{"id":14737,"date":"2008-02-29T11:12:41","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T16:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14737.html"},"modified":"2008-02-29T11:12:41","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T16:12:41","slug":"has-the-clinton-campaign-really-gone-nuclear-with-its-new-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/has-the-clinton-campaign-really-gone-nuclear-with-its-new-ad\/","title":{"rendered":"Has the Clinton campaign really gone ‘nuclear’ with its new ad?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s just not that unusual for a presidential candidate to rely on the politics of fear. LBJ’s “Daisy” ad certainly set the bar, but we’ve seen plenty of egregious examples in the post-9\/11 era, usually from the right (“If you vote Democrat, Osama bin Laden will kill your dog.”).<\/p>\n

With this in mind, the new Clinton campaign ad, “Children<\/a>,” which is reportedly poised to air in Texas and probably Ohio, is causing a bit of a stir. ABC News described it as Clinton going “nuclear<\/a>.” Take a look:<\/p>\n

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If you can’t watch videos online, the clip shows children sleeping in their beds. With a phone ringing in the background, a narrator says, “It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing. Something is happening in the world.”<\/p>\n

As the ringing continues, the narrator adds, “Your vote will decide who answers that call, whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military — someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?” The clip ends with a picture of Hillary Clinton wearing eyeglasses.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’ve become desensitized a bit, but this one didn’t really faze me that much. It feels like a regular ol’ Republican ad, except a) this is from a Dem; and b) the ad doesn’t show any brown people we’re supposed to be afraid of.
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\nOn the political Richter scale, this one didn’t score very high for me. She doesn’t mention Obama by name, and this is just a slightly caffeinated version of Clinton’s message from the last several weeks. Indeed, I imagine that if there’s an Obama-McCain general-election match-up, we’ll see an almost identical ad from the Republican campaign. I’m almost surprised Clinton hasn’t run it sooner.<\/p>\n

For the Obama campaign, which apparently was none too pleased about this new spot, campaign manager David Plouffe issued the reply<\/a> I expected him to offer:<\/p>\n

“We don’t think the ad is going to be effective at all. Senator Clinton already had her red phone moment — to decide whether to allow George Bush to invade Iraq. She answered affirmatively. She did not read the National Intelligence Estimate. She still, curiously, tries to suggest that it wasn’t a vote for war, but it most assuredly was… <\/p>\n

“This is about what you say when you answer that phone. What judgment you show…She, John McCain and George Bush gave the wrong answer.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I certainly understand the point of the fear-based ad. As Chris Cillizza put it<\/a>, the idea is to get Dems “to take a hard look at which of the two candidates they want sitting in the White House.” For Clinton supporters, the ad suggests Clinton’s background as First Lady offers her insights that make her better able to answer that 3 a.m. call. For Obama supporters, the ad is a reminder that Clinton got the big question wrong, and that Obama’s judgment and vision makes him better able to answer that 3 a.m. call.<\/p>\n

I’d be surprised if this ad were a real game-changer, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s just not that unusual for a presidential candidate to rely on the politics of fear. LBJ’s “Daisy” ad certainly set the bar, but we’ve seen plenty of egregious examples in the post-9\/11 era, usually from the right (“If you vote Democrat, Osama bin Laden will kill your dog.”). With this in mind, the new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}