EUCLID —
Targeting middle-class voters, President Barack Obama on Monday unveiled a sweeping $25 million, nine-state ad campaign whose centerpiece is a commercial portraying him as the steward of an economic comeback and confronting Republican criticism that recovery has sputtered on his watch.
“We’re not there yet,” the ad says. “It’s still too hard, for too many. But we’re coming back. Because America’s greatness comes from a strong middle class. Because you don’t quit, and neither does he.”
Countering from hard-hit Ohio, Republican Mitt Romney argued that Obama’s policies are squeezing middle-income Americans and that his business background could help jumpstart the economy.
“The president and I have fairly different visions for what it’ll take to get America working again,” the former Massachusetts governor said.
The competing economic visions — and the huge Obama investment in TV advertising in battleground states — are shaping a White House race that new surveys suggest is competitive six months before Election Day. A poll of voters in a dozen swing states by USA Today and Gallup found Obama and Romney essentially even among registered voters — Obama 47 percent, Romney 45 percent.
Just weeks old, the Obama-Romney race is playing out in a country in which unemployment is hovering around 8 percent and where many voters are not feeling growth that economists insist is occurring
Monday’s announcement of the new advertising effort came just days after Obama opened the latest phase in his White House re-election effort with a pair of rallies in politically important Virginia and Ohio.
The sheer scope of the ad effort — $25 million in one month in the battlegrounds of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, North Carolina, Florida and Colorado — illustrates the huge advantage the incumbent Democrat has over Romney. Obama is tapping into a campaign bank account of more than $100 million to pay for his big opening salvo in the TV ad wars while Romney scurries to catch up after a costly and contentious primary season. The presumptive GOP nominee is relying on outside groups — like the pro-Romney Restore Our Future political action committee — to keep him competitive on the air against Obama’s behemoth campaign.
In the 60-second ad, Obama tries to paint a picture of a nation turning the page on a difficult decade.
The ad traces America’s economic landscape from late 2008 and the massive economic downturn that crippled the U.S. economy, with housing foreclosures, job losses and the financial crisis. “The economy spiraling down ... all before this president took the oath,” it says. “Some said our best days were behind us. But not him.”
“He believed in us, fought for us,” the ad says as it highlights jobs being created, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 2001 terrorist attacks, and the return of U.S. troops from a lengthy war in Iraq in Obama’s first term.
It could be considered Obama’s take on President Ronald Reagan’s patriotic “Morning in America” theme, yet with a gritty undertone. It juxtaposes images of unemployed workers and home foreclosure signs with workers assembling cars, a girl jumping into the arms of her soldier father and a woman working behind a cash register. But, despite the optimistic tone, the ad overlooks the challenges Obama faces in selling the message that the economy is improving.
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