Obama's show, graded

Our favorite political professor, Wake Forest's Allan Louden, is stopping by one more time with a a critique of Barack Obama's half-hour commercial last evening.

Louden, a debate scholar and political communications professor at Wake, has informed and entertained Ballot readers since the primaries with his analysis of ads, speeches and debates. His final grade goes to a wholly different sort of pitch - a 30-minute infomercial.

Says the professor:

“We interrupt our normal program to bring you a special featuring Barack Obama.” It just so happens that the normal programming in N.C. these days is an onslaught of Obama ads and coverage of state-stops by Barack and Michelle.

The mediated political landscape - wall-to-wall Obama - takes away some of the “special” from the Obama special. In our metro paper this morning, coverage of Obama’s infomercial was pushed from the front page by coverage featuring, you guessed it, Obama.

My sense is that the film will disappear into the clamor of campaign coverage, not long remembered for influencing campaign results. In the current climate, it was more about reinforcing an established brand, making comfortable a vote for America’s first minority president.



The program itself, however, was radiantly presented, unarguably persuasive for anyone who watched with an open mind.

It would be justifiable to point out that there was nothing new in Obama’s 4 million dollar prime-time commercial, yet the message was all about the new. Change was the motif, but a change in service of the American we aspire to become, garnished with the American we nostalgically remember.

Obama, as narrator, displayed little pretence of royalty, opting more for rhetorical acts of identification. He introduced a progression of representative middle-America families and comfortably sat at their kitchen tables and shared stories of parallel relatives. The film was less about Obama the candidate and more about him as embodiment of what American could become—One America.

The quasi-documentary was pastel, soft, safe, but also aimed at policy, especially health and jobs. It was Obama’s “convention film” in the tradition of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” the archetype of winning candidate films. The story, from a narrative perspective, was coherent and quiescently American.

The half-hour infomercial has been lauded as something new in political advertising, yet purchasing a half hour to address the voters was historically a common practice through the 90s. Most were not memorable, trumped by events and timing.

Obama’s commercial has one technical trick that added drama. The half hour concluded with a live cut from a rally in Florida, itself not particularly additive, but enticed viewers to stay-tuned to see how this innovation would work.

Grade: A.

Managed to be over-the-top without being over-the-top.