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Barack Obama's half-hour infomercial Wednesday night didn't teach us a lot we didn't already know—except that an Obama administration would likely
feature immaculate stagecraft.
The spot opened with a shot of—I’m not making this up—amber waves of grain. Obama reiterated his plan to cut taxes for families making less than $250,000 in a softly lit room in front of an oak desk. He explained his Social Security plan to moist-eyed retirees in what could have been a church vestibule. Then a guy behind a register tells Mark Dowell, a laid-off auto worker, the price for groceries. The camera cut to Dowell, scowling, in a way that could not have possibly been live. Not to mention the well-coordinated switch to Obama's live address in Florida, with sweeping cameras straight out of a Rolling Stones concert movie.
Improved artifice easily fits under the banner of "Change." Some of President Bush's worst political moments came from poorly executed stagecraft. Dressing up as a fighter pilot and standing before a "Mission Accomplished" banner was the epitome of tone deafness. Bush's team also goofed in allowing him to be photographed looking down at post-Katrina New Orleans. Optics aren't everything, but Bush's visual flops were especially damaging.
And it's not just choreography that matters: It's making the choreography look effortless. Tonight's episode featured all sorts of shots that simply had to be rehearsed: a couple praying before dinner, a mother walking out of a grocery store toward a fixed camera, a woman with arthritis massaging her knuckles. You can imagine the cinematographer saying, "Can you pray a little longer this time? OK, now try moving your mouth a little." It's heavily choreographed. But the production quality is high enough that the transitions are almost invisible. It's the opposite of George H.W. Bush's famously clunky statement to the people of New Hampshire in 1992: "Message: I care." The trick is not to let the seams show.
Smart propaganda does not a smart administration make. If anything, it means we have to be more vigilant in calling out theater when we see it. But whatever the next four years may bring, we're in for some damn good camera angles.
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How’s this for rapid response:
11: 15 a.m.: Clinton campaign
e-mails: “NEW AD: Clinton Campaign Unveils New Ad Asking
Voters, ‘Who Do You Think Has What it Takes?’ ” [Watch it here.]
4:49 p.m.: Obama campaign e-mails: “AD RESPONSE TO CLINTON
FEAR AD” [Watch it here.]
Five-and-a-half hours: All it takes to digest, produce,
edit, and hit back with a counter-spot. So this is that 21st Century campaign I've been hearing all about. Obama spokesman Bill Burton says the ad will be airing in Pennsylvania.
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Hillary Clinton just released a new "3 a.m." ad, with a twist. This time, instead of some vaguely ominous national crisis, it's a vaguely ominous economic crisis. From the script:
But there’s a phone ringing in the White House and this time the crisis is economic. Home foreclosures mounting, markets teetering. John McCain just said the government shouldn’t take any real action on the housing crisis, he’d let the phone keep ringing. Hillary Clinton has a plan to protect our homes, create jobs. It’s 3 am, time for a president who’s ready.
At risk of sounding obnoxious, aren't the markets closed at 3 a.m.? Or maybe the crisis is happening in Japan?
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The online reaction to Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m.” ad has
ranged from analytical
to rebutting
to outright mocking.
But what were people thinking as they watched it for the first time?
There’s a new “Damned Spot” video
up on Slate V that shows an audience's real-time reaction to the ad. Of the 554 viewers, the Clinton supporters are
generally approving. Undecided voters and Obama supporters are neutral and
vaguely disapproving, respectively, for most of the ad. But notice how their
opinions plummet the second Hillary’s mug appears onscreen at the end. It looks
more like visceral instinct than rational response.
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Somebody should tell John McCain that it isn't 2007 anymore. McCain's campaign announced today that they're recycling a Woodstock-themed ad that first ran in New Hampshire last October. Predictably, it's terribly outdated.
Here's the basic gist of the ad, which pulls footage from a Fox News debate: McCain says Hillary wanted to earmark $1 million for a Woodstock concert museum; McCain makes a poignant quip about not going to Woodstock because he was "tied up" at the time; roll footage of McCain on a bed as a POW; standing ovation; McCain says sinister earmarkers like Clinton shouldn't be president; John McCain approves this message.
Here's the problem: The ad comes from a long-ago epoch when Hillary Clinton was the inevitable Democratic nominee, Fred Thompson was still a major player, and McCain still symbolized a failed candidacy more than a rejuvenated war hero.
The election has matured quite a bit since then, even if the level of discourse hasn't. Originally, the ad used Clinton as a prop to show that John McCain isn't afraid of the Clinton machine. But that's not the situation on the ground anymore. Now that Obama short-circuited Hillary, the Republicans have to run against all Democrats, not just Clinton.
Considering how old the ad is, there must be a reason why McCain is recycling it. A working theory: The segment touches on the economy (wasted government spending) while still hyping McCain's national security credentials. For McCain, who doesn't like to pander on economic issues, hyping his commitment to curtailing pork-barrel projects is the smartest way to address the growing economic concern in the country.
The original ad didn't stay on the air very long in New Hampshire. Fox News sent a cease-and-desist letter to McCain's camp saying it doesn't allow debate footage in political advertisements. That prompted McCain to redo the ad and release a different version. The new South Carolina ad is an exact replica of the first Woodstock ad, just without the Fox News logo onscreen. This seems like a curious and not-so-kosher way to get around the cease and desist issue.
The McCain campaign and Fox News haven't returned requests for comment.
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NASHUA – Linda Lagana is a devoted Ron Paul supporter. She does graphic design and grassroots organizing for him in New Hampshire. So when the campaign asked her to appear in an ad that would air across the state, she agreed.
But during the shoot, everything felt wrong. “They were having us read lines,” she said. “They should have let us use our own words and then cut it together.” But she trusted the director, who had been producing Republican ads for decades. How bad could it be?
When Lagana first saw the final product on YouTube, she panicked. “I almost cried,” she told me. “It was so, so bad.” So bad that everyone inside the campaign hated it, she said. So bad that Slate V dedicated an entire Damned Spot to mocking it. (Watch the original ad here; Lagana is the one who says, "Look, the man's a doctor, he understands the health care mess.")
“I thought it was going to ruin the campaign,” she said. “I got on the phone and begged them not to run it.” When they said they were going ahead with the ad anyway, “I wanted to die.” The other actors weren’t quite as critical, she said, but none of them actually liked it.
The spot got roundly panned on the Ron Paul forums and YouTube comments sections. (See all 5400 comments here.) But these days, Lagana feels slightly better about it. “It was so bad, it’s good,” she said. “You know the guy at the end—‘He’s catchin on, I’m tellin’ ya!’—that’s like a catchphrase now.”
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In a new ad
for New Hampshire voters, Mitt Romney claims:
In the next ten years, we'll see more progress,
more change than the world has seen in the last ten centuries.
You read that correctly. The next ten years will run roughshod over the
Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the formation of American democracy, the
printing press, interchangeable parts, division of labor, the end of slavery, nuclear
technology, antiseptics, the theory of gravity, the theory of
relativity, the rise of communism, two world wars, universal suffrage, landing
on the moon, and the Internet.
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A few weeks ago, we pointed out how one Obama ad looked more like a theatrical trailer than a political spot. Well, John Edwards has upped the ante. Today, he released an actual trailer, complete with soaring strings, cymbal crashes, and a narrator who voices movie trailers for a living. You'll recognize him instantly:
"In a world where corn grows tall and hope grows taller ... where people have a special power to decided the fate of a nation ... one man can clean up George Bush's mess."
That man is George DelHoyo, who you may know from Fox ads, car commercials, and the trailers for Shark Tale, The Polar Express, and Happy Feet. He also does commercials in Spanish (listen here)—something Edwards might consider using in Florida (if that were allowed) or California. Apparently, DelHoyo is himself an Edwards supporter and has been doing campaign events in Iowa. Between him and Kevin Bacon, the Edwards campaign might as well shoot a biopic.
The trailer gimmick is smart, in that it gets to be cheesy and overdramatic—everything a political ad needs—while still making fun of itself: "On Jan. 3 ... a candidate will rise ... a party will unite ... and a nation will be redeemed." It's like, they're joking—but also not. By the end of the trailer, once DelHoyo and the orchestra have worked the Edwards worship into a lather, a dinky voice comes out of the void: "I'm John Edwards and I approve this message."
The question now is, which campaign will snap up Don LaFontaine?
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In November, John Edwards began airing a series of ads called “Heroes” that called average Americans the heroes of the country. He first ran the ad in Iowa and then adapted the spot for the New Hampshire market by swapping in less rural, more New England-ish scenes.
Today he released the South Carolina version, which explicitly caters toward a larger African-American audience. Nearly 30 percent of the Palmetto State’s population is African-American, according to 2005 statistics from the U.S. census. That’s compared with 1 percent of New Hampshire and 2.3 percent of Iowa.
You can see a side-by-side-by-side comparison on Slate V. We wrote about this when Edwards swapped some characters for the New Hampshire version. Selections from that post are republished below.
Gone are the tractors, suspenders, and trucker hats. Instead, the new characters have nondescript profile shots. The ad replaces an image of an older white couple with two younger adults, one of whom appears to be a person of color. Plus, instead of a white woman near the end of the ad, the ad shows a black woman.
The changes come after the Iowa ad caught flak from bloggers for being almost exclusively white. The Edwards campaign countered that the waitress in the diner is Hispanic, but ABC News' Jake Tapper insisted that the "optics" of the ad didn't convey any diversity.
Edwards' national spokesman, Eric Schultz, told me that the "Heroes" series of ads "highlights the hard-working men and women from across the country." The new version, he says, is specific to New Hampshire, and the new faces in it are all New Hampshire residents. Many of the characters in the Iowa ad, however, are also in the New Hampshire ad (including the Latina waitress).
What we're seeing may be yet another example of the YouTube Effect. Advertisements can no longer be contained to a specific audience in the age of YouTube. The campaign got burned on its Iowa ad because the world had access to it, not just 3 million Iowa residents. Now we have a different set of characters in the New Hampshire ad.
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Mike Huckabee's YouTube page lay fallow for most of his campaign, but in the past few weeks it's added some new offerings. First came brief clips of Huckabee and Chuck Norris talking policy. Then today Huckabee's camp unveiled a new Web-advertising campaign that aims to ensnare supporters of other candidates.
The "Switch to Huckabee" campaign has a bare-bones premise. A person stands in front of a beige screen, talks about why they like quirky Mike better than the other candidates, and suggests you might like Mike, too, if you just gave him a shot.
Sound familiar? Compare that with Apple's "switch" ads a few years back: A person stands in front of a white screen, talks about why they think Macs are better than PCs, and proudly declares that they've made "the switch." The two ad campaigns even have the same music.
It's a fun analogy, but it's also flawed. While the Apple ads were catchy, they weren't that successful. Macs still had a low market share because Apple hadn't had its "iPod moment" quite yet. Plus, Mac's operating system was still too weird-looking for Windows-trained office drones. Apple was asking people to make a switch to the Mac before there was any glowing media coverage to grease the wheels.
Huckabee, in contrast, has momentum on his side, and voters are already taking a second look. He has boosted his poll numbers (market share) on his own, thanks to a series of strong debate performances ("iPod moments") and positive media coverage
At this stage, it would make more sense for Huckabee to adapt a different Apple campaign: The popular "I'm a Mac" spots. He is¾for now¾still the quirky upstart. But he's also got the poll numbers to prove he's a major player. And his media glow hasn't yet worn off. All of that sounds similar to Mac's status these days.
Spoofing the ads would be easy. Just set Chuck Norris and a stuffy, well-coifed guy (Whom are Justin Long and John Hodgman supporting, anyway?) against a white backdrop. Norris would say, "I'm Mike Huckabee" as he give a menacing look to the other guy. The Romney stand-in would then respond, "And I'm Mitt Romney." Run through some policy points, make Romney sound like a flip-flopper who is trying to buy the nomination, and voila! You've got yourself a sales pitch; maybe even one that will be as popular as the other Mac ad spoof.
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Barack Obama's new spot "Moment" looks more like a theatrical trailer than a political ad. The footage comes from Obama's widely praised speech at last month's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa. As we hear him make promises about bridging the gap between red and blue, raves flash on screen, a little too dramatically:
“Scrupulous honesty.”
Joe Klein, Time Magazine, 11/12/07
“Vision” to lead the nation
Concord Monitor, 10/11/07
“Across the Divide.”
Newsweek, 7/16/07
That last one barely makes sense. Likewise, the words coming out of his mouth are pure boilerplate, riffing on "the same old Washington textbook campaigns" and "re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s." It might be the sappiest Obama ad yet. But it works. The soaring orchestra fits the soaring rhetoric, the teary eyes are real, and anyone who has seen Obama speak will recognize the crowd's roar. I practically expected it to climax into a slow clap. I feel the same way I did after watching the trailer for I Am Legend: That was really cheesy and really manipulative, but nothing can stop me from seeing that movie. Two thumbs up.
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Barack Obama's campaign has leaked a new television spot that is set to air in South Carolina, according to Ben Smith. Listen closely, and you'll hear the same background music from his black radio ad in S.C. earlier this month.
Is Obama's campaign hinting that the muzak union is backing him?
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First came the Politics of Hope. Then the Politics of Pile-On. Now, via the Edwards campaign, the Politics of Parsing.
In what looks like a direct response to Hillary Clinton’s mashup of Tuesday’s debate, which shows the other Democratic candidates uttering her name over and over, Team Edwards has released what has got to be the most devastating indictment of Hillary’s debate performance so far.
The spot, posted online today, juxtaposes clips of Hillary saying one thing—on Iraq, Social Security, and drivers licenses for illegal immigrants—and then saying something that sounds contradictory. Plenty of observers and campaigns have already pointed out these inconsistencies. (Some might call them nuances.) But no one has lined them up in such a simple way that, context be damned, lets you watch Hillary dig her own grave. It's pretty unfair, but it's also why YouTube was invented.
This line of attack seems to be carrying Edwards (and Obama) a long way. Hillary’s camp was concerned enough after the debate to hold a conference call with big donors to talk strategy and ask for more money. Her opponents are speaking of “chinks in the armor.” Supporters say it’s good practice before facing Giuliani. But if there’s an anti-Hillary narrative that could sustain itself through the primaries, it’s her tendency to equivocate—not to lie, necessarily, but to slice and dice the truth into tiny little slivers. (An approach that, with a little YouTube trickery, starts to sound a lot like like lying.)
In the meantime, Edwards might consider taking this attack to prime time.
UPDATE 12:52 p.m.: Hillary spokesman Phil Singer responds:
"In 2004, John Edwards said 'If you are looking for the candidate that will do the best job of attacking the other Democrats, I am not your guy.' But now that his campaign has stalled, he’s launching false attacks on his fellow Democrats. Voters will certainly be asking whether Mr. Edwards’ pledges to be positive in 2004 were anything more than just a political tactic."
UPDATE 11/5/07 1:07 p.m.: The knife twists.
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You can find it here. Then watch what Ron Paul fans think of Ron Paul’s new ad.
The spot, one of two that will air in New Hampshire over the coming weeks, looks like something out of a different era. Soft tones, New Age music, stilted dialogue—it’s like a political infomercial. They used volunteers instead of actors, and it shows. “He wants us to get out of Iraq, pronto,” says one supporter. “I agree with him most of the time, I really do,” says another. The footage looks like it was shot on Super 8 video, with a soundtrack lifted from the local cable-access station. Still, the two spots cost the campaign roughly $30,000 to make, according to spokesman Jesse Benton. That includes travel to the Granite State for the camera crew, as well as payment for the producer, Jay Bryant.
Benton said the campaign initially got some negative reactions, but mostly from hard-core fans who expected more policy details. “These ads speak to people who haven’t turned to Ron Paul yet,” he said. “From those kinds of crowds, we’ve been getting pretty positive reviews.” He also said the ad works better on TV than on YouTube, where people are usually expecting something “more dynamic.”
The spots are part of Paul’s first major commercial blitz. Depending on their success, the campaign could roll out as many as four more ads. In total, Paul is spending $1.1 million on Granite State airtime through the primaries.
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John Edwards is launching a new ad in Iowa today called “Heroes.” (No, we can’t embed video at the moment; yes, we’re working on it.) “If you’re looking for heroes, don’t look to me,” he says over a soundtrack that sounds a lot like Coldplay. “Don’t look to Elizabeth. … We have the American people behind us. Look to them.”
He’s using the ad to kick off “American Heroes Week,” a tribute to the working men and women of America. Seems like a good way to use his momentum coming out of Tuesday’s debate. Plus, after his New Hampshire SEIU endorsement, it could confirm him for good as the candidate of the working class.
But am I the only one who can’t hear that tour name without thinking about Bud Light’s “Real American Heroes” ads? Edwards could certainly use the votes of Mr. Jelly Donut Filler, Mr. Major League Infield Raker, Mr. Fake Tattoo Inventor, Mr. Putt-Putt Golf Course Designer, and Mr. Wrecking Ball Operator. He might even pander to Mr. Inspirational Poster Writer (although that guy’s probably already on staff). Of course, let’s not forget the realest of American heroes, the one who toils away for countless years despite the slimmest odds: Mr. Third-Place Candidate Man.