Hillary Invokes The Boogeyman (And Karl Rove)
Hillary has apparently decided to fall back on her fearmongering strategy (previously seen when she implied that terrorists may attack if Obama is elected) in a desperate attempt to slow her defeat. In her new TV ad, you hear a narrator, who in a somewhat creepy voice (sounding very similar to the guy who does all of the scary movie trailers), tries to stir fear in the voter, while the scene keeps shifting between children sleeping in the dark. Here’s the voiceover: |
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It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep, but there’s a phone in the White House and its ringing. Something’s happening in the world, your vote will decide who answers that call, whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead in the dangerous world. It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep, who do you want answering the phone?It is a pretty brilliant spot actually, in a straight Rovian way. It plays on many subconscious triggers of fear in order to maximize it’s impact on the voter:
I’m Hillary Clinton and I approved this message.
- The time, 3 a.m., is repeated twice. It is well know in the intelligence community that early morning is the best time to abduct targets in order to maximize confusion and disorientation. Targets are not only vulnerable because they are asleep, but they are more easily manipulated when they are unable to reorient their senses.
- All of the scenes are dark, minus the end where Hillary is talking on a phone with a lamp. Darkness has always been associated with the unknown, fear, terror, apprehension. Obviously it has to be dark if it is 3 a.m., but even when the worried parent checks on the children, they don’t turn on the light, only Hillary can do that.
- “Your children” are ostensibly the targets of this dangerous world, and the phrase “you children” is repeated to drive that point home. Every parent’s worst fear is something happening to their children, which is why the entire ad depicts vulnerable helpless sleeping children while the narrator talks about the dangerous world and that “something” is happening (presumptively terrorists are lurking). Playing on the deepest fears of parents produces the most visceral reaction to the “unknown”, it creates anxiety, worry, fear.
- The worried parent checks on the kids which shows that even though the whole spot is about national security, somehow there is reason to think the danger is imminent and personal, there must be some reason to think that if Hillary isn’t elected, something might happen to your defenseless children, and so you need to worry about their safety.
- The as if all of this wasn’t enough, the narrator has to point out that we live in a dangerous world, which is obvious to everyone, but typically only exploited by Republicans looking to use the fear card to win elections.
- Then at the very end when Hillary appears with the light, the happier turns a little happier, like now everything will be ok. The light is on, the boogeyman is gone, and all because of Hillary.
- She says she already knows world leaders. True, she knows some, so does Obama. She met most of hers while First Lady in the 90s, and none of those are still in office to my knowledge. She also doesn’t have the best track record with forming working relationships with world leaders, for example Putin, whom she ever diplomatically called “soulless”, and who has responded by saying she has no head. It should also be pointed out that her husband, Bill Clinton, had even less foreign experience when he was elected president, and the Republicans used the same fearmongering attacks against him then that his wife is using against Obama now. This is also a weak argument for her as John McCain has no doubt met more current foreign leaders than either Democrat.
- She says she knows the military. She doesn’t provide any evidence to back up her relationship to the military, but we can assume she is referring to her presence on the Senate Armed Services committee for the last few years, which is fine, but we should also be pointing out that Obama serves on the Senate Foreign Relations committee and the Senate Homeland Security committee, which then would seem to give him more experience in foreign policy and homeland security, while Hillary is slightly stronger when it comes to sending American troops off to die in wars. Also, again, not a good campaign strategy for Hillary, as John McCain has just a little bit more experience with the military than she does.
- She says she is someone who has been tested, but again offers no reason for us to accept this as fact. She has never been in an executive position and been forced with responding to a sudden crisis. This isn’t to say Obama has been, however he isn’t running on the presumption that he has been battle tested whereas his opponents have not. Hillary was tested when Bush wanted to start a war with Iraq, and she failed the test by not reading the intelligence reports and by being gullible enough to believe Bush’s lies and supporting him. Obama on the other hand had the good judgment to not follow Bush blindly, as retired General Merrill McPeak points out in his new ad:
And judgment is what we need from our next commander in chief. Barack Obama opposed this war in Iraq from the start, showing insight and courage others did not. And he is our best hope to restore our security and standing in today’s world. The old Washington hands have let us down. We need a new leader to lift America.
- In addition to saying she has been tested, she reiterates that she is ready to lead. Again, there is absolutely no evidence of this based on her experience and her judgment. She has shown time and time again that when the pressure is on, she gets angry, she is erratic, she lashes out, she mocks people, she lies and she tries to cheat the system, and then she’ll resort to Rovian fearmongering. Obama, on the other hand, has always been calm, collected, logical, and never childish or underhanded. He speaks out of judgment and reason, never out of anger and pride. He is the epitome of what we need in a president, and she is precisely what we cannot afford to have in the White House again.
Her “ready” argument is even harder to believe given how poorly run her campaign has been. As I’ve pointed out before, she started this campaign out with every advantage (name recognition, money, establishment, former president campaigning on her behalf) and she has effectively run it into the ground. She has been outraised by Obama, out organized, out planned (she had no plan after Iowa, and then no plan after Super Tuesday), she has shown she has no control over her campaign officials and surrogates, and she didn’t even know she was almost broke (how the hell could you not stay up to date on the most critical component of a campaign?? If I were in her position I would have been demanding daily updates on campaign contributions, cash on hand, debts and expenditures, I’d have it graphed, I’d have projections, I’d have comparisons to rival campaigns, etc, the fact that she didn’t even know what was going on with even the most basic aspects of her campaign funds shows she is a poor manager and is definitely not ready to be president). On contrast, Obama has excelled in all aspects of campaign management, taking him from being the ultimate underdog going against the two biggest stars in the party, to rocketing past them despite all of their lies, attacks and manipulations. Of course judgment and management abilities aren’t the only reasons for this, because Obama was by far the superior candidate, and Hillary’s message and history (Iraq) were flawed, but without her running a chaotic campaign, and without Obama running an amazing campaign, she may have still prevailed despite being the inferior candidate with the inferior message. This campaign has been a testament to Obama’s experience as a community organizer and to his natural ability to lead and manage.
Expect her next ad to feature Pennywise the killer clown from Stephen King’s IT:
Also, lest we forget this gem from Bill Clinton back in 2004 (when the Republicans were the ones using fearmongering to attack Democrats, before Hillary took that up as a hobby) that I pointed out the last time she employed blatant fearmongering:
If one candidate is trying to scare you, and the other’s trying to get you to think; if one is appealing to your fears, and the other is appealing to your hopes - it seems to me you ought to vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.Once again Bill, I couldn’t agree more.
Update: Obama’s response to Hillary’s fearmongering ad:
I do want to take a moment to respond, because the press is, I’m sure, curious, to an ad that Senator Clinton is apparently running today. It asks a legitimate question. It says, who do you want answering the phone in the White House when it’s 3:00 a.m. and something has happened in the world. It’s a legitimate question. And we’ve seen these ads before. They’re usually the kind that play upon people’s fears and try to scare up votes.
I don’t think these ads will work this time because the question is not about picking up the phone. The question is, what kind of judgment will you exercise when you pick up that phone. In fact, we have had a red phone moment; it was the decision to invade Iraq.
Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer. I stood up and I said that a war in Iraq would be unwise. It cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars. I said that it would distract us from the real threat that we face, and that we should take the fight to al Qaeda in Afghanistan. That’s the judgment I made on the most important foreign policy decision of our generation.
I will never see the threat of terrorism as a way to scare up votes, because it’s a threat that should rally the country around our common enemies. That is the judgment we need at 3:00 a.m., and that’s the judgment that I am running for as president of the United States of America.
Update #2: I’d also like to take this opportunity for us all to remember Hillary’s “Shame on you, Barack Obama” speech accusing him of “using tactics right out of Karl Rove’s playbook!” She also declared that “This (Obama sending out mailers pointing out facts about her position on NAFTA and healh care) is wrong, and every Democrat should be outraged!!”
Update #3: I should also point out, because I think it is incredibly important to always keep this in mind, that by all reasonable accounts, Obama WILL be the Democratic nominee for president, at this point it is obvious that Hillary can’t win this thing, so given that, keep in mind that Hillary is using these Republican tactics against our own nominee, and for no good reason, while he is busy trying to take on McCain and the Republicans. You really have to ask yourself if Hillary cares about the Democratic Party AT ALL, or if she is trying to to be McCain’s VP. Perhaps she is so angry that Obama won what was supposedly “rightfully” hers that she is going to spite the whole party and try to make sure that if she can’t win, no one can. Frankly I’m kind of sick of watching Hillary and the GOP double team Obama and trade attacks, which is exactly what is happening here (and don’t think McCain won’t be happy to borrow this add). Why are we standing for this?
Update #4: Apparently Hillary plagiarized the idea behind the ad straight from the Republicans, specifically John McCain’s campaign. In turns out they are sharing attacks and tactics more freely than I had previously suspected.
Update #5: It should also be noted that when her top strategists were asked the obvious question, when has she actually be tested in an emergency, the response was silence. How they were not prepared for the obvious question is beyond me, but it is telling. The indisputable fact is that she has NEVER been tested in any way. I thought it was a great moment.
Update (3/3): Bill Richardson, who has a hell of a lot more experience than Hillary weighs in on the “ready to lead” debate:
Richardson, who has not endorsed either Clinton or Obama, warned both candidates about negative campaigning. He was outspoken in his criticism of Clinton’s new “ringing phone” ad, which suggests that Obama is not ready to become commander in chief.Update (3/11): Here is an interesting NYT Op-Ed piece discussing the ad’s potential racial implications.
“I happen to disagree with that ad that says that Senator Obama is not ready,” he said. “He is ready. He has great judgment, an internationalist background.”