Only Connect

Michael Hirschorn has a fantastic article in this month's Atlantic on the campaigns' digital personas and the increased value of genuineness for the YouTube generation:

McCain understood this new culture of authenticity intuitively even during the 2000 election, when he branded his campaign the “Straight Talk Express.” In this endlessly mediated age, even authenticity is a form of branding. Indeed, precisely because we live in an era of endlessly manipulable images, authenticity is the most truly prized brand attribute. But McCain, 100 percent authentic or not, has compellingly sold realness, and may do so all the way to the White House.

This is why an Obama-McCain match-up would be the most engrossing in recent memory: not only an opportunity to see two master communicators go at each other but a chance to alter political discourse for good. The old political speech has started sounding so canned that we literally cannot hear it. I could listen to Hillary all day without really understanding a word she says. It’s not just the unearned intimacy; it’s the way everything seems manipulated and focus-tested by teams of professionals to the point where it becomes a kind of elision, a non-speak.