Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Mitt Romney, World's Worst Lounge Singer

By James Wolcott
11:58 AM, July 15 2012

It's the political ad that everyone's talking about this post-All Star game season, and no wonder--it's a sneaky jab that completely shatters Mitt Romney's glass jaw. What's brilliant about "Firms" isn't so much the way it mails home the irony of Romney murdering "America the Beautiful" with his toneless, tuneless voice on the soundtrack as info flashcards remind us of all the jobs Bain Capital shipped overseas and how much money Romney's stashed in tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, though it is a clever, damaging juxtaposition that takes Romney's chief asset as a candidate--his halo of executive achievement--and hangs it around his neck like a choke collar. Very Rovian, that.

No, what's genius is the initial transition between President Obama striding a few steps at the White House and cutting to Mitt making with song...the contrast between Obama's vocal and physical gravitas and Mitt's goofiness is hilarious, devastating, emasculating. It's like going from The Shawshank Redemption to Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor when the Buddy Love spell wears off, from Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night to Fred MacMurray in Son of Flubber. And the fact that this ad is approved by Obama gives it much more authority and pow than if it were just something cooked up at the editing console by some bright operatives hoping the video would go YouTube viral. It's a smackdown from the man himself, not some Democratic front group, thus sending a much stronger message.

It's clear that the Obama campaign's strategy is to hit Romney hard early, define and diminish him in the public imagination with cartoon clarity, and send him into the Republican convention with a Dan Quayle deer-in-the-headlights look that conveys the unbearable lightness of completely lost.

The initial response from Team Romney is that the Obama ad is making mockery of "America the Beautiful," and thus of America itself, and therefore dishonors those great patriots who shop for mattresses on Presidents' Day. If that's the best these marshmallows can counterpunch, they'll be digging up Lee Atwater before Labor Day and trying to reanimate him with jumper cables.

[hat tip: John Cole, Balloon Juice]

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2012/07/Mitt-Romney-Worlds-Worst-Lounge-Singer