Obama’s half-hour TV ad could try to reassure voters

So, what do you think this half-hour TV show of Barack Obama’s is going to be about? My wife thinks that it will be like “Mr. Rogers.” I’m pretty sure they’ll go with a more traditional sitcom format. I’m guessing that, in an effort to have him come across as non-threatening as possible, they’ll use the old “Brady Bunch” set. And he definitely won’t be playing a Muslim or a ’60s radical. I’m thinking that he’ll be a successful, big city attorney who, after the death of his father, decides to move back to the small town where he grew up, and run for sheriff.

In all seriousness, I think that it’s likely that this half-hour primetime ad the campaign for Oct. 29 will be primarily casual documentary footage of Barack and his family at home together, not all that different from the unused footage Spike Jonze shot of Al Gore and his family in 2000. (If I know one thing, it’s that Americans love reality television.) The biggest apprehension that some voters have about Obama, it seems, is that they don’t “know” him. My guess is that they’ll seek to address that in this half-hour. We’ll see Barack talking policy and being presidential, but primarily we’ll see him being a good father and a loving husband in a home surprisingly not that different from our own. Contrary to what many of us expect, there won’t be a bust of Osama bin Laden, drug paraphernalia, or bomb-making materials. The next day some folks will be up in arms, saying that it was completely scripted and shot on a Hollywood sound stage, but the damage will have been done.