Obama's Campaign Commercials Are Closer to Gore or Carter than Clinton or JFK

In my friends classes, they learn about the effect that the mass media has on elections. One major aspect of the media that relates to presidential campaigns in particular are campaign commercials. To explore campaign commercials they use a website called Living Room Candidate.

Living Room Candidate has compiled all of the campaign commercials from every election from 1952 to today. It organized them by type (children, fear, biography, backfire, etc), by issue, and by year- the year is the year of the Presidential election. Each commercial has a name, and you can see the name when you move your cursor over the particular commercials. Each one is about 30 seconds to a minute, and loads after 10-15 seconds of clicking on it. In my class, we go through some of the more famous commercials, and analyze what makes good ones, what makes them effective, and the role that they played in the election.

Why am I telling you this? Well, there has been a lot of talk on radio channels and in articles about how Barack Obama is like Clinton. Or JFK. I think there is a little revisionist history going on here. For a trip down memory lane, watch Clinton's 1992 commercials- it was in these commercials that he established what kind of a candidate he was. Watch "Leaders 2," "Second," and "We Can Do It." In these commercials, Clinton brags about cutting taxes, making government more efficient, cutting welfare, and being tough on crime. Now, he might not have done these things as President, but the image he projected was none-the-less one of being a tax cutting moderate Democrat.

Or watch JFK's commercials from 1960- in them, he talks about how America is great, but he can make it greater- how America is strong, but how he can make it stronger, and about how America is a productive country, but he can help it produce more.

Obama is not Clinton or JFK. Obama talks about raising taxes, expanding government, increasing welfare, and being nicer to terrorists. He talks about how America is worse than it used to be, is no longer great, and in general how it is a bad country. In these respects, he sounds more more Gore and Carter.

Watch Gore's 2000 commercials. He ran on a platform of helping various victims of our system- the environment ("Matters"), healthcare ("Ian"), or education ("Accountability"). Gore opposed tax cuts ("down"). Or watch Carter's 1976 commercials- in "South" he talks about how workers have been cheated by government, and in "Reality" he talks about how America in reality sucks. These messages are closer to Obama's message.

What does this ultimately mean? What it means is that we can reasonably expect that an Obama Presidency will look closer to a Carter Presidency than a Clinton Presidency. The question you have to ask yourself and your fellow citizens is why would they want to return to the years of Carter- years when we were tested overseas and found wanting (which Biden already says will happen), years when our economy crashed (as it is doing now on anticipation of an Obama Presidency), and years when there were horrible energy shortages (Obama opposes almost all real energy creation in favor of unproven dreams).

For a happy skip down memory lane, watch some of these ads- 2008 McCain ads "Service to America" and "Original Mavericks," 2004 Bush ad "Whatever it Takes," 2000 Bush ads "Successful Leader" and "Priorities," 1988 H.W. Bush ad "Family/Children," or 1984 Reagan ads "Prouder, Stronger, Better" or "Peace." These messages are the messages that echo in good Americans hearts, and it is my hope that McCain will echo them as well in the final days of this race and somehow pull out a victory.