Barack Obama's Body: The Presidency, the Body Politic, and the Contest over American National Identity

Polity

Volumn 45, Issue 4, 2013, Pages 469-498

  Lowndes, Joseph ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OREGON   (United States)

Author keywords

Abraham Lincoln; American presidency; Barack Obama; Jacksonian democracy; political symbolism; race and racism

Indexed keywords

EID: 84887830082     PISSN: 00323497     EISSN: 17441684     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1057/pol.2013.22     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. On the role of race in Obama's candidacy and presidency, see among others, Taeku Lee, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow? Post-Racial and Pan-Racial Politics in the Age of Obama," Daedelus 140: Race, Inequality and Culture, Volume 2 (Spring 2011): 136-150;
2. Christopher Parker, Mark Sawyer, and Christopher Towler, "A Black Man in the White House? The Role of Racism and Patriotism in the 2008 Presidential Election," Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 6 (Spring 2009): 193-217;
3. Ron Walters, "Barack Obama and the Politics of Blackness," Journal of Black Studies 38 (September 2007): 7-29.
4. Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Cambridge: Bellknap Press, 1993).
5. Jeffrey Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
6. Sidney Milkis and Michael Nelson, The American Presidency: Origins and Development of the US Presidency, 1776-2007, 5th edn (Washington DC: CQ Press, 2008).
7. Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 43.
8. Anne Norton, Republic of Signs: Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 88.
9. Ernst Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Mythology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 7.
10. Michael Rogin, Ronald Reagan the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 82.
11. Adams, quoted in Eric Slaughter, The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 128.
12. Sidney Milkis and Michael Nelson, Origins and Development, 122-23.
13. Sean Wilentz, Andrew Jackson (New York: Times Books, 2005), 7.
14. Milkis and Nelson, Origins and Development, 123.
15. Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 180-81.
16. Andrew Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (New York: Knopf, 2003), 166.
17. Remini, Life of Andrew Jackson, 166.
18. James G. Barber, Andrew Jackson, A Portrait Study (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), 6.
19. Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 931.
20. Patricia Hill Collins, "Like One of the Family: Race, Ethnicity, and the Paradox of US National Identity," Ethnic and Racial Studies 24 (January 2001): 3-28;
21. Priscilla Yamin, American Marriage: A Political Institution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
22. This lover of plainspoken humor enjoyed telling a story about an American living in England who, tired of hearing George Washington being derided, hung a crude likeness of the hero in his host's privy. This was, to Lincoln, "very appropriate for their [sic] is Nothing that Will Make an Englishman Shit So quick as the Sight of Genl Washington."Harold Holzer, "How the Printmakers Saw Lincoln: Not-so-Honest Portraits of Honest Abe," Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 14, No. 2.
23. Herbert Mitgang. "The Art of Lincoln,"American Art Journal, 2:1 (Spring 1970): 9.
24. Holzer, "How the Printmakers Saw Lincoln," 148.
25. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003674571/, accessed on June 2013.
26. Thomas J. Craughwell, Stealing Lincoln's Body (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 20.
27. Hugh Gregory Gallagher. FDR's Splendid Deception (St. Petersburg, FL: Vandamere Press, 1999), 61-62.
28. Davis W. Houck and Amos Kiewe, FDR's Body Politics: The Rhetoric of Disability (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2003), 32.
29. Gallagher, FDR's Splendid Deception, 74.
30. Houke and Kiewe, FDR's Body Politics, 95.
31. Donald Ritchie. Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2007), 92.
32. Janny Scott, "The Long Run: The Story of Obama, Written By Obama," New York Times, March 18, 2008.
33. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19751-2004Jul27.html, accessed on September 5, 2013.
34. Obama, "The World That Stands as One," Berlin, July 24, 2008. http://obamaspeeches.com/, accessed June 2013.
35. Editorial, Dallas Morning News, "Obama strikes right notes in Berlin," Friday, July 25, 2008.
36. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-502443-162-4306672-502443.html, accessed June 2013.
37. Andrew Sullivan, "Goodbye to All That," The Atlantic Monthly, December 2007. http:// www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/12/goodbye-to- all-that-why-obama-matters/306445/, accessed June 2013.
38. Obama himself has sought to constrain interpretive possibilities. His campaign was quite careful, for instance, to limit his association with American Muslims. When Keith Ellison, a Muslim House member from Minnesota, offered to speak for Obama at a rally at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, Michigan, an Obama aide asked him to cancel the potentially controversial trip. "I will never forget the quote," Mr. Ellison recalled. "He said, 'We have a very tightly wrapped message'." While Obama visited numerous churches and synagogues throughout his campaign, he visited no mosques. And in one publicized incident, two Muslim women in head scarves were asked not to stand behind Obama at a rally in Detroit. Such image management, while understandable given the ways in which Obama has been racially demonized by his opponents, is at odds with the inclusive, participatory movement discourse that he employs. Andrea Elliot, "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama," New York Times, June 24, 2008.
39. Mark Penn, "Weekly Strategic Review on Hillary Clinton for President Campaign," March 19, 2007, http://www.theatlantic.com/a/green-penn-3-19- 07.mhtml, accessed June 2013.
40. Rick Perlstein. "Birthers, Health Care Hecklers and the Rise of Right-Wing Rage," Washington Post, August 16, 2009.
41. Philip A. Klinkner, Nicholas Anastasi, Jack Cartwright, Matthew Creeden, Will Rusche, Jesse Stinebring, and Hashem Zikry, "The 2012 Election and the Sources of Partisan Polarization: A Survey of American Political Attitudes," The Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center, Hamilton College, 2013.
42. Venart, http://dcist.com/2009/01/faireys-obama-hope-portrait-unveile.php, accessed June 2013.
43. http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/daily-brief/2009/01/28/obamicon-me, accessed June 2013.
44. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-08-06/news/36798091-1-joker- president-obama-poster, accessed June 2013.
45. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/5973064/ Barack-Obama-Joker-socialism-poster-denounced-as-racist.html, accessed June 2013;
46. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/08/ barack-obama-laughingstock. html, accessed June 2013.
47. See Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
48. On Limbaugh, see for instance http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2010/12/ 01/us-house- passes-backdoor-reparations-for-african-americans, accessed June 2013. On Beck, see http://www.today .com/id/32197648/ns/today-today- entertainment/t/fox-news-host-says-obama-racist/#.UbeM6-uhCFI, accessed June 2013. On Williams, see http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/ markwilliams-steps-aside-as-chairman-of-tea-party-express/58402/, accessed June 2013.
49. http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/weird/Outrage-Over-Carnival-Game- With-Obamas-Likeness-99991634.html, accessed June 2013.
50. "Obama-rama Boardwalk Game at the Jersey Shore (Seaside Heights, New Jersey)" http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=EDpuYFmgzpc, accessed June 2013. "Seaside Heights game with Obama caricature angers some Shore-goers, others claim free speech," Tuesday, August 10, 2010, http://www.nj.com/ news/index.ssf/2010/08/seaside-heights-game-with-obam.html, accessed June 2013.
51. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/25/1164628/-President-Barack-Obama- Is-the-Most-Threatened-President-In-History, accessed June 2013.
52. Laura Berlant, "Epistemology of State Emotion," in Dissent in Dangerous Times, ed. Austin Sarat (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 46-80;
53. Ann Cvetkovitch, "Public Feelings," South Atlantic Quarterly 106 (Summer 2007): 459-68;
54. Eve Sedgewick, "Melanie Klein and the Difference Affect Makes," South Atlantic Quarterly 106 (Summer 2007): 625-42.
55. See H. Berger Jr., "Bodies and Texts," Representations 17 (1987): 144-66;
56. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 3 vols. (New York: Vintage 1980-1988);
57. Diana Fuss, Identification Papers: Readings on Psychoanalysis, Sexuality, and Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995);
58. Yannis Stravakakis, Lacan and the Political (Princeton, NJ: Routledge Press, 1999).
59. "President Obama's remarks on Trayvon Martin (full transcript)," http://articles.washingtonpost. com/2013-07-19/politics/ 40672554-1-trayvon-martin-stand-your-ground-president-obama-s, accessed June 2013.