Obama's New Campaign Video Releases

There’s perhaps no better indicator o the tenor of the presidential general election than the new video released by the Obama campaign on Thursday. The campaign video, directed by David Guggenheim of Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman fame, and narrated by actor Tom Hanks, is a 17 minute reprimand for an American public that still feels largely “down and out”. The video, entitled “The Road We’ve Traveled”, attempts to remind viewers that not only could things have been much worse, but they were much worse only a couple of years ago. However, the rosy picture the campaign is trying to paint may be a taffy-pulling treatment of the truth; something closer in character to what we’ve come to expect from the Republican opposition.

One particularly large ticket that the Obama campaign is attempting to punch is on the bailout and subsequent recovery of the auto industry. It’s true that there has been significant recovery of the auto industry, particularly the big manufacturers, in the last several years. However, as was recently pointed out in The Huffington Post, the video claims that “business [is] booming and [they’ve] repaid their loans,” and that’s not entirely true. The reality is that the Big Three are much more competitive and most companies are recording higher revenue, but GM and Chrysler have yet to pay back their bailout loans, and are unlikely to ever. About $1 billion from Chrysler will likely never be paid back from the initial $12.5 billion. From GM, the government accepted stock in lieu of paying back about $27 billion, and is likely to not ever see about $10 billion of that total amount.

To be sure, Republican opponents have outdone his campaign video’s “exaggeration” by leaps and bounds when it comes to stretching or misrepresenting the facts. Still, Obama’s foray into the land untruthiness is a concerning change o tactic for the normally “above board” President. It shows that the Obama campaign may be willing to take some of the same measures as the GOP candidates in attempting to manipulate voters and mischaracterize the economic and political realities. With more than ten months left before the November election, there’s plenty of time for these kinds of misleading and unethical representations of the facts to get much more “unrepresentative”, particularly after the GOP primary election when the campaign is likely to get really nasty. Of course, perhaps the White House considers this a necessity in a race where Republican voters doen’t seem to mind bending the truth or outright lying in the service of getting votes. Check here for a more complete record of the GOP opponents track record of dishonesty.