Two political ads

First, the "Mourning in America" ad, which refers to the well-remembered "Morning in America" spot of Ronald Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign. Having heard something about it, I expected the new ad to be far more powerful.



It shirks facts, and it ends with a disappointing plea for our government to "care about us." Isn't that the problem?

The next ad, from benhoweblog, is many times better. It revisits history, naming the two men whom we have been trained to revere but whom we now know, thanks in my opinion largely to Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, to have been primarily responsible for sending the United States off its Constitutional rails in order to satisfy an elite ideology: Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. The ad also captures the fundamental point of the last two years' politics: economic misery is one problem, but the larger problem is just our elites' generations-long hostility to the Constitution. The insertion of the clip showing Barack Obama trumpeting "fundamental change!" to a screaming crowd captures, not an image of the simple days when he was a teenybopper idol, but an image of chilling and calculated evil.



Wise, too, of the makers of this ad to finish with many pictures of protesting crowds, for this reflects the other main point of the last two years' politics: popular movement, popular understanding of, and anger at, what is going on. Here are not actors portraying the sad unemployed, but the actual rallies and speeches the media would not report. Big red Xs over the portraits of Republican candidates who lost because they weren't conservative enough also capture history as it is unfolding.

Bravo, benhoweblog. Memo to the group Citizens for the Republic: a bit less timidity next time, please.