Although the rhetorical gifts of Barack Obama have been copiously examined, considerably less attention has been paid to one of the principal actors in political campaigns: the crowd. This critical analysis examines the nature and influence of the crowd as a political actor in the Obama campaign. Drawing on dramaturgical theory and literary history, the article also considers how a candidate’s strategic performance of his or her political self can be understood within the legacy of American romantic and transcendental conceptions of the self and its mystical and sacramental relationship to the crowd.
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