Did Obama's infomercial work?

last updated 8 January 2015

"Now, that was an impressively effective commercial," said Franklin Foer in The New Republic online. While rival John McCain talks about socialism and Barack Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, Obama aired a national 30-minute infomercial filled with clear ideas "stripped of any hint of ideology." That's how you make the sale for, "say, health-care reform," and that's why this infomercial was "one helluva closing argument" for Obama.

Yawn, said Mark Steyn in National Review Online. All the "waving wheat and music" made Obama's big show "seem like a standard campaign commercial, only longer." The adoring media, of course, loved it, yet, somehow, despite the Democrat's huge spending advantage and a spectacularly unpopular incumbent president, McCain—the supposedly "old cranky broke loser"—is "within two or three points of the King of the World."

The Obama camp sure took its "best shot" to garner undecided voters with this slick and expensive mega-ad, said Don Frederick in the Los Angeles Times online, but the reality is that the infomercial probably won't have any effect on election day. The ranks of the truly undecided have shrunk dramatically by now, and "those leaning against the freshman Illinois senator were unlikely to be swayed by it (or even watch it)."