Monday, August 4, 2008

McCain Attack Ads

There has been a fair amount of controversy over a recent McCain ad which knocked Barack Obama as a celebrity. (See here.) What was controversial about the ad was that it linked Obama to celebrities such as Brittney Spears and Paris Hilton. To be fair to the McCain team, the ad, if you watch it, is not nearly as crude as it has been described. Yes, shots of Spears and Hilton make a passing appearance, but that is all. I still think this was a horrible advertisement. It was boring and, even worse, came across as the whining of a sore loser. Being popular is not a bad thing. McCain can only wish he were as popular as Obama. A far better McCain ad is the recently aired, The One. (See here.) This ad lambasts Obama for his messianic sense of self worth. It features a series of clips of Obama speaking in his savior mode. Obama’s style of speaking works very well in context, as sound bites it can look quite ludicrous. The ad ends with Charlton Heston’s Moses splitting the Red Sea.

The One works as an ad because it is actually funny, it makes Obama look stupid and it raises a legitimate issue. Obama is where he is now, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, because he is black. Take this away from Obama and all that remains is a bright, articulate Harvard graduate in his forties, with no real political experience. Granted even this would be an improvement over the past eight years of having an inarticulate and mediocre former Governor of Texas for president. There are plenty of bright, articulate graduates from Harvard, who are white, whom no one ever thought to run for political office, let alone the presidency. The other thing that Obama has is that the far left has anointed him their savior. My impression of Obama, from reading Audacity of Hope, is that he is not a radical and, if elected, would govern from the center. Be that as it may, it is the far left that has pushed Obama to his current celebrity status, which poisons it. If Obama is a messianic savior here to change America then he must be the savior of the far left here to remake America over in its image. As this ad shows, McCain can turn Obama’s celebrity status against him by using it to question Obama’s ability and to connect him to the far left.

1 comment:

James Pate said...

Plus Brittney is a Republican, or at least she was in the last election.