Each time Americans go round their protracted electoral cycle, it gets a little more internet. It doesn't seem to happen here in the same way - perhaps we're not quite at critical mass yet, or maybe we're slow learners.
Anyway, the attack ad and YouTube were made for each other. Next to zero cost to make (some dork with a copy of Final Cut), zero cost to distribute (Google pays), and easy to circulate. Also for free.
Here's two very different ones against McCain. They each take a very different tone, but both make me pretty anxious about the fact that he's even still in this race (and tightening - Electoral Vote has it at 289-249 in Obama's favour today).
First, here's a TPM one about what a senile fool he is. Especially about Czechoslovakia. And timetables. Not to mention dirt, and/or Frankenstein.
Next, the really scary one, thanks to Scribo Ergo Sum. I have seen about half of the clips from this already, but the whole package together shows a terrifying whole. Seriously, if these two are the choices, wouldn't seeing this make everyone more sensible than Strangelove himself back Obama?
Anyway, it's not just the Americans who're doing this, obviously. Here's one more, presumably a TV ad just ripped for YouTube, but it was done by the Jamaican Labour Party, they posted it officially, and it has a YouTube aesthetic about it. Aaron tells me that "don't draw mi tongue" means "don't provoke me into slagging you off", roughly.
It's not much of a choice though is it; senile old soldier with ropey geography, or the American Tony Blair (Obama) who'll be just as reviled as "The Master" in ten years time having failed to deliver on his "Change America Needs" ( more properly packaged as "delivering the status quo in a slightly nicer manner")
Sure, neither of them are "Dubya" but I'm not sure how much either differs fundamentally from his world view. McCain if anything is more nuts on the military front, and there was a rather grubby Dutch auction over the weekend as to which of them could be more right wing about Russia's invasion of Georgia.
I'm not sure why Western liberals have such illusions in Obama.
Sure, the disappointment is inevitable with Obama, but the differences are starker this time even than the last two, I reckon.
Despite that, it's good to hear an American presidential candidate say say:
"This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons."
Or (limited as the final phrase is):
"This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations - including my own - will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere."
Seriously, read that speech if you haven't. It's full of worthy language, stuff that Blair would have never tried, and however bad the disappointment gets, at least we know what Obama'll be held to.
It's a speech- nothing more.
I'm sure Blair delivered similar stuff about "publically owned publically acoountable railways" etc and lots of onion-the-armpit flannel about old people not being left in fuel poverty and an "ethical foreign policy" which were liberal opinion former hot button issues in the mid 90s
he didn't actually do anything about it though, indeed it could be argued that some of his policies made these issues worse. So whilst Obama might talk the talk at present, I can't see him delivering on this stuff in power, just as with Blair.
It would be nice if on this occasion you were right and I was wrong though