In this ad, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul takes a much smarter approach than I have seen throughout most of the primary. Instead of trying to differentiate himself from Barack Obama, he shows how each of his relevant opponents have sided with Obama or with liberal politics and ideas. I think is a much smarter game plan - instead of slamming into the juggernaut that is the Obama politcal machine, Paul saves his early game for taking hits on the Mitt Romneys and Rick Perrys of the world. Now, while this is probably a logistical thing (Paul likely has much less in the war chest than his opponents, and therefore has to keep doing well in the primary to stay afloat), it's smart to save your big hits on Obama for when he is actually your main opponent and to make yourself look different from the sea of other (with apologies to Bachmann and Cain) white guys in suits that are running against you.
I also like this ad:
I'm a fan of this one because it's an incumbent behaving like an incumbent should. Not gloating about achievement, not complaining about what he would do better, and no mudslinging at any of his opponents. Now, I'm not exclusively against mudslinging per se - it's a very useful tactic. Though, Obama has the opportunity of being ahead of every possible contender and having a lot of chances for them to shoot themselves in the foot. This is clear with this ad, which is very calm and relaxed. It focuses on Obama has a candidate and a leader, not on tearing down any opponents.
I chose to analyze Gov. Rick Perry's calling of Herman Cain "brother" during a recent debate. These three articles had a couple big differences that I thought were critical.
What I found most interesting is that one of the articles, the one from the New York Daily News, didn't refer at all to the fact that Rick Perry also called Gov. Mitt Romney "Sir". I felt like this was an important idea, and lent very much to the fact that Rick Perry was sarcastically urbanizing his speech towards Cain while making Romney seem stuffy. He was lampooning his candidates in a way to make them less appealing to the voters.
I also found it interesting that the New York Daily News was the only publication to not rely on its own conjecture - instead going to experts in the subject of race relations. This allows them to tell a fairly straight inverted pyramid style story while everyone else relied on the instant analysis type of story.
I think it's interesting that the Washington Post, a paper seen as "liberal" analyzed every possible angle and reason the Perry could have used the term. It seems like they would have instantly gone with "racism" if they were marking for Obama.
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