Endorsement From Winfrey Quantified: A Million Votes

"Presidential candidates make the most of celebrity supporters, showing them off in television ads and propping them on podiums to stand and wave. No doubt Mike Huckabee’s aborted campaign for the Republican nomination got some sort of bump from those commercials of him with Chuck Norris, right?

"Or maybe not. Politicians and pundits routinely claim that celebrity endorsements have little sway on voters, and two economists set out recently to test the premise. What they found was that at least one celebrity does hold influence in the voting booth: Oprah Winfrey."

FOR FULL ARTICLE:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/business/media/11oprah.html?ex=1234065600&en=24d0b474c6a7978a&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=BU-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M056-ROS-0808-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click&mkt=BU-D-I-NYT-MODMOD-M056-ROS-0808-HDR

POLITICS: Obama turns celebrity title on McCain

HONOLULU (Aug. 11) -- Barack Obama is out to show that two can play the "celebrity game" with a new ad Monday labeling his Republican opponent John McCain as Washington's biggest celebrity.

The Democratic presidential candidate, vacationing in Hawaii, released an ad, titled "Embrace," that paints McCain as both a regular on the TV talk show circuit and a consummate political insider, chummy with President Bush and lobbyists alike.

"For decades, he's been Washington's biggest celebrity," the announcer says, cutting to a "Saturday Night Live" introduction of the McCain during an appearance on the show.

The ad shows McCain on ABC's "The View" and NBC's "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno. And it shows Bush -- hugging McCain, being hugged by McCain and kissing McCain on the forehead.

FOR FULL ARTICLE: http://news.aol.com/elections/article/obama-turns-celebrity-tag-on-mccain/127135

POLITICS: Obama's Symbolic Importance

By Jonathan Weisman

In his closed door meeting with House Democrats Tuesday night, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama delivered a real zinger, according to a witness, suggesting that he was beginning to believe his own hype.

Obama was waxing lyrical about last week's trip to Europe, when he concluded, according to the meeting attendee, "this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for."

The 200,000 souls who thronged to his speech in Berlin came not just for him, he told the enthralled audience of congressional representatives. "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions," he said, according to the source.

On Wednesday morning, House leadership aides pushed back against interpretations of this comment as self-aggrandizing, saying that when the presumptive Democratic nominee said, "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America," he was actually trying to deflect attention from himself.

No tape of the event exists and no one is denying the quote.

But one leadership aide said the full quote put it into a different context. According to that aide, Obama said, "It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign -- that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol."