It's an ad ad world

All week long the blatherers, who I spend many happy hours with each day, have examined with their proctoscopes the television ads mostly of the McCain stripe. Only one of them pointed out that no money is being spent on airing these ads. There is no need when the carnival barkers are doing all that can be done to keep this the story. They are even asking each other: What does BarackO have to do to get the conversation back to the issues? They can’t. BHO gave a speech in Lansing that I saw some of and the crowd seemed to love. Only one person this morning referred to it but he too said it was very good. The Today show had not a peep, presumably because they spent so much time covering the heavy rains in Texas that might happen later on today.

Harold Ford Jr. doesn’t think that the McCain ads rise to the level of the smut leveled at him. But I think that anyone familiar with both ads will gratuitously make the connection back to the very successful “Harold, call me” ads because of a black candidate and white chicks. The ad itself doesn’t suggest sexual tension unless you’re Bob Herbert at the Times who saw phallic symbols in the form of the Washington monument and Berlin’s Victory tower which he misidentified as the tower of Pisa even though it was not leaning.

When you realize that no space is wasted on these very expensive productions you would have to be pretty naïve to think that the window pane/white cross behind almost President Huckabee last C’mas wasn’t intentional.

Ford, a popular Congressman even as his father had been, was ahead in his Senatorial bid when the ad struck and made national attention because it was playing on the fears of black men and white women cavorting. He lost. The effect of the ad is unquantifiable but the sniggering class all believe that it was dirty pool and that it speaks to a belief in the lowness of the common voter by the McCain camp. It also speaks to the fact that they know they’ve got nothin’ and this is the only way they have to make sure they don’t get stuck trying to defend their positions on “the issues.”

Harold Ford said he didn’t think these ads were as nasty as they could be and he thinks that’s because McCain himself (not the guy who says “I approve this ad”) really would rather they not have to go there. They all know it betrays a meanness and lack of a higher purpose, but they all know it works.

I agree with Ford that all this will be water over the dam when we witness the first debate. It is worth remembering that Reagan was behind till the first debate and then never looked back.