For months, both presidential candidates have been using short television, radio and Internet advertisements to woo voters. But soon Americans will be able to catch a longer message from Democrat Barack Obama in the form of a 30-minute television ad.

The Obama campaign has purchased half-hour time slots for the evening of October 29 on at least two national networks. The 8 p.m. slot will allow his campaign to produce an uninterrupted, detailed message to voters. Obama is not the first presidential candidate to try this tactic. One of the first half-hour political commercials was given by then vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1952, in what later became referred to as the “Checkers” speech. The last candidate to take this approach was Independent Ross Perot in 1992.

The Obama campaign also is trying some new advertising methods. Those who watch satellite television provided by the Dish Network might have channel-surfed past channel 073-00, the “Obama Channel.” The channel, paid for by the Democratic candidate’s campaign, airs Obama advertising 24 hours a day. And those playing video games on the popular Xbox system might notice something interesting on their screen – advertisements for Obama. Xbox users have spotted Obama billboards in racing games and Obama messages on scoreboards in football games.

Candidates use advertising tools as a way to “brand” themselves to voters.

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OBAMA, Barack, a Senator from Illinois; born in Honolulu, Hawaii, August 4, 1961; obtained early education in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Hawaii; continued education at Occidental College, Los Angeles, Calif.; received a B.A. in 1983 from Columbia University, New York City; worked as a community organizer in Chicago, Ill.; studied law at Harvard University, where he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, and received J.D. in 1991; lecturer on constitutional law, University of Chicago; member, Illinois State senate 1997-2004; elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2004 for term beginning January 3, 2005.

David Greenberg, assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said in a January 13 Washington Post article that Obama’s “allure” stems from his “near-perfect pitch in talking about race to white America.” Greenberg quoted from social commentator that a President Obama would be a “ringing symbol” that racism no longer rules in the United States. That, said Greenberg, makes Obama the “great white hope. “Greenberg said many voters and political pundits “remain intoxicated ... with the hope” that Obama can “deliver ... a categorically different kind of change” from Hillary Clinton or the Republican presidential candidates.

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Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr., a black Kenyan of Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, a White American from Wichita, Kansas. His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student. They separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Obama's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982. After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro's home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old. He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for several years and then back to Indonesia for her fieldwork. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995. As an adult Obama admitted that during high school he used marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol, which he described at the 2008 Civil Forum on the Presidency as his greatest moral failure.

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