The ad is displayed on the McCain website in the featured “McCain Videos” subsection of the “News & Media” link without a disclaimer of any sort.
Exactly. Though the ad has, for now, been confined to internet distribution (receiving no TV airplay outside of news shows discussing it), it is still most definitely “official”.
Again, this is a matter of advertising.
The first thing to realise is that no one pays attention to the content of an advertisement, just the impression. They aren’t going to be going in to analyse it to figure out what deeper hidden meaning it has. (And I’ll note that “He’s the antichrist!” is reading waaaaay more into it than is there.)
The second thing to realise is that people only pay attention to the first 5-8 seconds of an advertisement before divorcing even more of their brain. The first impression is MUCH stronger than the ending. So what do you see in the first 5-8 seconds? Reverence for Barrack Obama.
Yeah sure, over the course of the ad they move from “He’s great!” to “He’s arrogant and conceited!”, but they wasted the message for the very end and did it in a very very mooted and unclear way. Relying on your audience to fill in the blanks is not a good way to go–particularly not when the 2/3rds of your spot sounded in favor of Obama and they’ll have long spaced out by that point.
I agree with much of the responses in this thread, but I also think the appeal is much broader as well to include those who are just plain adverse to megalomania.
This worries me. McCain’s not dumb, and his campaign staff isn’t dumb, either. I suspect they know exactly what they’re doing, and who they’re talking to.
To me, the ad doesn’t seem strong enough to get out the end time voters. If he really wants them, he’s going to have to push harder.
In that case I withdraw my claim that it’s not a production of the McCain campaign.
I also will add that it brings the McCain campaign to a frightening new level of religious hysteria.
But Obama is not a megalomaniac, as evidenced by the fact that they had to tamper with his quotes to make him sound that way.
McCain is a master at uncorking the genie and then cackling behind people’s backs while he apologizes for the misunderstanding to their faces.
Someone called him the ‘Eddie Haskell of politics’, and it works.
Here’s another way to look at the ad: It’s a way to make an Obama ad so arrogant that it turns people off.
I think it’s meant to sound like an Obama spot, & be so over the top that it offends people into not voting for him.
For me, the second thing I thought of was Neo from the Matrix. But yeah, the first thing was that it’d resonate with those apocalypse-expecters. It’s kinda funny, but it’d be better if they could get Keanu himself made up as Obama, woodenly mumbling “I’m not The One Hillary.” and sort of fake protesting for awhile before accepting the nomination.
My, the Secret Service is going to be very busy with Obama as President if crazy religious racist nutjobs believe even half of the shit that Obama is portrayed to be!
I just don’t understand the McCain campaign. Instead of narrowly focusing on Obama’s weakness, which is inexperience, they instead go after his strength (popularity) and are blithely throwing a bunch of shit at the political wall and trying to make something stick.
I have defended McCain here and there, mostly against attacks on his military and legislative record, but this kind of stuff is just…bullshit.
Whatever happened to the sentiment earlier in the year that the campaign would be “clean”?
Back then it seemed like both candidates had a mutual unspoken agreement to not stoop to these types of tactics. Well, only one candidate is sticking to that deal, as far as I can tell.
Barack’s failings prevented the realization of that dream:
Yeah, right. :rolleyes:
The art design in this video looks as though it was consciously chosen to emulate the cover designs in the Left Behind book series. Which are purported to be a Biblically accurate portrayal of the End Times. I don’t think cheap factors into it.
Maybe he should just wear this when he’s out campaigning.
This is the Rove playbook: attack where your opponent is strongest; if you can make a dent there, the rest of your opponent’s campaign will fold like a house of cards. See “Swiftboat Veterans for Truth” and the nuking of Kerry’s war record, which, at the beginning of the campaign, looked like the club with which Kerry was going to pound Bush. After the fact, of course, that seems silly, but that’s just 20/20 hindsight; coming into 2004 Kerry’s military service appeared to be his one area of impregnable armor. Same approach here: if McCain can somehow transform the positive into a negative, then in principle Obama’s campaign will dissolve into vapor. Now, whether or not this specific attack is a good way to accomplish that goal is rather questionable, but that is the general idea.
I would have said the same thing about Hillary Clinton before the primaries, i kept waiting for her to pull something out of her sleeve that would make her horrible campaign make sense. Truth is republicans have been running campaigns very succesfully one way for several elections, now that its not working they are just throwing things out there to see what sticks.
It’s ads like this that give me hope Obama will win. If that’s the best you can do- go after his popularity and charisma and veiled threats he’s the anti-Christ (which save for the latter is right out of Hillary’s book) then maybe McCain will end like Hillary. I don’t think Hillary or McCain has quite thought out that by attacking Obama’s charisma and eloquence and lack of experience in D.C. they’re just continually re-enforcing that “this guy has INCREDIBLE charisma and eloquence and hasn’t been part of the D.C. machines!”
I really can’t see this gaining one vote for McCain though. Those who’d succomb to its clear religious message will already be refusing to vote for Obama because he’s a Muslim who can’t say the Pledge of Allegiance and his family in Africa orchestrated AIDS and the 9-11 hijackings (or whatever the hell else the emails are now saying about him), while anybody with 2 functioning neurons will see through it as a cheap and pathetic act of desperation from an old sold-out crank to cut off the young dynamo on lack of experience. Admittedly it works out better than the more factual “It’s about experience! I sell out more times before breakfast than that young half-breed sells out in the last 10 years!”, but not by much.
I can actually see it gaining votes for Obama. Accussing someone of being too popular seems like such a ridiculous strategy.