Something to put your head in a good place this Monday morning
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Category Archives: Video
Ghosts of SOTU speeches past
An outfit called Bankrupting America sent out this video last night before the State of the Union address. I didn’t get around to seeing it until today. As the release promises, “The video highlights 3 decades of State of the Union presidential promises on fiscal discipline.”
There’s also a fact sheet that goes with it.
I find being part of a long, ongoing tradition to be very reassuring, don’t you? See, it doesn’t matter whether they’re Democrats or Republicans — presidents are all pretty much alike. People don’t change. Makes us feel… solid, grounded.
I would say, though, that one of those presidents actually did something about it: Bill Clinton. The video doesn’t mention that. But the fact sheet dismisses it this way: “Despite two years of on-budget surpluses, deficit spending in other years added to the debt.”
Oh, the video also assumes that the only way to reduce the deficit, and the debt, is by reducing spending. Raising taxes, and simply growing the economy to increase revenues, are not considered. In case you didn’t notice that.
Video: 2nd ex-wife drops the Big One on Newt
Man-oh-man — has a woman scorned EVER had an opportunity like this?
Just as he’s picking up the Big Mo, she torpedoes him by the simple expedient of telling what she knows about what he’s really like.
And there’s no defense against that, if you’re Newt Gingrich. I mean, when it comes to temperament and character, how many strikes does this guy already have against him? And how many does he get?
Which one’s ‘desperate,’ and which ‘unreliable’?
Here’s an ad the Gingrich campaign unleashed after midnight. The release that went with it:
Atlanta, GA – The polls in South Carolina are tightening and Mitt Romney’s attacks against Newt Gingrich are getting more desperate and more dishonest.
We’ve seen this play out before. The last time Mitt Romney ran for president, he ran equally dishonest and desperate attacks against John McCain and Mike Huckabee when he fell behind in the polls.
To remind voters of Mitt Romney’s history of launching desperate and dishonest attacks against his rivals, Newt 2012 released a new web ad, “Desperate.”
The ad features clips of John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson remarking on Mitt Romney’s desperate attacks against them as well as his multiple positions on multiple issues.
Watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHapuEmt2xw
And turn about being fair play, below is an ad that Romney put out yesterday.
Wait! I forget — which one’s desperate, and which one’s unreliable?
Remembering the Air Florida crash in D.C.
When I was traveling with Howard Baker in Iowa in 1980, before the caucuses, it looked like we were going to be iced in at Dubuque. We had flown in earlier in the day. I had been in the second plane, with a couple of guys from an NBC crew. It was a four-seater, and flying in from Des Moines, the pilot only had a tiny patch of windshield, about the size of my hand, that he could see through by constantly squirting alcohol on it. When I got out of the plane, I was trying to button my trenchcoat when the wind caught it like a sail and I started gliding across the frozen tarmac.
Later, I was scheduled to fly back to Des Moines in the “big” plane, which wasn’t all that much bigger, with Baker. We waited in the tiny general aviation terminal for more than an our while the wings of our plane were deiced, then deiced again, and again. Finally, we got in and took off. Someone told me that they only let us go because it was Sen. Baker.
Two years later, I realized that the aviation officials had done us no favors letting us go. I had no idea how very dangerous ice on the wings could be. Until the Air Florida crash.
Is it possible that Perry has dumbed his message down even MORE, just for li’l ol’ SC?
OK, so Rick Perry, who was not just on the ropes, but collapsed in his corner — his corner man’s arm cocked back ready to chuck the towel into the ring — before deciding to make one last comeback in South Carolina, has come up with a TV ad just for us.
Everything’s riding on this, mind you…
And here it is, in its entirety:
“Values” Script:
Gov. Perry: “As the son of tenant farmers from the West Texas town of Paint Creek, I learned the values of hard work, faith and family.
“I took those values with me when I served our country as a pilot in the Air Force. I returned home to farm and ranch with my father and married my high school sweetheart. The values I learned served me well as Governor of Texas, and will continue to guide me as President.
“I’m Rick Perry and I approve this message.”
Or, to be even briefer, Ah’m a regler feller, vote fer me.
Yep. The guy who has lowered trite saynothingism to the crudest of art forms, who has spent a fortune boring us in Iowa, has dumbed it down even more. Just for us.
Do you feel insulted? I feel insulted. I feel more insulted than I’ve felt since “Tinker, Tailor” didn’t come to Columbia as a mainstream commercial release (although I do hope to get to Nickelodeon this weekend).
Come, on Rick — show me there’s something there! Give me something to agree with, or disagree with. I mean, really — do you think South Carolinians are so dumb that they haven’t even absorbed the fact that you’re running as a good ol’ Southern boy?
Time’s a wastin’, boy. If you’ve got something to tell us, tell us. Otherwise, run along on home.
Why stump for Romney in NH, rather than SC?
Speaking of releases from the SC Democrats, they just put out the above video, with this comment from Dick Harpootlian:
Instead of rolling up her sleeves and getting to work on South Carolina’s problems with jobs, education, and taxes, Nikki Haley is jetting to New Hampshire to play politics and mingle with the national press and pundits. It’s clear Nikki Haley is already done with all of us here in South Carolina and is planning her national political career. I hope she’ll bring us back a t-shirt that says “Nikki went to New Hampshire and all I got was this lousy tee shirt (and a lousy Governor).”
Aw, come on, Dick! The T-shirt gag has been done to death, and you just used it awkwardly to boot.
Anyway, the conclusion I draw from the video is that the Dems are driving to drive a wedge between our governor and her Tea Party fans, who are already less than enchanted with her over her support of Mitt Romney.
Beyond that, I find myself wondering — if she wants to campaign for Romney, why doesn’t she do it right here at home, with our primary coming up on the 21st?
Could it be because she’s worn out her welcome with many of the voters Romney needs to charm down here, while she still continues to get a free ride, and hagiographic coverage, from the national media — thereby making her more valuable far from home?
I don’t know. I doubt Mitt is that hip to the situation in SC. But it would be interesting if that’s what his campaign is thinking.
The Huntsman Girls, tonight on Pub Politics
I emailed Wesley yesterday to let him know I would be available if he needed me this week or next on Pub Politics (which would me my unparalleled eighth appearance on the show). He said he’s let me know if he needed me.
Since then, he’s been distracted by the demise of the candidacy for which he was working.
But that didn’t prevent him from lining up a show with considerably more appeal that I could bring:
Did you know that the human body produces its own supply of alcohol naturally on a continuous basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Did you know that the world’s oldest known recipe is for beer?
And did you know that the Huntsman Girls are going to be our special guests this week on Pub Politics? Meet Wes and Phil and the girls at Pearlz Oyster Bar in the Vista this Thursday, January 5 at our usual time, 6pm. We’ll chat politics and partying to celebrate Phil’s birthday.
The Huntsman girls – Mary Anne, Liddy, and Abby – the eldest three children of presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman are most notable for their recent viral YouTube videos. Mary Anne, 26, is a concert pianist and works on the fundraising side of her father’s campaign, Abby, 25, works in broadcasting and handles media with the campaign, and Liddy, 23, is a recent college grad recruiting young voters.
You can follow them on twitter @Jon2012Girls or check out their YouTube videos where they mock a Herman Cain ad or offer up their own rendition of a popular Justin Timberlake song.
With a Mormon and a Catholic leading the pack, let’s pause for a few words from John F. Kennedy
On the morning after the photo-finish in Iowa, The New Yorker is waxing deeply philosophical:
What will be more telling, perhaps, is how the Republican candidates, in the primaries and caucuses to come, address the ideals and most personal beliefs of others. A party whose base has increasingly been oriented around the interests of politicized evangelism finds itself with a tie between a Mormon and a Catholic. (The “entrance polls” in Iowa, like many others so far, showed one set of numbers for those identifying themselves as “evangelical or born again,” and one set for those who do not.) One has been left to wonder how much of a factor Romney’s religion has been in his troubles with Republican voters. (They have so many non-sectarian reasons to suspect him that it’s hard to tease out.) In the 2008 election, as Hendrik Hertzberg noted at the time, Romney attempted to ingratiate himself by drawing a circle around the followers of organized religions generally, while casting aspersions on those who led a secular life. Santorum, meanwhile, has made religious beliefs about matters such as family planning and romantic relationships cornerstones of his political program.
We are more than a half century removed from John F. Kennedy’s campaign to be the first Catholic President. In a speech that he felt he needed to give, at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, he said,
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist.
Watching his speech on the subject now, one is struck not only by his words but by the expressions on the faces of the people who are listening—really listening, it appears, to words thoughtfully spoken…
This has not been the spirit of the speakers or the audience in the dozen or so debates so far. What will we see in the six scheduled for January alone, not to mention the ads that will air in the weeks and months ahead? What will the candidates, and their surrogates, have to say about each others’ religions? Or about people who have no religion at all, and—one hopes this won’t need to be said—are no less faithful citizens for it? (Kennedy, in a crucial phrase, spoke of the right to attend “or not attend” the church of one’s choice.)…
Huntsman ad: “We are getting screwed…”
Kudos to Jon Huntsman for being the first GOP candidate to break out of the prison of the trite and poorly worded, and give us an ad that says something, and does it with a bit of a bite.
And I’m not just saying that because he uses the word “screwed” in mixed company.
I’m saying it because he actually tells you something about himself in a way that you might take note, and remember.
I don’t know if I’d go so far as Henry McMaster in praising it:
I miss Ronald Reagan. I served as his first US Attorney.
We all wish he would appear out of the cornfield in a “Field of Dreams” and be our nominee for President.
But right now – there is only one true Reagan Republican in the race, a leader who worked for Ronald Reagan and has proven himself over the years to be a strong, consistent conservative, with the best record as a chief executive creating jobs, cutting taxes and balancing budgets at the state level.
That is my good friend Jon Huntsman.
I hope you’ll take a moment to watch Jon’s latest TV ad. It truly is a wake up call for America.
Our nation is deep in debt. And we’ve lost trust in government to solve problems.
I believe Jon Huntsman is the leader we need to repair both the economic deficit and the deficit of trust that has afflicted our country.
Jon has never been a flip-flopper or an opportunist. He has always been consistently pro-life and pro-family. As Governor of Utah, he led the nation in creating jobs, cutting taxes and stimulating real economic growth.
Jon Huntsman is the most extraordinary Governor I’ve seen since Carroll Campbell. And he’s also the only one in the presidential race with foreign policy experience as a United States Ambassador to both Singapore and China. The world we live in is far too dangerous to pick another president with no foreign policy experience.
I ask you as a friend, as a South Carolinian, a father and an American to join me in restoring trust, dignity, and integrity in Washington, DC by supporting Jon Huntsman for President.
Peggy and I wish you and your family a very happy, healthy and blessed 2012.
Sincerely,
Henry McMaster
I’m not sure this is a “wake-up call for America.” It’s more like a “get up briefly and let the dog out” call. But at least you don’t sleep soundly through it, and that’s something.
Compared to what it’s up against, this ad deserves brief applause, at the minimum.
… apparently, a MAJOR target
Rick Perry, reduced to doing everything he can to claw his way past the guy perceived as being in third place in Iowa, is now spending money to take him down, as the above (extremely monotonous, if you’re listening to it while typing on another tab) video will attest…
Even NEWT does mind-numbingly trite ads
You would think, as idiosyncratic as the guy is, as much of loose cannon as he is, that at least Newt Gingrich could produce ads that don’t seem like they started out vanilla, but then got any trace of any sort of original flavor filtered out of them through a multi-step process.
But he can be just as trite as the king himself, Rick Perry. Triter, even.
That’s disappointing, somehow. I’d like to see a little edginess from this guy, at least. Something that stands up and says, “I’m Newt, and I refuse to be boring!”
No such luck, though. He’s gotten all plain and careful since his numbers went up.
Perry ads amazingly trite, yet revelatory
I continue to be fascinated by Rick Perry’s TV ads, largely because they are so startlingly lacking in anything that might ordinarily fascinate an active mind.
They are so formulaic, so trite, so astoundingly lacking in originality, that it is truly remarkable.
And on top of that, they are badly executed — which is also surprising, since you would think that anyone would at least be able to present such simplistic messages without tripping over his laces. Take this bit of the script of the ad above:
The fox guarding the henhouse is like asking a Congressman to fix Washington: bad idea.
Obviously, what is meant here is, “asking a Congressman to fix Washington is like the fox guarding the henhouse.” The idea being criticized, being held up as a bad idea, is asking a congressman to fix Washington, and the universally understood cliche to which it is being compared is the fox guarding the henhouse. But the announcer gets it completely backward. Even if you told me that the script writer’s first language wasn’t English, it wouldn’t excuse this, because logic knows no language.
But, as bad as these ads are, they do reveal things about Perry, and with great economy of language.
Once again, what we learn about him (as we did back here) is that he assumes — or should I say, presumes — that the president of the United States is an absolute monarch who rules by fiat, with the other branches being completely subject to his will.
In this case, he plays on populist resentment of people who make more money than the voter (and he’s a Republican, right?) to endear the voter to his plan to emasculate and hobble the legislative branch. Elect me, he is saying, and I will wave my scepter and this thing you resent, this Congress, will become a poor, feeble thing, unable to wield any power any more (and unable to be a check on my power), too busy trying to scratch out a living back home to be an obstacle to the new King.
I say all this as someone who — as my readers well know — is a longtime champion of executive power here in South Carolina (a governor in control of the whole executive branch, a strong mayor in Columbia). But that’s because on the state and local levels here, the executive is so weak as to be unable to perform its proper function in a healthy government. That is not the case in Washington, and in any case, Perry overreaches to an extent that is shocking, and would be under any circumstance. Yes, he does so out of deep ignorance of the rule of law under our constitution, but that doesn’t make the (fortunately remote) prospect of him being president less chilling.
There’s a deeper irony here. In reality, the only way to bring about this poor shadow of the present Congress is, of course, to ask Congress to do it. No president could bring that about unilaterally. And as he says, asking Congress to “fix” Washington (according to his notion of “fixing”) is indeed like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Or the other way around. Whatever.
I really don’t get political wives; do y’all?
I’m guessing there’s a little-known codicil attached to the First Amendment that says you’re only allowed to make a certain number of painfully trite and pandering campaign ads in a month, so Rick Perry had to get his wife to do one, because he had exceeded his quota.
That would help explain the painful-to-watch phenomenon above.
Set aside the script, which makes me think that the Perry campaign paid the writers extra not to put in anything touching on originality or genuinely revelatory of character: No, this sounds too much like a real person — go back and watch another hour’s worth of ads from the 19950s and try again!
The appearance of a political wife in this one reminds me of the question Kathleen Parker raised yesterday: “Callista Gingrich: A Laura or a Hillary?” My first reaction, when I saw that headline on Twitter, was to think “Neither; she’s a Stepford.” But that one’s been done to death, so I didn’t Tweet it.
My next thought was this: I’m always a bit suspicious of political wives when they step to the fore. Like, why are they doing this? Is it their own ambition (I guess Hillary is supposed to stand for that) or are we to think they’re just so doggoned loyal and supportive that they’ll put up with all this, and with a fixed smile (I’m guessing that’s Laura)?
I mean, the candidates themselves are, by definition, not psychologically normal. No regular guy puts himself through that. He either desires power, or other people’s approval, or self-flagellation, or regular sex (the Alpha Male phenomenon), way more than your average Joe does, or he’s got a screw loose, or he is just ordained by Almighty God to be the nation’s leader (which would be my excuse, were I to run).
But hey, at the end of it all, he gets to be president and call the shots (which LOTS of guys would go for, if they didn’t have to go through a campaign to get there). But to run for First Lady? Where’s the reward? You have to show up for all the ribbon-cuttings, but get no real power. So I wonder. About all of them. (As for the husbands of female candidates — there are too few, and they stay too far in the background, for me to have formed many impressions, much less to have leaped to any generalizations.)
Whenever I’ve mentioned — just for the sake of argument, baby, just for laughs, you know, heh-heh — the remote possibility of thinking about considering running for office, I don’t get the sense from my wife that she’d be up for ANY sort of involvement in such madness. Because she’s a normal, sane person, and doesn’t need anything that such an experience has to offer. Which makes me wonder about the women who DO actively get involved in such goings-on.
It puzzles me.
All you “progressives” out there: Don’t forget to vote for Mitt Romney next month!
Last night I was cleaning out email, and ran across this item from last week.
Actually, technically, it’s from 2002. In the clip, Mitt Romney assures Massachusetts voters, “My views are progressive.” And you know, at the moment, it may have been true.
In any case, you may have noticed he doesn’t say that much any more, for some reason.
Nothing like openness and transparency, eh?
I had missed this local news clip, but alert correspondent Burl Burlingame, way out in our Honolulu bureau, brought it to my attention.
Nothing like openness in an elected official, huh? Here’s the WACH story about what you see above…
Not bad, but sorry — I already have those albums
A fairly cool little come-on designed to get you to buy the Beatles’ albums on iTunes.
But you see, I already own them all on vinyl. And I have a turntable that connects to my computer via USB.
So thanks anyway — enjoyed the video.
… and guess who CAN’T say that?
And so it begins. As the WashPost notes:
Mitt Romney is up with a new ad that takes a not-so-subtle swipe at Newt Gingrich. Called “Leader,” the 30-second ad set to go up on the air in New Hampshire and Iowa this week, features old home video footage of Romney, his wife and his kids, with a voiceover of the former governor of Massachusetts saying:
“If I’m President of the United States, I will be true to my family, to my faith, and to our country, and I will never apologize for the United States of America.”
With images of Romney as a dad and as a husband front and center, the obvious contrast is with Gingrich, who has been married three times and has admitted to infidelity. The ad is the most personal look at Romney and his family life so far as he tries to make more of a connection with voters, particularly social conservatives, who still have concerns about Gingrich….
I guess Romney’s really taking those latest poll numbers to heart.
As plain as he can be: Newt’s going for pure, unadulterated generic
Now that Newt Gingrich is the apparent front-runner, I thought y’all might want to marvel with me at his new ad.
I think it just might be the most generic political ad (generic for a Republican, anyway) I have ever seen.
A little “Morning in America.” A little “America the Beautiful.” Breathtakingly lacking in controversy.
Maybe its natural that the most idiosyncratic “front-runner” I can remember in many a day would seek to be as ordinary as possible. As generic as he can be, totally friction-free.
Or maybe Newt’s overdoing it a little…
Ben Smith at Politico calls it “literal.” I call it “Extreme Vanilla.”
But verily, yon Richard be a godly man, withal…
No sooner had I posted the earlier Perry video than this one came in, and it truly boggles the mind in its simplicity. In case you have trouble watching it, here’s the script:
Gov. Perry: “When you run for president, you get a bunch of questions about your faith.”
Text: Rick Perry
“People want to know what drives you, how you make decisions.”
“Now some liberals say that faith is a sign of weakness. Well they’re wrong. I think we all need God’s help.”
“America’s greatest leaders have been people of strong faith, strong values. That makes for a strong America.”
“I’m Rick Perry, I’m not ashamed to talk about my faith, and I approve this message.”
Really? That’s it? You spend who knows how many thousands of dollars producing this and getting it aired, you have this golden opportunity to address the entire nation on the subject of God, the universe and everything, the ultimate questions, and that’s what you say? I’m one a them good folks whut believes in the Lord, and not one a them heathen lib’ruls.
That’s it?!?!?
And this is supposed to work for you?
Tell you what, Rick. Go read Matthew 6:5. In fact, read the whole chapter. Run along, now, there’s a good lad…