THE COALITION OF THE WILD-EYED
The Bush campaign has a new ad on its website, entitled Pessimism, showing Al Gore, Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, Michael Moore and John Kerry saying mean things about the President, including MoveOn.org video comparing Bush to Hitler. The video begins saying that these are the faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party, followed by the anti-Bush images and John Kerry's soaring rhetoric ("Today, George Bush will lay off your camel, tax your shovel, kick your ass and tell you 'there is no promised land'."). The ad ends: "This is not a time for pessimism and rage...It's time for optimism, steady leadership, and progress." I agree with the message and am glad to see someone on the right learned the cheap grainy video trick that Michael Moore uses to the delight of the Cannes glitterati. And I get it. Bush is optimistic, like Reagan. He's not shaking with rage like those raving maniacs in the ad (although Kerry actually comes off as the most stable of them all).

But I don't think that this ad will be effective in showing people how addled and desperate the hate Bush crowd is. It could backfire as the short attention span set only gets the messages that Bush is Hitler and a "miserable failure". And face it, it's the short attention span that makes swing voters what they are - unprincipled folks who vote on image and personality instead of policy and philosophy.

Fortunately, it appears, though, most of the wishy washy undecideds won't be seeing it. The campaign calls it a "web video", so you won't be seeing it during Scarborough Country or Last Comic Standing. I guess it's there for fundraising among the faithful.