Barack Obama

Barack Obama’s Lucky Tie (Style)

By Michael Scherer | @michaelscherer | September 10, 2009 | +

This is how the President of the United States like it when the pressure is on: Cherry-red, with thin silvery-white diagonal stripes. He wore this tie last night. (See it here.) But that’s not all. Gabriel Winant, an eagle-eyed blogger at Salon, lays out the pattern.

Well, there’s last night. Then there’s the president’s quasi-State of the Union speech. (He was standing in the House of Representatives chamber, with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi behind him. It counts.) That’s not all, though. He wore this tie for his victory speech in Grant Park on the night of the election. That was a big one. He had it on when he delivered his “closing argument” speech in Canton, Ohio on October 27, 2008, and for the third debate with John McCain. And the clincher? This was his tie for the Democratic National Convention — arguably the biggest speech of his life.

First off, Winant is off about the Grant Park tie. Look closely, and you can see that the stripes are different. But the other ties all look alike. So what’s going on. Is the president superstitious, like Jeb Bartlett on the fictional West Wing? The Bartlett who says “there’s a lot of juice in that tie”?

The truth is a bit less tantalizing than we all might hope.

According to a well-placed source in the White House, “They look similar but the one last night is actually new according to folks.” So there is little hope for memorabilia collectors who want a crunch tie auction at Sotheby’s. But at least we know the man is not afraid of repeating a fashion statement.

Related Topics: lucky tie, Barack Obama

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  • treepeony

    Really now? A tie? How on earth does a tie matter on a political blog? A post like this belongs on a fashion blog or better yet it doesn’t belong on a blog at all because this is a waste of time.

    This is what you get paid for?

  • pafro
  • stuartzechman

    This has to be satire.

  • Matt

    He better give that tie to Max Baucus this afternoon…

    http://www.political-buzz.com/

  • pafro

    Greg Sargent found another example of Rep. Bubba Wilson throwing a fact-free tea tantrum. Good times. http://is.gd/37bI4

  • grape_crush

    OT, but trying to add meaningful content to another throwaway Scherer post.

    Who is doing the ‘calling out’ on this? She’s not even a particularly good liar…

  • deconstructiva

    Michael, any word about the socks? Belts and shoes did match, yes? Oh, feet don’t matter in politics since you’re often behind a podium? Think Palin. A lot of media coverage was wasted, er, spent on her feet, esp. the red naughty monkey peep toes. Thx, grape, for Sarah’s reaction, here’s her direct link – http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=131081638434

    Of course, I’m still waiting for the Sarah Palin Health Care Plan Also[tm].

  • pafro

    What I really want to know is whether that Boustananny guy used a Socialist teleprompter or if he is a real ‘Merican?

  • fourlegsgood

    Maybe he just likes red. Or it was solidarity with Hillary, who wore a red suit. OH MY GOD!!

    Seriously, the stuff people obsess about is crazy.

  • pafro

    Rep. Bubba Wilson also freaked out and called someone a liar when information came out that his hero Strom Thurmond had committed statutory rape on the 16 year-old housekeeper of his family and that she had borne Thurmond’s child. http://is.gd/37eQJ

  • Ivy_B

    Well he could hardly have worn a Nancy Reagan red suit. After all, Hillary and Nancy Pelosi had that covered.

  • deconstructiva

    …and Joe Wilson wore a BLUE tie? What was he thinking?
    Blue = Dems, Blue = NORTH Carolina and Duke. He should’ve worn either red or purple / orange to show his allegiance to South Carolina or Clemson.

  • ymmartin

    Wow MS, really slow news day huh? Well at least your colleague down the hall did a better job for his post

    http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2009/09/10/the-lost-decade/

    And you have to love this:

    “(1) I don’t know how much of this was bad luck and how much was bad policy (nobody does), but there’s really no getting around the fact that the Bush presidency was an economic debacle. Americans got poorer on his watch. The last time that happened was, well, during his father’s presidency. But that one only lasted four years, so it was different.”

  • square1

    Clearly he is taking after Tiger Woods. The big question is whether other politicians will be intimidated from wearing red ties with silvery-white diagonal stripes when Obama has a big speech.

  • kathy

    Michael: Are you off your effing rocker? Ties???

  • http://elvisberg.wordpress.com Elvis Elvisberg

    Just as Olbermann refers to “comedian Rush Limbaugh,” it seems to me that the best way to understand this stuff is as a product of “Time magazine lifestyle writer Michael Scherer.”
    -
    Atrios was on that earlier today: “I don’t know if this reflects a general unwillingness to correct Republican horsesh*t, or just a general lack of interest in knowing the facts about any policy issue. But in any case, informing readers of what they need to know is apparently not an especially high priority. Maybe people really do just want politics as gossip and theater criticism. There’s space for some of that, I guess, but I’d expect that people who want that would just go watch Entertainment Tonight and read People.”
    -
    PLEASE NOTE: Scherer is praised at Atrios’s link, at Media Matters, for having pointed out the useful fact that Joe Wilson was, of course, wrong about everything.

  • along1

    Of course you mean Jed, not Jeb (full name Josiah Edward), and Bartlet, with one ‘t’.

  • sacredh

    Repeatedly wearing a “lucky” article of clothing doesn’t seem all that unreasonable to me. An old girlfriend of mine refused to change her lucky underwear until she lost at the track. After three weeks I stuffed some flour, eggs, milk, baking powder and a dash of salt in her panties and with all that yeast…we made bread.

    If the threads aren’t serious, the comments shouldn’t be either. I want a cookie for this one.

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