The Obama phenomenon is struggling in Israel

Reading a US election campaign article written outside the US media network offers you the chance to broaden your opinions.

US Perception

Obama has been winning over the voters with his charismatic personality and confident speech delivery and the US media have been lapping it up. Only recently, after Clinton accused the media of being overly critical towards her, have reporters began to self-assess their work.

The recent court case of Tony Rezko, has allowed the media to critically examine Obama's connection to Rezko. Having been involved with Rezko over his personal real estate dealings, Clinton's campaign released a statement urging Obama to confront the issue.

Had I typed Obama and Rezko into a Google search a couple of weeks ago, I wouldn't have achieved the same amount of links as I can now find. The media has put it firmly on the agenda, arguably off the back of Clinton's complaints, and this could be an issue that comes back to haunt Obama.

Israel perception

The checkpoint Jerusalem blog article highlighted an issue that is beginning to creep through into US media and could start to become crucial in the next stage of this campaign.

It will be interesting to come back to this topic in a couple of weeks and compare the amount of articles that appear in Google. On March 7, the search "Obama viewed with suspicion in Israel" generated 142,000 related results.

Obama is generally viewed within Israel with suspicion is the topic discussed in the blog.

There are a couple of US mainstream media companies that are beginning to pick up on this issue. The blog links you to an example.

Scaremongering

Scaremongering is always used in politics, especially within a presidential campaign and I think this technique will begin to push this topic further into the mainstream media.

It can already be seen to be trickling through. The blog allowed had in-linking to Obama's opposition scaremongering techniques.

McCain has had to apologize for two members of his party for deliberating using Obama's full name Barack Hussein Obama and deliberately trying to provoke controversy.

The drudge report claimed that the picture of Obama in traditional African tribal dress was slipped by Clinton staffers. If true, this is another example of how quickly a topic can be grabbed by politicians and media and used to their advantage.

Photo from Chicago Tribune