'Bump in the Road' Ad Powerful Indictment of Obama Economic Policies (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | Say what you will about Mitt Romney's less than solid conservative record. However, he has proved able to raise baskets full of money. In turn, that money has allowed Romney to buy a well-produced and powerful ad known as "Bump in the Road."

The ad starts with a scene of a desolate landscape bisected by an isolated road that looks like it came from nowhere and is headed nowhere. A text explains how unemployment has spiked to 9.1 percent recently. President Obama speaks about how the current economic downturn is just a "bump in the road" on the way to recovery.

Then, what looks like a bundle of people sleeping rough rise to their feet. One by one, an ethnically diverse group of people declares, "I am not a bump in the road. I am an American." Each holds up a piece of paper explaining their circumstances. There is the single mother who has been out of work for a year. There is the man who must work three jobs just to meet expenses. There is the college student who is looking at a bleak, jobless future when he graduates. And so on.

At the end, all of the people are on their feet, grim, determined, and not prepared to take platitudes from their president.

The ad is powerful on a number of levels.

First, it provides a human face to the casualties of the Obama economy. Usually the Democrats are good at manufacturing victims. This ad shows actual ones.

Second, the ad suggests that President Obama is an unfeeling monster who lacks the ability to show empathy. Most presidents, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush, are able to emote and feel people's pain. Obama cannot, and that fact is turned against him in the "bump on the road" ad.

Romney also seems to be comfortable in his frontrunner status enough that he has ignored the rest of the GOP pack and gone straight at Obama. Romney himself, however, is only mentioned at the end, the obligatory part that shows on whose behalf the ad is produced.

Finally, Romney is following the advice of one James Carville, offering an "it's the economy, stupid" assault on the record of the president. That is good, but not exceptionally difficult, politics, all things considered.

Source: Bump in the Road, Romney for President, YouTube

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110613/us_ac/8633983_bump_in_the_road_ad_powerful_indictment_of_obama_economic_policies

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