The 2012 presidential race is looking to be as dirty a campaign as there can be. On Wednesday, Gov. Rick Perry released a video condemning President Barack Obama as president Zero (meaning that there have been no jobs created and that change has not come.)
The video looks like next summer’s Michael Bay movie. It has quick, jarring cuts, pundits talking over one another and choice out-of-context sound bytes of Obama. It will undoubtedly work wonders on apocalyptic right wing nutjobs, but will leave others in some sort of confused energetic state, the result of the atmosphere of the video, not the message.
When Perry finally comes into play, about halfway through the commercial, the music changes into something that can only be described as heroic. The video packages Perry as some sort of cowboy superhero.
The biggest problem — blatant propaganda aside — is that the video does nothing but trash Obama. There are no solutions posed by Perry, no rhetoric to back up the smack talk. He merely bashes the president as the video proclaims, “In 2012 America will discover a new name for leadership, an American who served for freedom, a president who will lead a nation.”
That’s it. Then the Perry logo flashes on the screen.
But Perry is not Superman. He isn’t even a new name for leadership — the man has been a governor for more than a decade, and he was in public office long before that.
It’s sad, really. Not that Perry is going full throttle at Obama; that much is to be expected.
But the current state of American politics being what it is, do we really need another attack ad?
What’s ironic is that this ad is exactly what Perry does not need for his campaign. Instead of championing another politician’s weakness, why doesn’t he hammer Obama on the issues? A commercial offering realistic solutions for the problems the US is facing would do more for Perry’s campaign than anything else.
Stuff like this goes both ways. Once the GOP has their nominee, I guarantee Obama's campaign will attack him/her relentlessly. The president can't exactly win by running on his "accomplishments" so his campaign will go negative.