First blood in the 2012 general election

The first major clash of the 2012 general election for President of the United States has arrived.

We knew going in that Obama is a skilled campaigner. We knew that Mitt Romney has a lot of awkward moments and struggled through his primary. But the first clash wasn’t even close. Obama’s team badly outmaneuvered Mitt Romney all week long, landing several blows while pinning him in a corner. They capped it off with a new attack ad so devastatingly effective it inspired me to write this post.

What’s that, Mitt? You want
an apology from me? LOL
(photo via Reddit)

First, the buildup to the new ad: Last week Obama’s team picked a fight over outsourcing at Romney’s financial firm, Bain Capital, based on a Washington Post story Romney had disputed. Shortly after that the Boston Globe published an article contradicting Romney’s story about when he retired from Bain Capital. An Obama spokesperson suggested that this might make Romney a felon. Romney took great offense, and announced on Friday he was giving interviews to five news networks, a pretty big deal. He called the Obama campaign dishonest and demanded an apology from Obama himself. He ended up trying to distance himself from his own company’s actions between 1999 and 2002, when he was the official CEO, the 100% owner, and paid a six-figure salary. The Obama campaign responded by mocking Romney for “whining,” and Obama himself referenced “the buck stops here,” to which Romney has no good defense.

So it was a terrible news cycle for Romney. He looked weak. His business record, the core of argument of his candidacy, was questioned. Even prominent Republicans started calling for him to release his tax returns.

Then, on Saturday, the Obama campaign released an attack ad for the ages, “Firms”:



I was blown away when I first saw it. So was David Kurtz, and many others. The concept is brilliant. The execution is perfect—the sound filtering, the visuals, the typography. There are a dozen neat little touches. The tagline at the end is brutal.

The remarkable thing about this ad is that none of its specific accusations are all that tough. It isn’t hard to think of an effective defense: there’s nothing immoral about outsourcing or tax havens, and you can even argue that they’re good for capitalism. Yet the summed impact of the ad is devastating.

The ad resonates with all the negative messages Obama wants to send about Romney: he’s weird (singing off-key at a campaign stop), he’s phony (doesn’t mean what he sings), he’s bad for the working class (empty factories), he’s a fat cat (millions in foreign accounts), he likes rules that favor the wealthy (tax avoidance). The ad conveys all that to the intuitive right brain while avoiding the skeptical left brain, and all in a simple 30-second spot. The elegance is incredible.

After such a painful week, Romney tried turning to offense rather than playing defense. He rolled out a new campaign message accusing Obama of cronyism. But it doesn’t look like the accusation will stick, and it might even backfire. Meanwhile “Firms” has gone viral on the web and is being broadcast in every swing state.

The Romney campaign also released an attack ad of its own, directly imitating “Firms.” You can imagine its producers brainstorming at Romney headquarters: “Hey, we also have audio of Obama singing! We also have accusations we can put on screen! Let’s do what Obama’s people did!"

Here’s the result:



Oh, I’m sorry, the video is no longer available (as of 7/17; it might be back eventually after a fight). YouTube took it down a few hours after it was posted, because Obama is heard singing “Let’s Stay Together,” and BMG Rights Management claimed a copyright violation. Seems like it should have been considered fair use, but such is politics. The political blogosphere is now littered with broken videos like the one above this paragraph. You just have to feel bad for Mitt Romney at this point.

Anyway, you can see the pulled ad here. Compared to Obama’s ad, it is sad. The production quality is awful, even by attack ad standards. The concept just barely coheres and requires a lot of left-brain processing. Obama’s voice hits all the notes and he’s a big hit with his fans, whereas Romney’s singing is off-key and awkward. Finally, of course, very few people will see Romney’s ad online, while Obama’s ad has gone viral.

There’s no polling data yet to assess the damage this clash did to Romney. The truth is that there probably won’t be much noticeable damage. As of 7/17, Nate Silver gives Obama a 66.8 percent chance of winning reelection, right around where he has been for weeks.

The shaky economy is still a serious liability for Obama. Super PACs are poised to spend billions of dollars in support of Romney. Anything can happen in the next four months. But as far as campaigning skills go, right now Obama looks like a chess master playing against an amateur.

———

UPDATE, 7/18: Ezra Klein makes great points about the Bain attacks, especially his points numbered 7 and 8. It’s almost tragic—Mitt Romney has two great accomplishments on his résumé, building up Bain and passing health care reform, which together they should make him an ideal Republican candidate. But instead of campaigning on those accomplishments, right now “he’s running from both.”

Also, Benjy Harlin documents the Romney team’s attempts to change the subject. The Wall Street Journal urges Romney to defend Bain capitalism instead, and I think they’re right, at least strategically. But Jacob Weisberg makes a strong counterargument.