Obama responds with his own ‘3 a.m.’ ad
Given all the attention given to the Clinton’s campaign’s phone-rings-at-3-a.m. ad yesterday, I thought it only fair to take a closer look at the Obama’s campaign’s very quick response.
If you can’t watch videos online, the beginning of the clip isn’t just similar to the Clinton ad; it’s identical, showing the same house, with the same sleeping children in the same bed. When the White House phone is ringing at 3 a.m., it’s the same ring in both ads.
The script, however, delivers a different message: “It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone ringing in the White House. Something’s happening in the world. When that call gets answered, shouldn’t the president be the one — the only one — who had judgment and courage to oppose the Iraq war from the start? Who understood the REAL threat to America was al-Qaeda, in Afghanistan, not Iraq? Who led the effort to secure loose nuclear weapons around the globe? In a dangerous world, it’s judgment that matters.”
It brings the debate full circle — we’re right back to where we were last summer. Clinton believes she’s best able to handle a crisis because she’s spent more time on the national stage. Obama believes he’s best able to handle a crisis because he has superior judgment, as evidenced by his consistent opposition to the war in Iraq.
The difference is, now, Obama’s message seems geared to challenge both Clinton and John McCain.
Ben Smith and Beth Frerking had a good item about all of this.
Obama’s response, though, was adapted to both Clinton and McCain.
“It won’t work this time,” he said of the ringing phone. “Because the question is not about picking up the phone. The question is: What kind of judgment will you make when you answer?
“We’ve had a red phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Sen. Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer.”
Obama signaled that he will use as his trump card in the general election the same moment that has been his fallback argument, time and again, against Clinton’s claims of experience: the decision to invade Iraq.
When push comes to shove, it’s still a compelling message, no matter which opponent Obama is talking about. When the proverbial “red phone” rings, do people want someone who got the big question wrong to be picking up the phone, confronted with a question that requires sound judgment? It’s Obama’s strongest card, and it’s smart to play it as often as necessary. (He also played this one awfully quickly — it was only a couple of hours between Clinton’s ad being unveiled and Obama’s similar response ad.)
Rick Wilson, a Republican media consultant, sounded a little cocky when it comes to a general-election match-up.
“If Barack Obama gets in a scrap with John McCain over national security credentials, he might as well pack up and go home, because John McCain cannot be beat on that front by a guy who never served in the military, who has no experience or background or basis of understanding of national security matters,” said Wilson.
I think this is fundamentally wrong, and I’m optimistic the Obama campaign does, too. McCain can absolutely “be beat” on national security — rather easily, in fact — given that he consistently demonstrated that he’s confused and misguided on the key questions.
As far as I can tell, Obama isn’t willing to give an inch of ground on this issue. It’s encouraging.
obama floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.
the way things are going maybe there will be a mccain/clinton ticket.
The next question for Clinton/McCain…why did you choose to invade Iraq instead of stepping it up in Afghanistan?
Excellent—Obama “reverse-triangulates” Clinton (with her own message, no less), and hits the GOP “bomb-everything-to-smithereens” candidate with another anvil.
It’s going to be a very good year….
McCain’s phone-ringing ad will show him throw a temper fit for being woken up in the middle of the night.
Perhaps Mr. Wilson should check his recent history.
I still prefer these alternative endings to Clinton’s ad:
No, I don’t want to change phone carriers.
No, Monica, Bill can’t come to the phone right now.
I’m sorry yoou have the wrong number. This isn’t the White House.
and my personal favorite:
President Obama! Call on Line 1.
“the beginning of the clip isn’t just similar to the Clinton ad; it’s identical, showing the same house, with the same sleeping children in the same bed.”
Aha! Plagiarism! Et tu Barack!
Actually, the Obama campaign shows just what an efficient machine it is yet again. If Barack can operate the White house in the same manner against Republican BS from Congress, these will indeed be good years under his presidency.
“… a guy who never served in the military….”
I’m getting a little tired of this mantra when it comes to McCain. He lost five planes, only the last of which was due to enemy fire. One of those was when as a joke he “wet started” his A-4 Skyhawk on the USS Forrestal, initiating the deaths of 167 servicemen. He finished fifth from the bottom in his Annapolis class. His connections (dad and granddad were four-star admirals) enabled him to flout military regs routinely and get away with it. There’s more, but what more do you need?
Now that the GOP has swift-boated ours, it’s time we end the typical Demcratic pussyfooting about and fight back in terms they’ll understand: source and another course. As I said, there’s plenty more out there whether the MSM cares to look at it or not.
Clinton believes she’s best able to handle a crisis because she’s spent more time on the national stage. Obama believes he’s best able to handle a crisis because he has superior judgment, as evidenced by his consistent opposition to the war in Iraq.
As I’ve said before, I don’t really have a problem with Clinton’s vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution. As the wife of a president, it’s understandable that Clinton wouldn’t want to limit a president’s options. Granted, her speach on the Senate floor explaining her vote was over the top — talking in Bush-like terms (although with better grammar) about how “evil” Saddam was and how much of a “threat” he was.
But when Bush proved that he was lying when that war would be the last option, Clinton never spoke out. When the fall of Baghdad was quickly followed by widespread looting and violence, she never spoke out. When Bush denied that Iraq was in a civil war, she never spoke out.
It wasn’t until polls showing public opinon of Bush’s handling of the war reached 65 percent disapproval that she finally “found her voice” and began to criticize the Iraq war.
And after after Bush had abused the trust she gave him by voting for the Iraq war resolution, she voted to trust him again by voting for Kyle-Lieberman and handing Bush a potential pretext for attacking Iran.
When the president gets a phone call at 3 a.m., I want their only thought to be to take the action that will be best for the country, not to wonder which action that will best support their image of being strong on defense.
Great response from the Obama campaign.
I don’t know if this Obama ad is an official one from his campaign or not, but it’s brilliant, whoever did it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe0BPwWAxnk
Teaser: it features Bill Clinton!
Obama wasn’t in the senate when the vote came up. It is dishonest of him to take credit for opposing the war. Everyone I know opposed the Iraq invasion.
Clinton voted for the AUMF.
Here is her statement on that vote
“Today we are asked whether to give the President of the United States authority to use force in Iraq should diplomatic efforts fail to dismantle Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons and his nuclear program. ”
http://clinton.senate.gov/speeches/iraq_101002.html
Back then we didn’t know how utterly awful W was. The senate didn’t know he cooked the intel. And we didn’t know he was the greatest anti-diplomat in history.
Hillary Clinton: No regret on Iraq
“Obviously, I’ve thought about that a lot in the months since,” she said. “No, I don’t regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade.”
But she said the Bush administration’s short-circuiting of the U.N. weapons inspection process didn’t permit “the inspectors to finish whatever task they could have accomplished to demonstrate one way or the other what was there.”
votehttp://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/21/iraq.hillary/
don’t know if anyone else noticed this about the clinton “3 am” ad, but it’s 3 am in the morning and hillary is answering the phone fully dressed, bejeweled and coiffed. maybe her slogan should be “ready and stylin’ on middle-of-the-night one”.
In presenting his case, Obama should ask voters to consider why they should trust Hillary to make a sound decision at 3 am, when, in voting for AUMF, she failed to do so when she was supposedly clear headed, and with ample time and evidence, including the NIE, at her disposal. I think the nuance here is significant.
Nell, i must disagree. We all knew how utterly awful G.W. Bush was by 2002. Advisers on the current Clinton team were publicly saying that Bush was lying. Not one person with an ounce of sense thought that the AUMF was an attempt to get inspectors into Iraq or deal with situation diplomatically.
Sen. Clinton supported the invasion. Remember that the executive order making the removal of Saddam Hussein a foreign policy goal of the United States was signed by her husband. The same husband who sent up a trial balloon for his own military adventure in Iraq when he sent Sec. Albright, etc to Ohio for a televised meeting about possible military operations in Iraq…remember too that they were vehemently shouted down by the audience.
Yes, she thought it would be a cakewalk like Gulf War I. However, the objective was completely different. Invading and occupying Iraq is a whole lot different than evicting the Iraqi military from Kuwait.
She has long stood by her lack of regret and the story of being duped by G.W. Bush, but in the Cleveland debate she said that she has repeatedly stated that she regrets the vote. Which one is it?
Finally, 23 Senators and more than 130 Representatives were not fooled; they voted their convictions. She believed in the mission and she wanted it. That’s her prerogative and her right, but she can’t have it both ways. I’d be more impressed with her if she’d be honest about the issue, even if i don’t agree.
Obama wasn’t in the senate when the vote came up. It is dishonest of him to take credit for opposing the war. Everyone I know opposed the Iraq invasion.
Huh? Well then everyone you know deserves credit for not falling for the bullshit. I’ve never understand why any of us imagine that it became harder to vote against the AUMF if you were in the Senate. It wasn’t just that Hillary voted for it, she fully supported it. But it wasn’t just this issue. She had been running with a “tough” foreign policy stance for quite awhile, and even more recently agreed to Cheney’s saber-rattling against Iran. There is no excuse why any of those fools voted for the AUMF.
I definitely prefer the one who made the strong anti-war speech over the one who made the firm pro-war speech. And her speech was horrible. As she put it, only two outcomes would happen: Either Saddam would let the inspectors in and we’d find his WMD’s, or he wouldn’t let them in and we’d invade. Somehow, she failed to predict what would happen if he let the inspectors in and they couldn’t find anything. Or if we were wrong about WMD’s to begin with. But she wasn’t really concerned about that. She just wanted her “tough” foreign policy.
And while we can’t “know” how Barack would have voted in the Senate, he was running for the Senate at the time he gave a strong anti-war speech. Sounds good to me.
Okie, I just watched that link. Do you know if anyone’s told Hillary that Bill is shilling for Barack? I’m guessing they haven’t—since the Secret Service hasn’t arrested her for trying to murder a former president…yet….
#15 Lex
lex, i agree. however, hillary cannot be honest because she didn’t vote her conscience, she voted her political future, which at that time as NY state senator and a recipient of AIPAC donations required her to climb on the 9/11 blood vengeance bandwagon, however misguided it was understood by many to be at the time.
Back then we didn’t know how utterly awful W was. The senate didn’t know he cooked the intel. And we didn’t know he was the greatest anti-diplomat in history.
How quickly we forget. I happened to save a bunch of articles from the more skeptical blogosphere from those days before the Iraq War started, and I was shocked to go back to read them the other day. Many of them were saying almost the same things they’re saying now, and it reminded me that even then there were LOTS of people who clearly recognized that our country was being railroaded into war under false pretenses. Don’t believe it for a minute that Congress was a bunch of babes in the woods. If they believed all Dubya’s BS it’s because they closed their eyes to ample evidence that they were being lied to. Hillary has no excuse. Don’t forget that the vote was timed and hyped specifically so that Congressmen who voted against it could be tarred with the “unpatriotic” brush right before the 2002 election. It was a total setup, and the Dems who voted for it (like Hillary) did it in an act of electoral cowardice, fearing that they’d be painted as traitors by the Rovian slime machine. It was yet another example of triangulation. None of them dared speak out and condemn the railroading that was so clearly taking place, playing upon the fears that the Republicans had been stoking constantly for the past year. Everybody with half a brain knew that Bushco was determined to go to war, that they had no intention of solving things diplomatically, that Bush and Cheney and Rummy and the rest of them couldn’t be trusted. The Dems simply got boxed into the patriot/traitor spot right before the election and Bush got what he wanted. It happened again in 2004 right before the election, though at the moment I don’t recall the legislative travesty that was committed that time, there have been so many it’s hard to keep track.
Hillary didn’t have to worry about not being reelected in October of 2002, but she was always in full triangulation mode with the presidency in mind, and she knew that in our militaristic and jingoistic society she’d have to look tough and warlike. So she went for it. She knew damn well it would lead to war. Don’t think for a minute she was fooled.
What if the phone call is about another goddamn hurricane? Doesn’t matter which way anybody voted on Iraq then.
I still don’t know why people think Clinton’s vote on the AUMF was “triangulated”. There are some people who voted for that measure who I think were worried about being called a coward, but I don’t think Clinton is one of them. Time and time again she has made statements that indicate that she thinks that the President should get a lot of leeway in foreign affairs. That makes sense given that her White House experience involved a President who was stonewalled at every turn by a group of people who weren’t opposing him for ideological or moral reasons but purely to score political points.
I’ll give that her inability to see that Bush was a moron who shouldn’t be trusted is another example of her poor judgment of people (as evidenced by her campaign staff, Mark Penn, the folks she trusted for the whole Whitewater thing, and, if you’re in a frame to look at it this way, her choice of spouse – she has a long history of making poor choices in who she surrounds herself with). But I think she really is a Liberal Hawk and a firm believer in global Liberal Interventionism. And those are the two reasons (her hawkishness and her poor judgment of character) that I’ve decided to vote for Obama – who is ALSO a Liberal Hawk who seems to believe in Liberal Interventionism – but at least he seems to have shown a bit better judgment.
I could write reams refuting Nell’s silly claim that we didn’t know how utterly awful Bush was, but two words will suffice – Molly Ivins.
Okie, @10
This is hilarious. And one more proof of how much on the ball Team Obama is…
Yeah, “Rampstrike McCain” who was such a piss-poor failure as an officer that the US Navy didn’t want anything more than LCDR McCain, who was told after he screwed the pooch in his one and only command assignment after coming back from prison camp that the Navy privately advised him to retire before he embarassed himself, is sure the guy to be leading us on military and national security issues.
This is so funny! I can’t beleive that Clinton would be so foolish as to put a person who likes Obama in her 3AM commercial. I am really not sure she is cut out to win this race.
-Peter
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