MADSISON AVENUE RULES!

Readers of this blog are well aware that I hold Hillary Clinton in low esteem, but fairness requires me to acknowledge true political brilliance when I see it.  Yesterday I watched a Clinton commercial -- one  of the first I have caught on the tube, though I imagine by now there have been many.  I say without hesitation that it was the single most powerful and effective political advertisement I have ever encountered.  It was so good that after I had watched it for a while, unbidden there rose in me a visceral longing for a Clinton victory in 2016.

The commercial was lavishly produced and must have cost a small fortune, paid for out of the Clinton campaign's famously deep pockets.  It ran for an unimaginably long time -- three hours, I believe, though I only watched the first ninety minutes.  The format was sheer genius.  It pretended to be an actual live debate among eleven of the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.  By inspired cross-cutting and photo-shopping, the producers of the commercial managed to make every one of the Republican candidates look like a blustering bully, a blithering idiot, or an ineffectual fool.

The real genius of the ad is that since it used absolutely nothing but the Republicans' own words and facial grimaces, they have no grounds for complaint.

Now if only the Sanders campaign could produce commercials like this!