed to dictate Obama’s rhetoric. The worldview Obama calls to mind differs greatly from the past administration’s figure, George W. Bush. Tinged with a patriotic and proud nostalgia, Obama readily invokes images of Abraham Lincoln and other classic moments of political and American history far gone from the recent political image.
Obama’s rhetoric is situated in a time where a new frontier means not a geographical but a digitized landscape. His effective use of digital media infused his persona {and thus his proposed ideology} with all the brightness of pixel and pop, though with seriously hopeful undertones of strength and determination. “Yes we can,” personified, translated to song, to image, to color.
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