I hate to detract from CokeGate here, but yeah, Kerry Healey is starting to burn off some of her immense fortune on media. And I have to agree with David that her newest ad is pretty lame — much like 99.9% of all political ads. Let’s take it apart, shall we?
- It’s got Kerry Healey in it. Talking. That’s not good. She sounds kind of icy … almost like she’s scolding you through a clenched jaw.
- “I may not win every battle…” What kind of loser talk is that? She’s basically saying, “I’m not going to be a very effective governor. As a nominal Republican with no party and no real base of support, I’m not going to be strong enough to check the legislature. But, you know, I’m what you have, so vote for me.”
- At the end, sneaking in the inconvenient fact that she actually does want to spend some money on things … “like education” — just under the wire, Kerry! Whew!
Well, this is not exactly by-the-books Lakoffian framing. Healey thinks that acknowledging her manifest weaknesses as a lonely Republican and diluting her fiscal discipline message will somehow inoculate her from Democratic attacks. Really, the ad tries to do way too much at once.
But maybe — as political consultants so often tell us — it doesn’t matter if the ads suck. So what is there?
Local and national Republicans have been able to deliver an anti-tax message as a “kitchen-table” type of issue. Taxes do affect family finances: money you pay in taxes is money you don’t have in your pocket. (Duh.) And that’s why taxes hit home as an issue, but the government’s fiscal situation generally does not.
But taxes are not the only kitchen table issue: health care and education for example) are issues that affect people every single day, and they tend to favor Democrats. And yet it seems that often, Democrats seem boxed in, wonky, reluctant to get personal and emotional. But people don’t understand the government’s problems, and shouldn’t be made to; it’s hard to enough to deal with their own.
So, as lame as her ads are, Healey has staked out some important territory on taxes, and presented the issue on a personal level. The Democratic candidates need to be at least as strong and personal on their kitchen-table issues — and it shouldn’t be hard to be more deft and clear with their messaging.
By the way, if you want to see what political ads ought to look like, do see Eliot Spitzer’s for NY Governor. Can’t Gabrieli or Healey afford stuff like this? It’s not rocket science — this kind of stuff sells dog food and life insurance and cars 24/7. And yet political advertising usually looks like public-access cable compared to run-of-the-mill commercial advertising. Why?
