Last week, as today’s Iowa caucuses drew near, the major Republican candidates took to the airwaves, releasing ads in which they made their closing arguments to the voters. In a campaign where no one has been able to hold a lead for very long, and in a state where a significant amount of caucus-goers tend to make their decisions about whom to support at the last possible moment, these spots could end up having a real impact on the outcome tonight, and on the race as a whole.
So we put together the video you can see above, in which we took a close look at ads from Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich, evaluating them and their potential impact on the candidates’ prospects.
Here’s a look at some of the other interesting ads that the candidates—and the Super PACs that support them—have put out over the past week.
Rick Perry, “Win Iowa”; Michele Bachmann, “America’s Iron Lady”
These two closing-argument spots may serve best to sum up why Perry and Bachmann have fallen as far as they have over the past few months. Legitimate Presidential campaigns simply do not put out material this weak.
Perry’s ad fails for the same reason the candidate has. The Texan just doesn’t have a strong narrative with which to sell himself. Instead, he postures, trying to distract from his inability to sound serious or Presidential by out-red-stating the other candidates. The key line from this spot, said with an unnaturally heavy Texas accent: “I’ve fought back against Obama’s war on religion, and I’ve proposed a part-time Congress—cuttin’ their pay, makin’ ’em accountable.”
Bachmann’s whole spot, like her campaign, is one big delusion of grandeur—it compares the Congresswoman with Margaret Thatcher—and it looks unprofessional, something out of a low-grade congressional campaign.
Rick Perry, “Rick Santorum—Unelectable”
Perry is also putting out attack ads; he released the spot below on Monday. It’s a minute-long shot at Santorum, reflecting the momentum Santorum has had recently. This is basically just a variation on a classic attack ad, essentially a just-barely-honest tactic usable against almost any member of Congress. It calls him “a porker’s best friend,” saying he voted, for instance, to “spend millions on the Bridge to Nowhere” and “for a teapot museum in North Carolina.”
These accusations are true, to a point. Yes, he did vote for that teapot museum. But, as you’ll see if you look up the Senate roll call vote that the ad cites as evidence (and most viewers won’t), the money for that museum was included in a huge appropriations bill that included funding for the Departments of Transportation, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development; the Judiciary; the District of Columbia; and more. The same attack could be used against ninety-three of the Senators serving at that time, because they all voted for that appropriations bill; only one Senator, Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh, voted no. (Six did not vote.)
(Of course, Santorum isn't an entirely innocent victim. As George Packer notes, Santorum has been spreading some falsehoods of his own.)
Restore Our Future, “Whoops”
The rise of the Super PACs has created an interesting dynamic in this race. In previous races, campaigns had to weigh carefully the pros and cons of running attack ads against their opponents. This year, they don’t necessarily have to make that choice. Mitt Romney, for example, can stick to a completely positive message—his closing argument ad can be summed up as “I love America, and jobs”—while the Super PACs that support him handle all the dirty work. One of those groups, Restore Our Future, has been savaging Newt Gingrich (who Kelefa Sanneh wrote about in the magazine this week) with ads like the one below, which actually hits Gingrich with the “flip-flopper” attack to which Romney has been particularly susceptible.
