As Obama hits the campaign trail, “Mourning in America” ad greets him, recalling the Reagan era

ANDREW MALCOLM
Los Angeles Times

These videos pretty much speak for themselves.

The first one is the classic “Morning in America” ad that helped ensure Ronald Reagan’s overwhelming reelection in 1984 over some Democrat from Minnesota.

Watch it. And then scroll down to the next one.

Now here’s a powerful new ad that you’ll soon be seeing on TVs across the country.

Its title is different by one letter: “Mourning in America.”

Democratic President Obama and his sidekick from Delaware head out on ambitious cross-country campaign swings starting this week, trying to stem what polls indicate is a serious hemorrhaging of political support for their administration, their expensive policies and their majority party that has controlled Congress since 2007.

Obama’s not on any ballot on the Nov. 2 elections. But this slow-paced visual message by Fred Davis of Strategic Perception for Citizens for the Republic is aimed smack dab at him — and by implication all those who support the incumbent’s “grand experiment” that has so regrettably failed.

However, Obama’s not angrily attacked. And he’s mentioned only once.

But as Kathleen Parker so eloquently notes, that’s enough with the parallel, contrasting Reagan era images to tap into, not the ubiquitous anger we hear so much about abroad in the land these days, but instead into the nation’s surging sense of sadness over the failure of so many hopes in the last two years.