I gotta hand it to Karl Rove's American Crossroads Super PAC: they make some quality political attack ads.
The new spot takes on Obama's celebrity status, showing a greatest hits of Obama's cultural moments: singing Al Green, killing a fly on television, calling Kanye a jackass, drinking a Guinness on St. Patrick's Day and appearing on Jimmy Fallon, the latter showing just how quick Crossroads works (Obama appeared on the show on Tuesday).
Obama appeared on Fallon to protest Fallon's terminal unfunniness discuss student loans. Crossroads' ad makes a quick right turn into the harrowing numbers for current students and recent grads, with student loans skyrocketing and the employment market nonexistent:
This ad smartly neutralizes two of Obama's strengths: his popularity, and his call for more two and four year collegiate degrees as part of an economic rebuilding strategy. The ad makes his popularity appear at the cost of his presidential accomplishments—while this guy was impoving over the Roots, your jobs were going down the toilet. Meanwhile, it portrays Obama's theme of universal higher education as a naive pipe dream: after Cool Obama tricks you into taking out student loans, is he going to help you pay them?
Personally, I like the Obama=Celebrity meme better than most of the anti-Obama narratives out there, because it's actually true: the man is definitely a celebrity, whereas the case for him being a Kenyan Muslim Socialist Black Panther Supervillain is not yet airtight. For all that I disagree with the criticism of Obama as an empty suit, I'd rather criticism focus on his job performance, however obliquely, than on his citizenship or religion.
JT Langley:
Mitt Romney is supposed to appear on The View tomorrow to announce his solution to help college students pay back their loans. Bet your duckets and cattle that I'll be tuning in-- #fauxBama
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