Nate Silver (Poblano) has written that Obama’s ads are failing to move voter sentiments because they lack the kinds of striking images or metaphors that stick in voters’ minds (think Reagan’s “Bear in the Woods” or the “Celebrity” ads). This TIME article about why Obama loves poker and McCain loves crapsgave me an idea. Here's the second half of my 30 second Obama commercial attacking McCain for wanting to privatize Social Security.
NARRATOR: "John McCain will roll the dice with your future."
[Viewer sees a stack of casino chips labeled “Social Security" on a craps table. Dice fly through the air, then land on snake eyes. A craps rake coldly pulls the “Social Security” chips away from the camera.]
NARRATOR: “And that’s a bet…that Americans can’t afford to make.”
[Cut to destitute-looking elderly white woman.]
BARACK OBAMA: “I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.”
Here's my idea for the full commercial:
NARRATOR: “The ideas of John McCain and his Republican Party have already wrecked America's banks and mortgages”
[“Meltdown on Wall Street” type headlines, followed by images of “foreclosed” signs on houses]
JOHN MCCAIN [footage]: "I'm always for less regulation."
NARRATOR: “Now McCain wants to bet your social security on the stock market.”
JOHN MCCAIN [footage]: “I support President Bush's plan to privatize social security.”
NARRATOR: John McCain will roll the dice with your future
[You see a chip stack labeled “Social Security" on a craps table. Dice fly through the air, then land on snake eyes (a symbol of bad luck). Then a craps rake pulls the “social security” chips away from the camera]
NARRATOR: “And that’s a bet…that Americans can’t afford to make.”
[Cut to destitute-looking elderly white woman.]
BARACK OBAMA: “I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.”
McCain really does love playing craps – he goes to casinos to play it all the time. This is a window into McCain's temperment, personality, and potentiallly his presidency. Here's why. Craps is purely a game of chance where the odds are, by definition, NEVER in your favor. It is by nature a game for the reckless. Two kinds of reckless in craps “suckers," or people who are poor gamblers when they can't afford to be, and people like McCain who . Poker by contrast, as any good poker player will tell you, is almost exclusively a game of skill (only suckers believe that it’s luck). Obama is cautious, measured, and even a little conservative in his poker playing, just like he is in demeanor, thought-process, personality, and in his leadership style. In fact, at a late-night poker game once, a Republican colleague of Obama's from the Illinois State Senate once yelled at him: "Obama! If you were more conservative in your politics and more liberal in your poker-playing, you and I would get along a lot better!" Priceless.
Also, keep an eye out for footage of McCain out at casinos – I found this image of McCain at the craps table at the Bellagio.
Also, although you’d probably need a separate 30 second commercial for this, McCain wants to gamble with America’s health insurance as well. As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out, McCain wrote this in the Sept/Oct issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the America Association of Actuaries.
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."
McCain’s campaign must have written this in mid-August or so. This is manna from heaven for the Obama camp.
I’d love to hear your critiques, suggestions, and ideas for my ad or for new ads. I really believe that Obama needs to step up his advertising game to win this election at a comfortable margin. And if you're reading this, thanks for getting to the end my second diary ever.
UPDATE: I kid you not. I got this idea for my diary about six hours ago, then went to a family gathering that lasted a few hours, and spent the last few hours writing my diary. When I had done my final re-reading of my draft and had decided it was ready to publish, I was going to wait until tomorrow morning to post it. Then I saw that two hours ago, the New Republic posted an Obama ad that is eerily similar to mine. But it still lacks that striking visual image to make it an iconic ad, one that will be remembered twenty years from now, and I think that the craps imagery could do that.
Here's the ad: http://blogs.tnr.com/...