THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 283, October 30, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE OBAMA COMMERCIAL
By Alan Caruba
THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION & PROPAGANDA DISSEMINATED BY THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN: CLASS WARFARE,
CLASS ENVY, & FEAR -- THE MESSAGE OF LIBERALS & THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY EVER SINCE FRANKLIN DELANO
ROOSEVELT TOOK OVER THE WHITE HOUSE IN THE MIDST OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
FULL STORY:
The Wednesday evening (October 29, 2008) half-hour, $4 million dollar television commercial for the presidential candidacy
of U.S. Senator Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., was a masterpiece of imagery.
It was also entirely devoted to class warfare, to class envy, and, most of all, to fear.
This has been the Democratic Party message since Franklin Delano Roosevelt took over the White House in the midst of the
Great Depression — the real one, not the Recession the economy has encountered today. We don’t have 15% percent
unemployment, as was the case in the 1930s, but we do have a vast matrix of costly government programs left over from
those times.
Barack Obama’s message and the theme of his presidential campaign are those the Democratic Party has always used to
acquire political power. They are the promises about tax cuts that mysteriously never occur, once the Democrats are in office.
They are about protecting people from every kind of change that could harm them, and they promise “change” as a
government that will come to their aid in sickness, in their old age, to help their children attend better schools, to help them
go to college, and on, and on, and on.
The Obama commercial focused entirely on people struggling against changes in their lives over which they had no control.
For example, there was a Ford Motor Company couple laid off from their jobs, but no mention is made of the endless federal
mandates imposed on all auto companies that drove up the cost of every automobile for everyone, nor the massive union
pension and health programs those companies had to agree to in order to stay in business. These and other factors have
killed the auto industry in America.
The Obama commercial talked of more teachers and better schools, but, ever since the 1960s, the creation of the U.S.
Department of Education and the rise of the control over all schools by teachers unions, education in America has declined
so sharply that we rank behind many other nations. America's public schools produce students programmed to believe
centralized governmental control and direction is the answer to our problems, including those in the area of education, but it
has been U.S. central government that has destroyed local community control over schools and their curricula.
At one point, Obama said, “I will always be honest with you” and I recalled Jimmy Carter’s promise that “I will never lie to
you.” Both presidential candidates arrived out of the political wilderness with very thin resumes to suggest they had the
knowledge or ability to run a nation. Carter’s one term in office was a failure in so many ways, but worse, we continue to pay
for those failures in foreign and domestic policy.
And wasn’t it Obama who promised to accept public funding for his campaign, only to renege on that promise?
At the end of the Obama commercial, the scene shifted to the now familiar large crowd of adoring supporters. How long will
that last if Obama cannot make the Recession go away? How long will his popularity last if the homeland comes under attack
again and we see a weak response? It was the decade of the 1990s during which a two-term, Democrat Clinton administration
failed to response with strength against al-Qa'ida’s bombing of our embassies and other targets. By 2001, the targets were
the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
It is the unanticipated problems that test a presidency, not ones that have been around for decades. And, if Americans think
that government is the answer, they need to remind themselves of Hurricane Katrina.
On so many levels, the commercial will have appealed to lots of people, young and old, struggling to pay bills, but the
American government works best when it gets out of the way of Americans and let’s them begin new businesses, expand
existing ones, and conduct business with the least amount of paperwork and other distractions.
That’s not how the government functions these days and, under Obama, the effort to “change” America will continue to
generate multitudes of new federal laws and regulations, adding new laws to the United States Statutes at Large and
new regulations to the Federal Register. However, the class warfare and class envy will not end, nor the will the fear.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
American Politics, Political Competition, & the Control of
Public Policy: Elections, Political Parties, Political Factions,
Ideologies, & Special Interest Groups
American Government & the U.S. Presidency:
Presidential Politics & National Leadership
The American Political System:
Politics & Government in the U.S.A.
The American Political & Cultural Left:
Liberals, Statists, Socialists, Marxists, & Other Leftists:
The Democratic Party, Academia, & the Mainstream Media
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a
clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly commentary, "Warning Signs," posted
on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center, which is located at
www.anxietycenter.com.
Caruba has a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.
Caruba’s most recent book, Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy, has been published by Merril Press. Books
previously authored by Caruba include A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam, The United Nations Versus the United States: The
UN's Plan to Control Planet Earth, and America: A Nation Without Borders -- A Pocket Guide to Immigration Issues.
© Alan Caruba 2008
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues
Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity