"I Am the American Dream"
Please forgive me if you've seen this ad already -- I just saw it for the first time this morning; it was posted by a Facebook friend -- but it strikes me as interesting, particularly in light of the South Carolina results. (Click on it to see it larger.)
Now, it's easy to look at this with a partisan shrug -- yeah, you're really one of the masses, Barry. And way to slide right past those pesky little issues like the recession. And are we feeling a little defensive today? What's up with the capitals?
But this seems to me a very effective ad. It's defensive, yes, but the weaving together of a rockets'-red-glare sentimental patriotism with a contemptuous, patronizing tone toward dissenters reassures Obama fans that they are on the side of both the good and the intelligent. The hectoring, all-caps, drumming-it-in tone of the denials is designed to convey the impression -- or I should say reinforce the impression -- that the people he's defending himself against are dumb-as-dirt mouth breathers who have to have self-evident truths spelled out for them. Of course he's shouting, the ad projects: you've got to shout at Republicans to make them see sense. You can't reason with those people.
What could this gain him? A lot. By hearkening back to the vacuous, emotion-filled campaign of 2008, he sidesteps the issues and opens his arms to welcome back any Democrats who have become shaky about him during his calamitously inept first term. He can also easily draw fence-sitters with this kind of decorous, non-attack-ad approach -- see, we're above the fray. We're what this country is really all about; we're the good guys. Note the reiteration of the middle name: we're the inclusive party, the party that's about love (mom, grandparents, community) and the dream of prosperity. We good. They bad.
This can easily work; it's a variant of a formula that worked like a charm in 2008. And I would posit that this kind of dumbed down, context-free, content-free approach will be especially effective if the Republican nominee is someone who took Bill Clinton to the woodshed and is now indignant that he should be held accountable for similar indiscretions. That kind of thing confirms exactly what many people already believe about Republicans: that they shamelessly deploy the double standard when it suits them, and are therefore disqualified from being entrusted with the well-being of all Americans.
If a close look at your own performance will lose you the election, you change the subject. Issues, shmissues, this ad is telling us. Who makes you feel good about being an American? Who do you feel good about holding up to the world as your representative? The charmingly rumpled multicultural icon of humble origins who scaled the heights of academics and politics, or the whiter-than-white guy who can dish it out but can't take it?
If Newt's the nominee, we'll get some lively presidential debates out of it, but one uptick in the economy and it's all over until 2016. If anybody is likely to rally the undecided under Obama's tent, it's Gingrich.
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Comments :
Feb '11
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
I suppose "I am NOT A CROOK" would have worked better for Nixon.
May '10
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
The first two statements are false.
Maybe it should also say "I got into Harvard Law in spite of my mediocre grades by pretending to be a Black person."
Nov '10
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
Hasn't it already been done?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2CaBR3z85c
Aug '10
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
Didn't he learn from the 2010 election that "I'm not a witch" type ads didn't work for Christine O'Donnell.
Feb '11
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
And in her case, she really isn't.
Jul '11
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
Yes, President Obama represents the American dream. He started with humble beginnings and now holds the highest office in the land. I believe that he was born in Hawaii to a single mother; he was in Kansas with grandparents and went to Harvard Law School to become a community organizer. I believe that he is not a radical, not a socialist, not a Muslim terrorist and not the Anti-Christ. I also believe that none of this makes him the person this country needs to lead us at this time. I wish he was but he is not. You see we need a President who is something and who does not define themselves by what they are not. We do not need a President that reflects the American Dream; we need a President that represents America’s Destiny.
Jan '11
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
He'd have to release his transcripts so we'd know whether or not that's true.
Mar '11
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
"I am the American Dream. Give me four more years, and I'll utterly crush it once and for all".
May '11
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
Shame on you for buying into the premise that only an economic disaster can save us now, Gingrich or no. Instead of working so hard to lobby us about how ignorant Americans must be, I hope you are taking your case (whatever it is) to the masses.
This ad can only be effective if the several lies in it are not confronted. He is a radical. That is a word with a meaning, and if you look it up, you will recognize phrases from his own speeches. He is a socialist, only because he does not yet have enough control to be a communist. His February speech to the US Chamber of Commerce and his recent speech at Osawatomie Kansas mark him indisputably as a Marxist. Again, that is a socio-economic school of political thought with definitions and signatures, and the picture in the the dictionary for the "Marxist" entry may well be Obama's.
If your doomsday scenario is of demagoguery winning, it certainly makes no difference who we put up. Do you seriously think that Romney offers better magic against the Marxist Democrats' praetorian media? That is where fully half of this fight is.
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
As Judith said, "It's easy to look at this ad with a partisan shrug." Now that everyone's done that, what about her arguments? Haakon, it isn't Judith who is unfairly slandering the American masses by suggesting they may be ignorant enough to vote for this guy. The American masses did, after all, elect him President of the United States in 2008. That's the kind of data you ignore at your peril.
Mar '11
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
I think your right on the money, here, Judith. And I think Gingrich's negatives, as high as they already are among the American people, are only likely to get worse as the race becomes more contentious as they are reminded why they didn't like him a decade ago.
Instead of the election being a referendum on the last 4 years--instead of it being "Are you better off than you were $4 trillion ago?"--we will spend the campaign re-litigating the late 1990s. Instead of being about Obama, it will become a campaign about Newt. Instead of corruption, corporatism, and economic decline, it will be moral indignation.
Aside from people who are already staunchly in the Republican base, Obama does not personally come across to everyday Americans as some kind of hair-on-fire hammer-and-sickle-wielding unamerican closet-Muslim Kenyan anti-colonial.
He's going to try to campaign as "the adult in the room", "Mr. Reasonable", "a centrist" and he is going to contrast himself with every moment of the last 2 years that he can paint as "extreme"--the "Do-Nothing Obstructionist Congress"--and "hypocritical", and the "bomb-throwers" on the right wing.
May '10
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
Lefties are funny.
The "American Dream" is a myth. In fact, the fate of an American is determined by his/her race, sex, sexual orientation, and economic status. Two hundred years of suffering and exploitation make that perfectly clear.
Except for Barack Obama, of course.
Nov '10
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
Keep the text as is.
Replace the picture with debt figures, unemployment statistics, whatever.
Job done.
May '11
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
We face a very real trap of being portrayed as rooting for the depression. Meanwhile, as a Gingrich supporter I come home to this? "All is lost because we didn't toe the RNC lose-again-the-same-way-we-did-last-time line"?
Pardon me if what jumped out at me was a great big gout of WE'RE DOOMED if Gingrich gets the nomination, but there it is, three times in that piece. The point she is making is not about Republicans vs. Democrats; it is about Gingrich vs. un-named other Republicans.
My point is that the Marxism is the problem, not the champion we throw at it. Frankly, I only know one guy with the guts to call him a Marxist.
This post is more a woe-is-us-with-Gingrich than anything else. I disagree, pointedly.
If the impact of Democrat propaganda against specific candidates is interesting, I can't imagine anything more thrilling than the whole RomneyCare debacle, and I have said so for quite some time.
I do believe that Obama will get nowhere near the support he did in 2008--it's no longer historic, and he's no longer unknown.
Sep '10
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
Easy rebuttal for any Republican candidate:
The American Dream is not to rise to the top of the political food-chain. If that's the case, only 44 Americans have actually achieved that.
For the great majority of Americans, the dream is to have a job and to be able to prosper without being dependent on government, or likewise be overly coerced by government. Obama may have fulfilled his own American Dream, with the help of voters in 2008, but many of us feel he has greatly complicated ours.
Mr. Obama would like to tell us that he is not these labels. Labels which are patently ridiculous, by the way. He is absolutely correct.
Neither his Presidency, nor is his person can easily reduced to a list of labels. As a Republican I (we) don't believe our ideas can be reduced to a list of absurd labels either.
President Obama is a man with ideas though - these ideas are nuanced and at times quite complex, and we believe they are wrong.
We join with the President in moving the debate beyond ridiculous labels, and debate which ideas are best to revive the American Dream for everyone.
May '11
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
outstripp: The first two statements are false.
Maybe it should also say "I got into Harvard Law in spite of my mediocre grades by pretending to be a Black person." · 2 hours ago
Indeed. Were his parents married or not ? And when exactly was he raised in Kansas ?
Another line that could be added is "I destroyed more wealth with just one crony deal than Mitt Romney made in his entire business career".
Mar '11
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
It doesn't say "I deserve to be re-elected BECAUSE OF MY RECORD".
Jan '11
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
Where I am it is 4:20am Sunday; look at all the comments in the last hour. The sun never sets on Ricochet. [sorry I had nothing to add]
May '10
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
My job gets me up really early. My metabolism prohibits me from "sleeping in." So 5 a.m. Sunday is Laundry Time. By sunup the chores are done and I'm ready to play.
Sep '10
Re: "I Am the American Dream"
I can see Newt now saying, " Who is calling President Obama the Anti-Christ? Whoever they are, all 12 of them, can go jump in a lake. It's a straw man argument. Who is calling President Obama a terrorist? That's almost treason and I don't want their votes. I can do without those 37 votes and still win. I'm surprised he hasn't included the claims that some have, (whispers "get this") that he is a Martian. They are out there, and are about as rare as those who believe him the anti-Christ."
But I will ask, why is president Obama citing these absurd claims? Is he that out of touch with those of us who have policy differences with him? What is motivating him to smear his legitimate critics with these absurd references?"