He slices, dices and gets the grime out! Well, not quite, but Barack Obama appeared last night in a slickly produced, nationally broadcast 30-minute infomercial to sell himself as president.
“Barack Obama: American Stories, American Solutions” was seen in millions of homes on almost every network beginning at 8 p.m.
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It featured the candidate in a string of mom-and-apple-pie settings, from a lace-curtain kitchen to open fields and small white houses.
American flags popped up for a few seconds in several different scenes. Obama supporters waved them, or he and his family walked by one. And Obama, wearing a flag pin on his lapel, walked from behind a desk in a room with Old Glory next to a big picture window, evocative of the view from the Oval Office.
The spot skipped lightly over Obama’s family history, including his Kansas mom and Kenyan dad. Instead, stirring, somber music underscored the gravity of the situations faced by four struggling families in the crippled economy. Three live in swing states – Ohio, Missouri and New Mexico – and the other in Kentucky.
In Missouri, mom-of-four Rebecca Johnston opened her refrigerator to show how she parcels out her kids’ snacks to make them last. The infomercial was a retrospective of Obama’s campaign travels, including his convention address.
But there were mostly a sea of working-class faces in a mix of scenes: nodding as Obama spoke to them in a small group, as he sat at a kitchen table, as he toured a factory. The costly ad – a demonstration of Obama’s massive financial edge over John McCain – never mentioned the GOP contender, showing him only in a clip of debate footage.
Toward the end, Obama said, “I will not be a perfect president. But I can promise you this: I will always tell you what I think and where I stand.”
Most importantly, the heavily hyped piece let Obama – whom Republicans have tried to paint as “different” and “foreign” – reinforce the notion that he’s an everyman.
The Obama campaign purchased $4 million worth of time to telecast the ad on NBC, CBS, Fox, Univision, BET, MSNBC and TV One.
But it wasn’t shown on ABC because the network reportedly offered the air time to the campaign too late.
Officials at Fox, which began airing the rain-delayed Game 5 of the World Series after the Obama ad, insisted the spot didn’t affect the game’s starting time. The network canned its pregame show so that the first pitch would be made at 8:30.
McCain gibed in advance at Obama’s “performance,” saying, “It used to be that only rain or some other act of God could delay the World Series, but I guess the network execs figured an Obama infomercial was close enough.
“As with other infomercials, he’s got something to sell you. When you’re watching . . . remember that it was paid for with broken promises.”
The finale of the spot was Obama appearing live in Kissimmee, Fla., where he was hitting the stump with former President Bill Clinton.