So I’m watching TV last night, awaiting the dramatic conclusion of a Simpsons rerun, when a commercial starts. The scene is in a shoddy replica of the Oval Office, with the camera focusing on the President’s desk.
Narrator: “Meltdown. Foreclosure. Pensions, savings wiped out. And now our nation considers elevating one of the least experienced people ever to run for President. Barack Obama: he hasn’t had executive experience.”
[My response: why don’t you tell us how much executive experience McCain has? But it’s no more hypocritical than a typical campaign ad. That’s not the subject of this thread.]
Narrator: “This crisis would be Obama’s first crisis in this chair.”
So the first crisis Obama faces as President will be the first crisis that Obama faces as President. Huh? It looks like a tautology to me. Does anyone have any clue what they’re thinking? Or does McCain simple lack the money to make competent campaign commercials?
Not that i want to be defending McSame in anyway, but I think the point is that they are pretending that Obama does not have the executive experience to handle the financial crisis and that would end up being job one when he enters office. Their plan is to continue the same Bush policies that have been working so well so far. Won’t that be much better, ya’betcha!
Maybe it means the “Meltdown. Foreclosure. Pensions, savings wiped out.” will be the first crisis Obama faces in the chair, but you know, it’ll only be the first crisis.
I’m Captain Amazing, and I approved this explanation.
I think it’s suggesting that perhaps Obama could handle of something of middling crisisitude*, but that this is a crisis of massive proportions, and that it is the very first one he’s going into with his poor executive experience. So it’s saying “Not only does he lack in this area, but if he’s President he’s got a massive problem to deal with on this very subject, and it’s the first he’ll have”.
I guess that they’re implying, since neither McCain nor Obama have executive experience, that Sarah Palin could figure it out. Since she has loads of experience with executive leadership (Wasilla and Anchorage), economics (she must have been studying something at all of those schools) and meltdowns (she does have teenagers).
There’s a very important pause not reflected in the OP, which reads "“This crisis would be Obama’s first crisis in this chair.” The narrator clearly breaks between “crisis” and “in.”
“This crisis would be Obama’s first crisis. In this chair.”
To make it more explicit, "This crisis would be Obama’s first crisis [that he has to deal with as a chief executive]. [He would face it in] this chair, [the chair of the President of the United States].