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Home > Blogs > Ohio politics > Archives > 2008 > February > 18 > Entry
Eye on Ohio: “Enough” ad for Obama
Obama ad addresses American job loss
THE AD: “Enough,” 30-seconds.
WHERE TO SEE IT: It began airing in Ohio on Friday, Feb. 15, 2008, though it has been used in other states as well. Watch it now.
Obama ad addresses American job loss
THE AD: “Enough,” 30-seconds.
WHERE TO SEE IT: It began airing in Ohio on Friday, Feb. 15, 2008, though it has been used in other states as well. Watch it now.
SCRIPT: “I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.
“Ordinary people all across the country are struggling from paycheck to paycheck. If the plant moves to China, and you’ve been working there for 20, 30 years, and suddenly you have the rug pulled out from under you, and you don’t have health care, and you don’t have a pension, you’re on your own.
“We’ve got to stop giving tax breaks to companies that are moving overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that are investing in the United States of America. Enough is enough.”
VIDEO: The spot opens with Obama in a suit, and then flashes to a restaurant where he’s talking to a diverse crowd that looks on approvingly. A tieless Obama has his shirt sleeves rolled up and is gesturing emphatically. The day’s menu appears on a chalkboard in the background. A color drawing of the Statue of Liberty, with Lady Liberty holding an American flag, is displayed prominently.
ANALYSIS: This ad plays to voters’ feelings of insecurity about the economy, and it’s a convenient scene-setter for Obama’s touting of the Patriot Employer Act. That legislation would provide economic incentives for companies to keep their headquarters and employers in this country.
With John Edwards out of the race, and as he comes to a state that has been buffeted by job losses, Obama is ratcheting up his rhetoric about how he’d be the president who’d look out for workers.
To that end, Obama has been attacking Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on foreign investment and free trade, knowing that President Bill Clinton fought furiously to get the North American Free Trade Act passed.
That fact still infuriates Ohio’s labor unions, and the free-trade debate was front-and-center in U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s successful campaign in 2006 to unseat Sen. Mike DeWine.
For her part, Sen. Clinton is calling for a “time out” on new agreements and a reconsideration of trade deals every five years, a move Obama characterizes as a change in her tune.
Ohio’s experience with expanded foreign trade has been far from all negative. Though the state has lost more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the last two decades, business groups say an equal number of Ohio manufacturing jobs are dependent on the state’s $38 billion worth of exports.
Meanwhile, more than 200,000 Ohioans work for foreign-owned companies, and that’s not counting farmers who export their crops.
Though Obama comes to Ohio after an eight-state winning streak since Super Tuesday, the polls show him trailing Clinton in Ohio. Most pundits say those interviews are too dated to mean much, but they’re the reason that Obama’s ads are aimed squarely at uneasy workers.
Ellen Belcher is editorial page editor at the Dayton Daily News. E-mail address: ebelcher@daytondailynews.com. Telephone: (937) 225-2286.
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