There’s a quote in Jane Austen’s Emma that tickles me pink.  Mr. Weston is talking to May about the hypochondriacal Mrs. Churchill.  “I hope,” he says, “I have not been severe upon poor Mrs. Churchill.  If she is ill I should be sorry to do her injustice; but there are some traits in her character which make it difficult for me to speak of her with the forebearance I wish.” (Chapter 17)  If Obama is really trying as hard as he seems, I am sorry to do him injustice.  However, I believe he is victim to his own audacious marketing campaign.

You see it everywhere.  Marketers vie with each other to use the most buzzwords, to pose themselves as the best, most concerned, most socially conscious.  As my bottle of water notes: “Aquafina is a smart choice because every serving contains zero calories and is sodium free.”  Ummm … duh?  That’s stating the obvious as though it were some virtue inherent in the unique properties of the product itself.  But let’s be real: Aquafina is water.  Water, by definition, “contains zero calories.”

In the book Starbucked, Taylor Clark notes with amusement how Starbucks falls prey to the same trap of over-eager marketing.  In their zest to embrace all things corporate responsible, they actually go too far.  When you get your caffeine fix, your cup trumpets their “ethically-traded coffees.”  You see posters on the wall parading their commitment to “One Planet” sustainability.  From their stock-option program to their insurance plans for employees, the coffee giant goes out of their way to market themselves as a kinder, more socially responsible company.  “For a big corporation, they’re phenomenal and progressive in many ways,” the author says, quoting a former employee.  “But they promote themselves as being even better than they actually are.  So they open themselves up to be analyzed according to the highest standards.”  (Starbucked, Little, Brown, & Co., 2007)  So when people find out that the Mermaid cheats employees out of their insurance packages, pays cents per pound for their “sustainable, shade-grown coffees,” drives competitors out of business with ruthless undercutting, and generally behaves like a corporate giant, they’re indignant.  But let’s get real.  We’re talking about a coffeeshop. The “Starbucks Experience” is a caffeine rush.  This is what companies do to survive; we want them to be what they claim to be.

Obama faces a similar clash of the real world.  This is a man who came in on a nice slogan: “Hope and Change.”  I roundly criticized W. for fighting two unconstitutional wars, ballooning the Federal debt, expanding warrantless wiretaps, pouring Porkulus money into failing companies, illegally holding enemy combatants in Guantanamo, and shredding the Constitution with his Patriot Act.  Obama promised to change all that.  Today I criticize him roundly for fighting two unconstitutional wars, ballooning the Federal debt in ways W. only dreamed of, continuing illegal wiretaps, pouring twice the Porkulus money that W. did into failing companies, holding enemy combatants in Guantanamo, and shredding the Constitution by renewing the Patriot Act.  What, in the name of common sense, has changed?  The only difference - and it’s minor, because neither has the courage to follow through on their “convictions” - is their positions on family values.  George Bush claimed to be pro-life and did nothing; Obama claimed to be pro-gay and is currently defending DOMA.  Is it any wonder that even liberal institutions like TIME Magazine simply tip over laughing cynically when this slick marketer wins the Nobel Peace Prize?

As consumers, we’re surrounded by slick marketing.  If Obama wants to avoid going down in history as another peanut farmer, he’d better stop marketing and start producing.  Just as with poor Mrs. Churchill, the public is having a harder and harder time treating this man with forebearance.  Even his staunchest supporters are realizing that that something ill in his character was more concerned with marketing the cult of his persona than it was in defining his work by a set of goals.  This President needs to work fast to avoid a landslide in the midterms, not to mention in 2012.  I personally hope he doesn’t.  I hope that America learns from this mistake, moves on, and elects a President of substance and leadership.

But they probably won’t.  I keep going to Starbucks.  It’s the audacity of marketing, after all.