There has been much discussion by the pundits about the significance of the "Half Time" ad for President Obama's reelection. Democrats have a hard time understanding the Republican Clint Eastwood's motivation in associating himself with a project that highlights one of the President's singular accomplishments.
The rescue of the American automobile industry is the President's to claim. No doubt about it. But, that's from the perspective of the people who design, manufacture and sell the cars. From the perspective of the financial engineers, who thrive on breaking companies up and selling the parts as so much scrap, the "rescue" was an intrusion on their standard operating procedure. From their perspective, governmental powers are supposed to be used to acquire and access natural resources and "protect" American enterprise from foreign competition and the poaching of their patent/intellectual rights. Serving the interests of working people is not their idea of what government should be about. So, the rescue of the automobile industry, from the perspective of people aiming to get rich, represents a lot of work for something they expected to get for free--paper profits without actually doing anything.
Of course, as so often happens to people with ulterior motives, their real motivation can't be admitted. Willard Romney might admit that he likes "to fire people who provide services to me," but even he knows to specify that it's "service providers" he disdains, not the producers of goods--i.e. workers. Even Willard Romney knows he needs the votes of the working folk. Never mind that he and his buds spent decades ripping factories apart and putting workers out of jobs. He didn't mean it. He only likes to "fire people who provide services to me." You know, like the barber and the gardener and the insurance guys that got to underwrite all those derivatives and loans. Willard and Clint are firmly on the side of the workingman. This, Mr. and Mrs. America, you have got to believe.
Whenever a Republican political offering seems puzzling, Democrats are tempted to dismiss it as ill-informed or accidental. The first time that happened, that I'm aware of, was the attack on John Kerry's stellar military record by a rag-tag group of Vietnam veterans, who dubbed themselves the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, even though their organizer, Col. George Everette "Bud" Day, was in the Air Force and was aiming to help his old friend John McCain, rather than the incumbent George W. Bush. The attack, albeit totally unfounded, worked like a charm because it put Kerry on the defensive about one of his strengths and it took the heat off George W. Bush's obvious cowardice in going AWOL from the National Guard. Indeed, that weakness was effectively taken off the table because Kerry bringing it up would have looked like petty retaliation. So, the issue of meritorious military service was effectively preempted by the Swift Boat gambit.
Was it intentional or happenstance? I don't know, but it worked. Preempting an issue by claiming an opponent's strength as your own seemed to have been the point when the John McCain campaign came out with an ad proclaiming Barack Obama as "The One." Obviously, it didn't have the desired effect on the American people. Perhaps because it sought to blunt an opponent's advantage by inoculating the public against a message based on fact, which the audience recognized, but the producers of the ad didn't. Being faith-based, instead of reality-based, apparently has its disadvantages. People do things without knowing what it means. The result is "The One" from the McCain campaign
and now we've got one from the friends of Bain. Because, of course, the Cerberus Capital Management Group, which was founded as a hedge fund by former Vice President James Danforth "Dan" Quayle and now owns Chrysler, is in the same fraternity as Bain.
Come to think of it, perhaps there really is no recognition of the President's role in salvaging Chrysler and GM. Perhaps "Half Time in America" is supposed to remind us of the man who got to be Vice President only half as long as he planned. Now, there's a thought!