A new Jerry Brown ad is making the case that Arnold will be back--in the form of Meg Whitman.
The spot, which went statewide yesterday, has been viewed almost 43,000 times on YouTube. In true "Daily Show" fashion, the ad cross-cuts between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Meg Whitman making the same statements.
What with Schwarzenegger's job approval lingering at George W. Bush-like levels, the Brown campaign obviously considers any parallel between him and Whitman to be helpful. So yesterday, Whitman was asked what her reaction to the ad was. Her response:
On the one hand, Brown's ad can be viewed as a dig at the vacuous, sound bite-driven political rhetoric spewed by all candidates. (I daresay someone could put together a similar piece cherrypicking frequent Brown tropes and pairing them with those of some other down-on-his-ratings politician.)
But on the other hand, I think the spot highlights a core part of the narrative Whitman is trying to tell: That she is an outsider with new ideas, that she has not been infected with whatever ails the state's political system, and that her vast personal resources will immunize her against political quid-pro-quos that many people perceive to be an obligatory component of how government works. And I have to admit, even before Brown's new ad made the explicit comparison between Whitman and the governor, I thought these selling points did seem awfully familiar.