Michael Barone: Evening in America? Obama’s Campaign Video is Carteresque

President Barack Obama’s 17-minute video, “The Road We’ve Traveled,” gives us an idea of how he wants to frame the issues in the fall election.

 

The first thing you notice about the video is that the atmosphere is dark, wintry, minor key. You see but don’t hear the election-night crowd in Grant Park, and then the video switches to graphics about the economic meltdown that followed the financial crisis of 2008.

 

There are gloomy scenes throughout. Obama’s economic advisers arrive in a bleak Chicago after a snowstorm. The president is shown sitting in the Oval Office through a window at night.

 

The visuals are oddly antique for a president who promised hope and change. When narrator Tom Hanks talks of the “middle class,” we see downscale neighborhoods with houses built in the 1910s or 1920s. When he talks about economic recovery, we see an early 1950s Ford coming off the assembly line.

 

Hanks strikes another historical note. “Not since the days of Franklin Roosevelt has so much fallen on the shoulders of one president.” Well, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan might disagree, but one gets the idea. If America is not standing tall, it’s because Obama started off nearly six feet under...