Creativity in Advertising

Here's an ad for Steve Novick, running for the Democratic Senate nomination in Oregon.



Fantastic ad, no? I do like how it plays off his disability in a positive way. (Novick was born without a left hand, among other problems, and stands only 4'9").

He's a dark-horse candidate running against State House Speaker Jeff Merkley, but he's actually flashed an early lead in the polls.

Now, 40% are undecided in the primary battle, and Merkley hasn't hit the airwaves yet. Merkley is also the far more experienced politician compared to Novick. But the persistent murmurs I've heard about Merkley are that his resume is better than his will to win. We'll see if he can close the gap, but I have to say, Novick's ad is one of the best I've seen all season, and exhibits the sort of innovation and risk-taking that I think will serve him well if he makes it to the general.

This is a Cool Hit

I was browsing through my hit counter, and I came across this recent visitor, reading my post on Gordon Smith's boneheaded defense of Trent Lott, from the US Senate, referring URL http://smithg-dc2:980/default.aspx. Bizarre, but neat.

***

Domain Name senate.gov ? (U.S. Government)

IP Address 156.33.73.# (U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms)

ISP U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms

Location

Continent : North America

Country : United States (Facts)

State : District of Columbia

City : Washington

Lat/Long : 38.9097, -77.0231 (Map)

Language English (U.S.) en-us

Operating System Microsoft WinXP

Browser Internet Explorer 7.0

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

Javascript version 1.3

Monitor

Resolution : 1024 x 768

Color Depth : 32 bits

Time of Visit Dec 18 2007 4:34:49 pm

Last Page View Dec 18 2007 4:35:09 pm

Visit Length 20 seconds

Page Views 1

Referring URL http://smithg-dc2:980/default.aspx

Visit Entry Page http://dsadevil.blog...-smith-thinking.html

Visit Exit Page http://dsadevil.blog...-smith-thinking.html

Out Click Steve Benen
http://www.thecarpet.../archives/13966.html

Time Zone UTC-5:00

Visitor's Time Dec 18 2007 5:34:49 pm

Visit Number 221,272

What Is Smith Thinking?

Politicians are normally rational creatures. This isn't to say that they act in ways that I find preferable. Rather, though they upset me rather often, normally it's based on at least a perception of political gain. When they do dumb things, it's usually based on a miscalculation of the same.

That being established, what was Gordon Smith's angle, defending Trent Lott's comments on Strom Thurmond (specifically, that he should have been elected to the Presidency on his 1948 segregationist platform)?

Steve Benen has the complete story, but let's run through the basics.

-Gordon Smith is a vulnerable Senator in a blue state. Defending Trent Lott's bone-headed (to say the least) comments is hardly a winning strategy.

-Though Lott is retiring, the comments themselves are hardly back in the news -- indeed, I'd suspect Lott more than anyone would rather let sleeping dogs lie on that front.

-Indeed, Lott himself repented and called the comments disgraceful.

-And when Lott said the comments, Smith condemned them, and expressed satisfaction when Lott did resign his post as Majority Leader.

So, while it's easy to mock or condemn Smith, I'm too perplexed to even be scornful. What could he possibly have been thinking?