The Obama campaign released a seven-minute Web video on Monday highlighting the president’s first-term accomplishments, contrasting them with the challenges he inherited from the prior administration.
The video teases a new campaign slogan, "Forward," and while it doesn’t mention Obama’s likely Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, it blames GOP policies for the still-sluggish economy.
The ad begins by focusing on events from January 2008 onward, sketching a downward-trending timeline detailing mounting job losses, the foreclosure crisis, the stock market plunge and the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, with pictures of former President George W. Bush beneath.
The ad then transitions to Obama’s inauguration day in January 2009, looking to draw a clear distinction between the timeline of events that occurred before the president took office.
“On the day Barack Obama took office, America had already lost 4.4 million jobs in economic disaster, the worst in a generation,” the narrator says.
The ad then ticks off the president’s accomplishments: the stimulus, the auto bailout, increased manufacturing jobs, credit card industry and Wall Street reform, the repeal of “Don’t ask, don't tell,” the end of the war in Iraq and the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The ad reiterates the Obama campaign’s argument that Romney would reinstate the policies of the Bush administration, undoing Obama's accomplishments on the economy.
“He's got an opponent who basically wants to do what they did before, on steroids, which will get you the same consequences you got before, on steroids," former President Clinton said at a joint fundraiser with Obama in Virginia on Sunday.
Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs also hammered the point on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
“I think sometimes you listen to the Romney campaign, and they do think a lot of people in this country are stupid. … Their message is, 'You didn't clean up our mess fast enough,' " Gibbs said. “As I said, we've had 11 consecutive months of positive economic growth, 25 consecutive months of positive private-sector job growth.”
The ad also doesn’t shy away from Obama’s more controversial accomplishments of healthcare reform, including the birth control mandate, and green energy policies.
“But instead of working together to lift America up, Republicans were waging a campaign to tear the president down,” the narrator continues, over pictures of conservative media personalities like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.
The ad then turns to paint Republicans in Congress as obstructionist, splicing together shots of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) saying “no.”
The video plays McConnell’s line that has been used consistently by Democrats who say Republicans are putting politics ahead of legislating.
“Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term,” McConnell said.
The new Obama ad comes ahead of his 2012 campaign launch, with official rallies Saturday, May 5, in Ohio and Virginia.
