Washington diary: The Obama effect

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By Matt Frei BBC News, Washington

In tight economic times one thing that continues to sell well is the Obama family.

The August Wilson play that Mr Obama saw is a sell-out

The stall outside our office is still flogging Obama tea towels, T-shirts and umbrellas. The New York Times is advertising historic Obama medallions and Time magazine continues to sell its Inauguration Day specials almost five months after the 44th president took the oath.

The Obamas have also become an inadvertent product placement phenomenon.

The cardigan that Michelle bought from J Crew and wore on her visit to London has been flying off the shelves.

The August Wilson play Joe Turner's Come and Gone about black Americans in early 19th century and playing at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway, became a sell out at a time when many theatres remain half empty.

Two-week wait

The Obamas went to see the play last Saturday on a date night out in the Big Apple. I called Blue Hill, the west village restaurant where they dined on organic upstate cuisine, and asked if I could book a table: "Impossible for two weeks," the Maitre d' told me.

By the way, Mr Obama's date, which involved a small army of secret service agents, a motorcade and a smaller version of Air Force One, cost the tax payer $24,000 (£14,500).

It is a measure of the goodwill towards him that this expense did not cause a flap in hard times. Imagine if Gordon Brown had done the same...

This did not stop David Letterman from having fun with it: "It lasted four hours and cost $24,000. And former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer says 'Yeah, that's about right'."

My daughter went on a school trip to the Washington restaurant where the Obamas had dined before they moved into the White House. "I sat at their table," she told me excitedly.

Then there is the mobile dog drinking bowl that failed to convince the investors on the BBC's Dragons' Den but did convince Michelle Obama. Bo, the nation's first dog, now slurps from it. Orders have shot up.

I almost forgot to mention the books. There are the two Mr Obama has written himself - which are still levitating at the top of the best sellers list - and there are other people's books, which have been propelled there because the president happens to be reading them.

During the transition, the newly-elected leader was reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals. Barack Obama wanted inspiration.

For now, any product placed in the vicinity of the Obama family is certain to sell. They could single-handedly revive the stricken advertising market.

The book catapulted up the charts, despite the fact that it had been published three years before.

Just this week Mr Obama told my colleague Justin Webb that he was reading Joseph O'Neill's novel Netherland, about an uprooted Dutchman in search of a nation.

The writer is half Irish and Turkish. He was brought up in Mozambique, South Africa, Iran and England. You can see why the bi-racial president - who was brought up in Hawaii and Indonesia - liked the book.

In fact, you might say that the books and their reader gel all too predictably. But that is beside the point. Netherland's sales rose by 40% to 95,000 during a recession when book buying is an endangered activity.

But do not expect this president to boost the sales of too many books - he first mentioned that he was reading Netherland a month ago.

Mr Obama clearly likes to savour good prose slowly.

Corporate sponsorship

Product placement does not work with every president.

George W Bush was an avid reader with a rather eclectic and surprising taste in books.

When I interviewed him in early 2008, he told me he was reading Alastair Horne's excellent account of the Algerian civil war called a Savage War of Peace. The book did not pounce onto the best seller list.

He also said he was getting stuck into the works of Albert Camus. They did not budge on Amazon - perhaps because no one could imagine Mr Bush cosying up to anything French, even in translation.

For now, any product placed in the vicinity of the Obama family is certain to sell.

They could single-handedly revive the stricken advertising market.

Not that they will. I could more easily imagine the opposite happening, elsewhere.

In Britain, some members of parliament have clearly been forced to fiddle their expenses because they feel they do not earn enough money.

Since the taxpayer is unlikely to grant them a pay rise these days, I suggest corporate sponsorship, blatant and unabashed.

The moat courtesy of Caterpillar; the duck island sponsored by the Harrods Foods Department.

Or why not the new Parliamentary Expenses Reform Bill, brought to you by Rentokil?

<i>Matt Frei is the presenter of </i> <a class="inlineText" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america"> BBC World News America </a> <i>which airs every weekday on BBC News, BBC World News and BBC America (for viewers outside the UK only).</i>

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