What’s In a Name?
How could you not vote for Jim Spoo?
That name makes campaigning insanely easy. No one is liable to forget him and as soon as they see it on the ballot, they will have an instant connection.
We know that Hillary Clinton is delving deep into the name association game with her run at the presidency. The question is whether or no the association is positive. For Hillary C., most people will not know too much about her record as senator. They will only know her as the former First Lady. They will only know her as the woman who stayed married to a man who porked his intern with a cigar.
Whether you like Hillary or not, it’s unfortunate that her campaign will not be judged on her merits, but on her name.
The other candidate with a name issue is Barack Obama. Many folks seem to think it’s not an American name. That is to say, it’s stereotypically anglo-saxon, which is a nice way of saying it’s not a white person’s name. Perhaps worse, Obama sounds a lot like Osama and we all know we are supposed to hate Osama.
The issue here is that America is made of people from the world over whose names indicate an ancestry, a lineage, and a culture of which they are often proud. It’s high time we in America embrace our otherness. True, much of how we feel when we here a name is uncontrollable. It’s deeper even than emotions. We meet someone who has the same name as our mother and a connection is instantly created.
For the candidates, managing the timbre of those connections is of paramount importance.