a talking head I can get behind

[kaigou]

tipped to this by brithistorian

And I say that because it works like your usual thesis: here's are problems A and B, and here are solutions C and D. Very concrete, if generalized, with some kind of indication/invitation of where to find more information. I'm sure you heard thousands of ads like this for other topics -- about home insurance, about medical issues, about local events, even retail has a use for this pattern.

What works here is that it's not with pretty pictures, music selection, and a paid voiceover person, which in the end (regardless of argument or source) often makes me feel like I'm partially being swayed by who has the best production values and can pay for the best voiceover talent. Nope, here it's the candidate doing the talking, and I don't know why, but that just seems to me to be...

I'd say "powerful" but that's cliched. More like, "fundamental".

Or maybe it's something else, like the fact that this unexpected -- but hopefully short if intense -- migraine-headache is just making me see things. Heh, suddenly the intended tags for this post seems rather apropros.

Comments

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

I'm struck, once again, by the difference in simple plain eloquence and public speaking skill between Obama and McCain, to say nothing of Obama and Bush.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Makes me think of the bumpersticker I first saw here in town, which I think was from the Kerry 04 campaign: "Because our next president should speak in complete sentences" or something like that.

Obama is an orator on the level with Clinton and Reagan, and it'd be a good thing to have that back.

[kracken.livejournal.com]

Let's see, the Democrats have been the majority for how long? And wasn't he in Washington? What was he doing about it then? Oh, yeah, that's right, voting present and taking lobbyist money. Democrats and Republicans are both guilty. It's a shame that he's decided to not accept his share of the blame.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Uhm, have we been watching different political systems? The dems only took control of the house & senate a year or two ago -- and the repubs have been holding that since '92, when they nabbed it under Gingrich. Dem president, Repub congress for six years, followed by Repub president and Repub congress for six years, and I'm not even sure I'd say it's necessarily a Dem-controlled congress now (even given the basic majority numbers) seeing how the Dems have been oh-so-good for the past six years at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

I don't blame any senator for not reforming the entire system, as a senator, but instead acting in his/her state's interest. When I elect a senator and pay my taxes (a tiny share of which does end up in govt official incomes), I expect the senator to actually, y'know, do something for my state -- which means when I look at potential presidents who were senators, I look at their record for their state, and whether their constituency has been pleased/satisfied. (Which actually shows a generally good record for both McCain and Obama.)

Then again, I have a quiet dissatisfaction with senators, governors, and representatives running for national election who remain elected officials in any other capacity. I feel like saying, no, buddy, you're getting a salary to do a job and that job is not "running for x position." Seems to me it's like being paid by one company for the time you spend interviewing at other companies.

Either way, however, the point wasn't whether or not anyone agrees with the advertisement, but the style of the advertisement itself. That I'm growing more and more bored with the really slick, "someone else's voice over", music choice and images shown and faux-headline-clips commercials.

Style wise, I much prefer this: someone saying what they see as 'wrong' (or broken) and what they concretely list as their highest priorities for fixing it, and that being that. It tells me a lot more about what their priorities than any slick-ass hollywood-ized snarky commercial, and I say that regardless of party or political stand.

[kraehe.livejournal.com]

More than anyone else, Phil Gramm (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9246.html) has his fingerprints all over the current mess. Yes, Clinton bears some small blame for not vetoing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, but Gramm wrote it.

Conservatives have been preaching "We don' need no freakin' oversight" for decades now. Problem is, that just doesn't work -- any more than the opposite extreme does. Sharing everything all the time (communism) runs up against greed. Free markets with no regulation and oversight runs up against greed. Neither works in the end.

Prudent government with sensible rules and enforcement -- which Grover Norquist et al have done their best to shackle and/or dismantle -- is what we need.

Milton Friedman-esque capitalism is dead. Bankrupt. Kaput. We're just waiting for the coroner to show up.