It was suppose to be the high scale impressive ending to a historic presidential campaign and by its very nature it attracted tremendous attention: a half-hour bloc on (nearly) every major television network on the coverage—allowing unprecedented personal access to an untold number of tens of millions of Americans, purchased at a cost of almost $1 million per network. And by every expectation and every assessment, this experience in previously untouched presidential campaign territory succeeded by every metric it could be measured against. Say what you will, whether it was “the perfect ending,” “sealing the deal,” “icing on the cake,” or what have you, this was the ending that the campaign was looking for and the very nature of the production of the television program showed the vastness of their resources and the cutting edge of their innovation. Never before in modern American history has a candidate purchased air time to speak directly to the people, and then tell the stories that he has heard from the people during the course of his campaign to win their vote and then, in a marvel of modern technology, cut live to a rally in a swing state at exactly the right moment so as to carry the final 4 minutes live, in primetime, across the country—with no time going over.
A few notes:
· Obama began by speaking directly into the camera and then stood up as the camera zoomed out to show Obama standing in front of a large American flag (he was also wearing a flag pin) in an office which looked strangely familiar to the Oval Office, although with a deeper mahogany desk. Then, at least six short cuts to Obama campaigning across the country and speaking with, and excuse the phrase, “the average Joe’s.” But by no coincidence, from important states and reflecting the demographics that the campaign was hoping to reach out to.
· This was not a showy speech and it is hard to call the content like a “celebrity” as the McCain campaign tried to resurrect today (it was this argument that got the race close in July)
· There was no mention of the Clintons
· There was no mention of George Bush (except for a reference to the failed policy of the last eight years and criticism of the war in Iraq)
· There was no direct mention of John McCain (no image of him, for example) and nothing to reference Sarah Palin
· The cut to the live event in Florida was brilliant—no other way to describe it, although the word “live” should have stayed on the screen the whole time
· Check the ratings to see how many people this reached—and in what areas of the country.
· If this drives Thursday’s conversation (as anticipation of it did on Wednesday) then the Obama campaign will have succeeded in taking two critical days in the final week of this election.
Meanwhile, John McCain was on Larry King Live tonight and, in answering the question of whether or not he thought Barack Obama was a socialist, said, “No, but I do believe that he has been far left in American politics.”
Barack Obama is on The Daily Show later tonight.
