Boosterism is the act of "boosting" (or promoting) a town, city, or organization, with the goal of improving public perception of it. Boosting can be as simple as "talking up" the entity at a party or as elaborate as establishing a visitors' bureau. It has been somewhat associated with American small towns. Boosting is also done in political settings, especially in regard to disputed policies or controversial events.

During the expansion of the American and Canadian West, boosterism became epidemic as the leaders and owners of small towns made extravagant predictions for their settlement, in the hope of attracting more residents and, not coincidentally, inflating the prices of local real estate.

The 1871 humorous speech The Untold Delights of Duluth, delivered by Democratic U.S. Representative J. Proctor Knott, lampooned boosterism. Boosterism is also a major theme of two novels by Sinclair Lewis—Main Street (published 1920) and Babbitt (1922). As indicated by an editorial that Lewis wrote in 1908 entitled "The Needful Knocker", boosting was the opposite of knocking. The editorial explained:

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is the wife of the 44th and incumbent President of the United States, Barack Obama, and is the first African-American First Lady of the United States. Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Obama attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School before returning to Chicago and to work at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met her future husband. Subsequently, she worked as part of the staff of Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, and for the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Throughout 2007 and 2008, she helped campaign for her husband's presidential bid and delivered a keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She is the mother of two daughters, Malia and Sasha, and is the sister of Craig Robinson, men's basketball coach at Oregon State University. As the wife of a Senator, and later the First Lady, she has become a fashion icon and role model for women, and an advocate for poverty awareness, nutrition and healthy eating.

Chester James Carville, Jr. (born October 25, 1944) is an American political consultant, commentator, educator, actor, attorney, media personality, and prominent liberal pundit. Carville gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the successful presidential campaign of then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. Carville was a co-host of CNN's Crossfire until its final broadcast in June 2005. Since its cancellation, he has appeared on CNN's news program The Situation Room. As of 2009, he hosts a weekly program on XM Radio titled 60/20 Sports with Luke Russert, son of Tim Russert who hosted NBC's Meet The Press. He is married to Republican political consultant Mary Matalin. In 2009, he began teaching political science at Tulane University.

Carville, the oldest of eight children, was born in Carville, Louisiana, the son of Lucille (née Normand), a former school teacher who sold World Book Encyclopedias door-to-door, and Chester James Carville, a postmaster as well as owner of a general store. Carville, LA was named after his paternal grandfather, Louis Arthur Carville, the postmaster. He is of mostly Cajun (French) descent, with more distant Irish (from his patrilineal great-grandfather), Danish, and German ancestry. Carville attended Ascension Catholic High School in Donaldsonville, Louisiana.

Marshall Clement "Mark" Sanford, Jr. (born May 28, 1960) is an American politician from South Carolina, who was the 115th Governor of South Carolina from 2003 to 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he served from 1995 to 2001 as Congressman in the United States House of Representatives for South Carolina's 1st congressional district, where he held conservative positions.

In 2002, he was elected the 115th Governor of South Carolina, defeating Democratic incumbent Jim Hodges, and was reelected in 2006. As governor, Sanford had a contentious relationship with the South Carolina legislature: notably, he made public statements that he would reject stimulus funds for his state from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Following a subsequent battle in the South Carolina Supreme Court, he was forced to accept the funds.

On June 24, 2009, Sanford resigned as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, after he publicly revealed that he had engaged in an affair with María Belén Chapur, an Argentine woman. He was later censured over the affair because of misuse of state travel funds.

Christopher Wallace may refer to: