While the leading presidential contenders have suspended their campaigns for the Christmas holiday, they are flooding the airwaves with campaign ads masquerading as holiday greetings.
Hillary Clinton is shown wrapping a pile of gifts and putting labels under the ribbons: “Universal Health Care,” “Middle Class Tax Breaks” and “Bring the Troops Home.”
Clinton says nothing to the camera but asks: “Now where did I put universal pre-k?” Then, flashing a satisfied smile, she says: “Ah, there it is,” and affixes the label to the package.
Sitting in front of a Christmas tree, Michelle Obama thanks American families “for the warmth and friendship you’ve shown ours,” and Barack Obama says the holiday season reminds Americans that “the things that unite us as a people are more powerful and enduring than anything that sets us apart.”
Then their adorable daughters address the two main political constituencies, one wishing everyone a “merry Christmas” and the other wishing everyone “happy holidays.”
Vanderbilt University political professor John Geer said Obama’s ad would perhaps resonate well among Democratic voters and that Clinton would have been better off following a similar, family-style format.
“I just don’t think universal pre-k and Christmas fit together very well,” Geer said.
Bill Kristol, an experienced political operative who now serves as editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said on “Fox News Sunday” that Clinton’s commercial was “the worst ad I have ever seen in national politics.”
“It’s Queen Hillary giving the populace these gifts of universal health care, pre-k education,” he said. “It’s so inappropriate in a democracy for her to sit there as if she’s giving us these gifts.”
Another panelist on the show, Fortune magazine reporter Nina Easton, defended the ad. “She’s a policy wonk,” Easton said. “That came through.”
On the Republican side, on-the-rise candidateJohn McCain tells a compelling story about how he spent one Christmas as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, while Rudy Giuliani, who is dropping in the polls, dons a red vest, parks himself in front of a Christmas tree and reads off his campaign platform in the form of a holiday wish list. Santa Claus joins him at the end.
Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, once an underdog candidate who is now leading some early primary polls, stuck to a religious Christmas message without campaign rhetoric.
Giuliani aired the worst Republican ad, Geer said, in part because it failed to humanize the former New York mayor, who, unlike Huckabee, has a history of family discord.
“Giuliani had to bring in Santa Claus to get someone else in the ad,” Geer said.
