Is this anything?

David Letterman has a recurring skit called, "Is This Anything?", in which a performer comes out and executes an odd stunt, which may or may not be meaningful, hence the title.

So, some people saw Barack Obama's Super Bowl commercial yesterday and are asking the same thing:

Now, my pal Francis Beckwith is doubleplus unimpressed, characterizing the ad's message as, "I will end the politics of division by attractively stipulating the correctness of my views and thus implying that those who don't agree are ugly and want to perpetuate the politics of division." I think this is right, as far as it goes: the ad isn't about much of anything.

But that is surely expecting too much. The point of television advertising is not to set forth an argument -- stop, oh yes, wait a minute Mr. Postman! -- but to strike a resonant chord. It's all about emotion. That's what Obama's ad does, and does very, very well, I think. You see that ad, you hear his voice, and you hear the urgent music, and you might well feel -- feel -- that Obama is the opposite of the stasis we're now mired in. And surely that is the point of this and ads like it. The public already feels intensely dissatisfied with the status quo. What this Obama ad is trying to do is to prepare its viewers emotionally to identify with Obama as the antidote to the current feeling of paralysis and depression. The music, I think, is probably the most important part of the ad -- that, and the rising cadences of his words. It's not what he says as much as it's the way he says it.

Here's Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" ad. To deconstruct the content of the message is to miss its point; the ad was effective because it struck a responsive emotional chord with the audience, reinforcing feelings they may already have had that the country has turned a corner out of its crisis years, and that President Reagan had seen us through the bad times, and had caused the dark night to end. Notice the soothing music, and the images of patriotism, family, new beginnings, childlike wonder. Compare and contrast to the Obama Super Bowl ad: