Photo by Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie
It used to be that while Washington gets saddled with presidents and the staffs who move with them, at least we didn’t have to watch all their campaign ads. But no more. For the past month, D.C.-area airwaves have been flooded with commercials by the campaigns of President Obama and Mitt Romney, their respective parties and allied third-party spending groups.
And when we say flooded, it’s no joke. In the last week of July, the Obama and Romney camps, along with their related groups, spent $1.8 million on the Washington television market, according to The New Republic. That’s up from $213,000 at the beginning of the month.
Why the surge in presidential campaign spending? It’s certainly not for those of us in the District, where Obama won in 2008 with over 92 percent of the vote, nor is it for Maryland, where Obama nabbed 62 percent of the tally. The president might not be as bright and shiny as he was four years ago, but he’s a Democrat, so he’ll likely win D.C. and Maryland again with similar numbers.
Obviously, the downpour of campaign spending on the Washington market is because of Virginia’s recent emergence as a battleground state. The Old Dominion voted for every Republican presidential candidate between 1968 and 2004, but since then, it’s become awfully purple. Obama’s 2008 campaign spent $26 million on the general election in Virginia; Sen. John McCain’s spent $14 million. And those numbers are only expected to go up this time around as Obama looks to hold on to Virginia’s 13 electoral votes. That means even more campaign ads, featuring things like Obama mocking Romney’s off-key performance of “America the Beautiful,” 2002 Winter Olympics athletes praising Romney’s stewardship of the games and footage of Obama palling around with Midwestern factory workers.
It’s incessant. And CBS News’ Bob Schieffer is feeling the burn. In a brief comment yesterday, the Face the Nation host decried the ad blitz:
We’re bombarded by these things every waking moment, and it doesn’t stop there. I’ve seen so many I dreamed about one the other night! I’ve seen so many I can’t remember who said what about who.
And with campaign ads appearing during seemingly every commercial break on every network, viewers of all ages are impacted. Schieffer recounted a conversation with one campaign aide who watched a campaign commercial with his four-year-old son. The ad showed an image of Obama and the father asked the kid if he could identify the person on screen. What Schieffer recounted next is priceless:
“That’s Barack Obama,” said the child.
“And what does he do,” said the father.
Without missing a beat, the four-year-old replied, “He approves this message!”
Virginia’s legacy endures.
