I realize that “web videos” are commercials that most Americans will never see. Bush supporters who visit his site may check them out, but they’re already on his side. Dems like me will take a look, but only critique and criticize. That’s about the full extent of the audience.
That said, there’s something deeply strange about the Bush campaign’s latest effort, which they call “Kerry’s Coalition of the Wild-eyed.”
The point of the spot, as the ad tells us, is to emphasize that Kerry and the Dems are angry, but that this is “not a time for pessimism and rage.”
Only the Bush campaign would tell voters that we should reject rage the same day we learn Dick Cheney told a lawmaker to go “f— yourself” on the Senate floor.
But the ad is bizarre for a variety of other reasons. As my friend Phil said after watching it, “Actually, it seems more like an anti-Bush ad.” Usually, campaigns want it to be a little more obvious who the good guy is, but Phil’s right.
Reuters noted some of the clips included in the video, including a shot of Al Gore saying, “How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein’s torture prison?” and Dick Gephardt saying, “This president is a miserable failure.” At the end, Kerry is seen telling an audience, “Today, George Bush will lay off your camel, tax your shovel, kick you’re a–, and tell you there is no Promised Land.”
The idea is that we’re supposed to be outraged by the Dems’ outrage. Or something. It seems like the ad almost has the opposite effect — repeating Dem charges against Bush. A lot of people who don’t like Bush will watch this and actually like some of this rhetoric.
The most twisted part of the video is a clip that some nut sent into MoveOn that compares Bush to Hitler. Reuters described it as a clip “from” MoveOn, but that’s patently false. Some guy submitted it in a contest; MoveOn rejected it. The implication in the ad is that the group was responsible for the comparison, which clearly is not fair.
Maybe it was just me, but watching the video the first time made it seem like Bush was throwing in Nazi comparisons. In other words, the BC04 video showed one angry guy (Gore), then another (Dean), then another (Hitler). The implication almost seemed like the campaign was equating all of these angry people together. That probably wasn’t the goal, but it just points to how very strange the ad really is.