I was talking to a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago. He is a huge fan of President Obama.
He said, “Gas prices are down; the stock market is up so my pension is safer; the auto industry is doing better; we are out of Iraq and we haven’t gotten involved in another ground war; some friends and relatives who couldn't get insurance now have coverage. I love this guy."
Now I like the President but he is much too centrist for me. I could have argued some of my concerns about his economic and foreign policy decisions, but that is not what struck me about my friend’s comment.
My question was one that I would like the Clinton campaign strategists to answer. Why couldn’t you folks have created an ad with a simple statement like the one my friend made?
In 1980 Ronald Reagan centered his campaign around a basic question: ”Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” For too many Americans the answer was “No” and Reagan was elected. This year the Democrats could have asked, “Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?” Despite the fact that the benefactors of the recovery have too often been the wealthy, most Americans could answer the question in the affirmative. The question would have reminded folks of how bad things were in 2008, and that though the recovery wasn’t perfect, the country is in better shape than it was eight years ago.
A thirty second ad. Some guy/gal speaking into camera. "Gas prices are down; the stock market is up so my pension is safer; the auto industry is doing better; we are out of Iraq and we haven’t gotten involved in another ground war; some friends and relatives who couldn't get insurance now have coverage.” Perhaps a not too flattering picture of Bush. Voiceover: “Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?”
Incidentally, when I asked my friend why the Clinton campaign couldn't have come up with a simple effective ad based on the concept in his statement, his response was that he probably wasn’t smart enough to run a political campaign.
IMHO he could have done better than the Democratic brain trust, but then that’s a rather low bar.