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July 8, 2008

The symbolism of Obama's mass rally

By Bill Tate

The Democratic Party has announced that Barack Obama, who claims he will close corporate tax loopholes to pay for other proposals, will not accept the party's presidential nomination at the site where the rest of the party's convention is being held, but at a separate location: one whose name has been bought -- or at least partially paid for -- by a corporation that takes advantage of just such a tax dodge.

The new plans call for Obama to accept the Dems' nod, not at the Pepsi Center where the rest of the convention will occur, but at a football stadium whose naming rights are owned by Invesco, Ltd. According to Wikiedia, Invesco is an investment firm headquartered in Atlanta. However, "on 3 December 2007, Invesco PLC moved its primary stock market listing from the London Stock Exchange to the NYSE and became domiciled in Bermuda", a place in which U.S. corporations' tax obligations mysteriously disappear--as if in some Bermuda tax triangle.

Obama has railed against such corporate tax loopholes in the past. And he has vowed to pay for some of his proposals "by closing tax loopholes and tax havens that are being manipulated." 

A presidential candidate's acceptance speech is widely regarded as the most important moment of his campaign, a time when he has the nation's undivided attention and when he can introduce, or re-introduce, himself to the public before the start of the traditional fall campaign. That Obama would take the extraordinary step of moving the event from the convention hall to this particular site speaks of, at best, a tin ear to the symbolism or, at worst, hypocrisy.

Big Media, of course, has ignored this, focusing their coverage instead on the Obama camp's claim that more than 75,000 people may be on hand when the Big O accepts the party's nomination in Denver later this summer. Also ignored is the role that fund-raising failures and poor planning may have had on the decision. 

However, now that the decision has been made, maybe the Obama camp can learn something from it. Perhaps they can sell naming rights to their campaign. Maybe Goldman Sachs, which according to OpenSecrets.org is the largest of Obama's many large campaign-contribution bundlers, can buy the rights, meaning that the media--as with stadiums whose naming rights have been purchased--would have to refer to "the Obama-Goldman Sachs presidential campaign."

William Tate is the author of a new novel,  A Time Like This.
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