Ocean's Mormon

The music and visuals on this Mitt Romney ad reminds me of a euphemistic ad for an erectile dysfunction pill, but everyone I know who's smart about politics tells me that these issues (ironically, including the ubiquity of ads for ED pills on television) resonate with the voters:

That said, at times here I feel like Romney sounds like one of those computer-generated voices, where each word has been separately recorded and it's stitched together into a odd-sounding sentence.

Comments

Setting aside the practicality of what he's talking about (keeping porn off your kids' computers? keeping drugs off the streets? hey, how come nobody ever thought of that before?) and the hypocrisy of the pitch (hey, why not keep porn off your hotel TVs?), it's pretty straightforward pandering to conservative evangelicals...and it won't work because they hate Mormons. Seriously: there was a poll a few weeks ago with various matchups, and with Romney as the nominee Alabama flipped to blue. Alabama. That tells us everything we need to know about where his candidacy is going.

Posted by Tom Hilton | July 16, 2007 1:15 PM

Also, the whole ocean metaphor may be lost on the ad's target audience, many of whom have never actually seen an ocean.

Posted by Tom Hilton | July 16, 2007 1:16 PM

Great editing though. At "cesspool" the water suddenly looks menacing, nice bubbles at "inhaled too deeply" and when he says "pornography" the waves imitate a cum shot.

Posted by ~~~~ | July 16, 2007 1:24 PM

Too bad he's not talking about cleaning up the real oceans.

Posted by la dolce vita | July 16, 2007 1:27 PM

I dunno. Despite being a decadent coastal elitist, I found the ad somewhat compelling - even though I agree with Matt's aesthetic criticism, and think that Peggy Noonan is a fucking nutjob.

I think that, ultimately, this works because it's pretty abstracted, and not traditionally rhetorical. It doesn't sound like a campaign pitch, not even like one of Obama's hope-fests.

Posted by JRoth | July 16, 2007 1:36 PM

Can someone help me? My audio is not working (a blessing in the office) and what I have seen reminded me of painting "Sea of Blood", except for the final seconds with a dog, a lot of blue and a couch potato.

Posted by piotr | July 16, 2007 1:37 PM

Ask your doctor about Pandering to The Dwindling Religious Right Base™

Posted by C.L. | July 16, 2007 1:47 PM

I think Matt Damon has found his competition for that role in the Star Trek prequel movie. I bet Mitt would kill doing William Shatner's Rocketman.

Posted by Derrick | July 16, 2007 1:47 PM

wow, I kind of didn't follow that at all. It did kind of remind me of this though:

http://www.deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com/today.asp

Posted by MP | July 16, 2007 1:51 PM

Shorter Oceans Mittster Ad:

Sure, there's totally fucked up crazies out there who want to blow us up, a health care system crumbling, a new Guilded Age, Global Warming, but I'm worried about Teh Porns: I'm a total fuckin' pussy.

Posted by ed | July 16, 2007 1:56 PM

Not only that, ~~~~, but what he's saying during that frothy wave is that he'd "like to keep pornography from coming up on their computers." And the poor kid is ankle deep in it, stumbling to get away.

Posted by Not Althouse | July 16, 2007 2:12 PM

This really needs to be considered side-by-side with Fouad Ajamai's recent disembowelment over his "Scooter-is-a-fallen-soldier is just a metaphor" farce. In 9 years, when our real oceans run brown and red, President Romney will disavow responsibility by pointing to this ad and saying "it was just a metaphor. I never actually promised to clean up the *real* oceans!"

Posted by The Confidence Man | July 16, 2007 2:13 PM

He does sound like a computer voice, but more then that, he sounds like Shatner.

Posted by Chad Okere | July 16, 2007 2:24 PM

Wow, Peggy Noonan makes America sound like some combination of Somalia and Amsterdam's Red Light District. It's like 1968-69 never happened in her lifetime, when she would be in her late teens. So porn is the reason the Columbine kids became neo-Nazis?

Romney: For when you can't get an erection in your magic underwear.

Posted by Reality Man | July 16, 2007 2:43 PM

And besides, what does porn have to do with school shootings? Nothing.

Posted by Chad Okere | July 16, 2007 2:50 PM

Metaphorically speaking, the problem with our children inhaling too deeply in the ocean can't be the cleanliness of the water. Unless Noonan had an elaborate "children as guppies" conceit which the ad doesn't convey here.

Posted by Andrew | July 16, 2007 3:08 PM

Ocean...cleanse water...baptism...born again...?

Posted by berger | July 16, 2007 3:57 PM

I always thought Mitt Romney was more Wink Martindale than some computer program, but I can see some overlap there.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | July 16, 2007 4:14 PM

I swam in this ocean too, but I didn't inhale.

Posted by Motoko | July 16, 2007 6:15 PM

He spends about 50% of the ad quoting Peggy Noonan writing about Columbine--an incident that happened almost 10 years ago! What's Mitt going to save us from next, Marilyn Manson? Better alarmists please!

Posted by Rob Mac | July 16, 2007 7:18 PM

I think it is worth noting that Romney is also intentionally angering environmentalists by prioritizing clean metaphorical water over clean real water.

I think this is a good move for someone seeking to consolidate Republican support, which seems to be more into metaphors (Global War on Terror, anyone) than reality.

Posted by Jeff H | July 16, 2007 10:11 PM