By Samuel Rubenfeld
The slickly produced $4 million infomercial by Barack Obama provided little substance, but it didn’t have to give any.
Going into the final weekend of the campaign, voters have essentially heard all they are willing to hear about what each candidate will do to solve the financial crisis, how they will solve the looming health care, medicare and social security crises, and how they will conduct foreign policy.
They just simply need to be reminded, and perhaps persuaded, to vote. And Obama gave undecided middle-income voters every reason to do so Wednesday night.
Instead of being the focus of the 30-minute infomercial, Obama served as a narrator for much of it, focusing on the lives of everyday people struggling over how to pay for a necessary surgery, how to stay in their homes, how to keep going in an uncertain future.
“With each passing month, our country’s faced increasingly difficult times,” Obama said as he opened the infomercial. “Despite the economic crisis and war and uncertainty about tomorrow, I still see optimism and hope, and strength.”
He spoke from what appeared to be a model of the Oval Office, a similar concept to the idea behind the columns used at his acceptance speech in Denver at the Democratic convention. The intention is obvious: Obama wants to make people comfortable with the idea of him as president.
The last time a presidential candidate ran an infomercial was 1992, when Ross Perot, running on a third party ticket, spoke from a desk and showed the country how to analyze graphs and charts.
Unlike Perot, Obama spent less time on issues, and when he did, it was with broad strokes reinforced by displaying the talking points in words on the bottom of the screen. This was not the venue for a point-by-point treatise on an economic plan, nor was it a time for arcane policy details.
The image was everything.
There were clips from the tribute video prior to his acceptance speech, clips from his address on education in Dayton, Ohio from September and moments of Obama interacting with voters in a small, intimate setting. Key surrogates such as Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine and Massachussetts Gov. Deval Patrick all delivered testimonials to Obama’s ideas, leadership and judgment.
The campaign brilliantly timed the end of the video to an arena-sized appearance in Florida, where Obama delivered a positive coda to a positive advertisement. There was no mention of John McCain. Not one.
The McCain response? Spokesman Tucker Bounds released the following statement: “As anyone who has bought anything from an infomercial knows, the sales-job is always better than the product. Buyer beware.”