This oddly defensive ad rebutting a Koch brothers-funded attack is hardly an inspiring start to Obama's re-election campaign
Who
It is high time to forget about the nastiness, race-baiting, ex-wives and tax-dodging that is dominating the Republican nomination scrap down in South Carolina and look at the man the GOP hopefuls are so keen to fight: President Barack Obama.
Obama's re-election team and its backers have been quietly plotting his re-election strategy, building up an organisation in key states and raising a gigantic war chest of cash that now tops $220m. Now, it has released its first ad.
What
The ad is a 30-second spot that is a direct response to a campaign by Americans for Prosperity, an organisation backed by the Koch Brothers, that is also a supporter of the Tea Party movement. AFP have been running a $6m ad campaign poking away at the Solyndra issue, where an alternative energy firm collapsed despite massive federal financial help. The Obama ad is called (rather prosaically): "The Facts About President Obama's Energy Record."
When
It is going up Thursday in a series of "battleground states" across America. For millions of Americans outside the early primary/caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, this ad will be the first sign that 2012 is indeed an election year and it is going to be a nasty one.
It is also fascinating to look at where the ad is running: Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Virginia and North Carolina. Those are all states Obama won in 2008, including the grand prizes of Virginia and North Carolina, which represented the establishment of a blue toe-hold in the deep red South. But in the end, it is a defensive ad buy. The Obama team is sending the message that they want to try to hold their gains, but they have little sense they could extend them.
That is a fairly realistic assessment of Obama's prospects. But also ? this early in the race and with so much money on hand ? shows a lack of ambition.
Why
The ad is a remarkable one. But not in a good way.
Given that this is the first ad in Obama's re-election campaign, one might think the team behind Obama would want to stress a positive message, perhaps mentioning some of his achievements: ending the war in Iraq, staving off a Great Depression, saving the auto industry or ? if you are feeling militaristic ? shooting dead Osama bin Laden. Or perhaps, Obama could have gone on the offensive, feeling ordinary Americans' pain over joblessness and warning that no one should trust the rabble-rousing Republican party with being adult enough to make things better.
But no. To kick off the campaign, the Obama team chooses to mention Solyndra and engage ? not with ordinary Americans ? but with Charles and David Koch. The reasoning behind this has to be bizarre. One possible explanation is that the Obama team has been reading recent polling looking at his collapsing support among independents. Thus, they are assuming their base is safely secured and want to talk about issues, and fight opponents, likely to influence that middle ground.
Even so, this ad's subject matter still seems a distinctly odd choice. General elections, especially at this early stage, are about sweeping narratives and broad arguments, not the nitty gritty of individual issues. Leave that stuff until the last weeks of the fight.
How
The ad kicks in with the usual gravelly-voiced gentleman sounding serious. "Secretive oil billionaires attacking President Obama with ads fact-checkers say are not tethered to the facts," he says, in a rather confusing way. The secretive rich folks are not mentioned by name (but we know who they are!) and a screen shot of a Solyndra attack ad is shown. To this humble correspondent, this seems infuriatingly amateurish. If you are going to make the decision to devote your first ad of the campaign to the Kochs, then why not actually mention them.
And showing the Solyndra name (a company still largely unknown to the vast majority of American voters) is likely to do nothing but spark someone's interest. One can easily imagine a voter watching this ad, scratching their head and typing Solyndra into Google and running straight into the AFP campaign. Surely that is not what the makers of the Obama ad intended.
Next, we see a shot of Obama appearing presidential in an office (though he also looks a little like he's giving a one-arm fascist salute ? hmmm, poor picture choice). Then, the voiceover says that independent watchdogs have called Obama's record on ethics "unprecedented". Again, this feels like a mis-step. It's a defence to an attack that surely most people have not seen. Faced with this ad, it is again easy to imagine voters, not nodding in agreement, but suddenly wondering who exactly has been calling Obama unethical (and why).
Then, the ad claims clean energy has brought in 2.7m jobs. Which is great. Jobs and the economy are the big issue of the 2012 election and it's about time this ad talked about them. But again, it is framing the issue of jobs against a defence of environmental and energy policy. A couple scenes of people filling their cars with petrol and an oil rig at sea follow as the narrator claims America's dependence on foreign oil has been reduced (a ridiculous, amorphous claim that is virtually unprovable).
Finally, up pops Obama to tell us he approved this message. Which, no doubt, he did. But it is disturbing in some ways.
There is an old rule in politics that runs something like this: never wrestle with a pig, because you'll both end up in the mud ? but the pig will like it. In this case, Obama's team is deciding in the middle of January to kick off its campaign with a tussle with the Koch brothers over the issue of clean energy and Solyndra. In my view, that is not an argument that American people really care about yet.
First impressions count for a lot. This was an opportunity to put forward a strong vision and a firm argument for why Obama deserves a second term and why America needs him to win. It was a chance to reconnect with the voters, to look back at the last three years and explain what happened and why. That opportunity was comprehensively missed in favour of elevating an obscure spat with a couple of billionaires that the ad itself ? lacking the courage of its convictions ? does not dare name.
That cackling sound you can hear? That's a Koch brother laughing.
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