Obama's "Compassionate Liberalism" photo ops

Now that Obama has opened up America's vast, gaping, race wounds with his vicious Philidelphia speech I think we can all see that there is a throbbing, wounded, heart beating in every instapunk and derbyshire. I'm calling for an all out war on the poverty of spirit. Leftists and liberals must renew their outreach to those whom PC has left bloodied and inarticulate, unable to use the "n" word even in private conversation. But what would that outreach look like? How can a fatally tanned Obama ever hope to reassure the vast right wing middle of the roader that he isn't going to force them all to listen to rap music or applaud Michael Jordan?

Chuckling and the Left Coaster have both separately hit on what must be Obama's new strategy: Compassionate Liberalism. The Left Coaster observed a few days ago that Obama needs to be photographed with world leaders (hugging and kissing optional) to counter McCain's recent old guy in a suit tour of world leader photo ops. This will show that Obama is not just a man for the people, he's a man for the elite. More important than his ability to inspire ordinary Americans is his ability to look normal (and not have baggy pants or walk with a hip hop swagger) with the great and good.

Chuckling today, quoting the Washington Post, observed that what Obama needs to do is, essentially, tigerwoodize himself:

This is why I say, play up Obama's white heritage as much as possible. He needs to start posing with his mother's family a lot more, not the United Nations crew of brothers and cousins he's normally seen running with. Staffers need to start snapping as many pictures as possible of him putting mayonnaise on his sandwiches and shaking hands straight up and down (no more low-fives that evolve into a shake with that pat on the back). He should also be banned from speaking at any kind of Baptist church (not just the United Church of Christ) and should just stick to churches that only use a pipe organ and where folks sing their songs solemnly and straight from a hymnal.

People in the know may remember that the distinguishing feature, in fact the only feature, of Bush's compassionate conservativism was an endless series of images of Bush hugging black people on the White House's "compassionate conservativsm" page. Bush kissed a lot of black babies to explain to us, visually, that he'd never (for example) let an entire city drown and abandon its populace just because it was majority poor and black. Good times. My gentle suggestion is that Obama start doing the same thing. He might want to denounce himself a few times, or at the very least he can be filmed cursing Michelle and the girls. If he can be photographed with those little plaid pants and tasselled shoes, I think we are home free.