Oliver Willis

There are two kind of political ads I like. First, good attack ads. Give me your grainy footage, your sinister voice and music, etc. in order to turn an opponent into the reincarnated soul of evil. On the flip side, there is the cheesy nostalgic side of me, the one who loves when the family comes home on Extreme Makeover Home Edition (I watch it every week) and who loves The American Experience on PBS because it’s about how America is awesome fuck yeah. These two new ads from Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton are in that second category, and maybe because most Iowa voters are normal people and won’t be paying attention to the beltway fighting between the campaigns as Christmas comes up, they’ve gone in this direction. I like both ads, but Sen. Obama’s is much better because it communicates a movement and not just a list of policies (that I happen to agree with).