Baby, It's An A.M. World

David Weigel | April 3, 2008

Not everything in politics can make as much as sense as a Mike Gravel YouTube. Take this Hillary Clinton ad. I've watched it three times and I have no idea what it means.

It's 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone ringing in the White House

Oh, right, it's a sequel to the ad that probably won Texas for Hillary Clinton. She's only paid her team a couple dozen million dollars—you can't expect them to come up with two good ideas. Indeed, this is the French Connection II of campaign ads.

and this time the crisis is economic.

Wait. What? What markets are open at 3 a.m.?

Home foreclosures mounting, markets teetering.

At 3 a.m.? This sounds curiously like the panic we've got going now. Hillary Clinton's response to the panic has been a bold, heat-of-the-moment plan a much-maligned idea to empanel Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin and get them to un-shit the bed they made and messed, respectively.

John McCain just said the government shouldn't take any real action on the housing crisis, he'd let the phone keep ringing.

Actually, no. Let's go with the idiotic "phone call" metaphor. McCain got a panicky call from a titan of industry, screaming that the economy was in meltdown. McCain could hear the faint sound of burning trash cans and yowling ledge-jumpers in the distance. His solution: To not panic.*

Hillary Clinton has a plan to protect our homes, create jobs.

Which is?

It's 3 a.m., time for a president who's ready.

Oh, sorry, didn't realize the ad was over.

Before you take McCain's side on this, note the oddball response ad he's running: He buys into the "phone call" gag and pledges to "grow jobs." Look, if non sequiturs could solve this problem, I'd be buying Bear Sterns stock.

Headline explained here.

*In that NYT article, you'll notice that Clinton accuses McCain's non-intervention plan of being "like Herbert Hoover." She thinks you're an idiot.