The Campaign Infomercial

I’m not going to critique last night’s half hour campaign infomercial from the Obama campaign:

THE PROGRAM The program gave a new meaning to the word “infomercial” and, for that matter, to all notions of political advertising. Executed with high standards of cinematography, with help from the director of “An Inconvenient Truth,” Davis Guggenheim, the infomercial was part slickly produced reality program; part Lifetime biography; and part wonkish policy lecture with music that could have come from “The West Wing.”

Its imagery was acutely Middle American: suburban lawns, American flags, corn fields and factories. It was packed with swing state and Midwestern governors and senators who spoke in glowing terms of Mr. Obama; a brigadier general, now retired, vouched for his national security credentials.

At the heart of the program were the stories of four everyday families of different backgrounds who told stories of lost health care benefits, the necessities of food rationing and the need to hold more than one job. Mr. Obama told how his mother had to worry about whether the health care provider at her new job would cover her as she battled ovarian cancer. And he retold his background as the grandson of a man who fought in “Patton’s Army” and a grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line in World War II.

For that you can go to Joe Gandelman who, as usual, has about the best roundup of commentary in the blogosphere.

Will the infomercial garner Sen. Obama more votes than he otherwise would have received? Frankly, I doubt it. I suspect that virtually everyone who watched the half hour program had already decided to vote Obama.

What surprises me is that no one has pointed out the immediate, practical result of the half hour primetime spot: it funneled millions of dollars to the television networks. It seems to me that Sen. Obama is looking beyond the election and further securing his relationship with the media. If so it’s very savvy politics.