Best Political Ad Ever!

I just saw The Best Political Ad Ever. Most of them are terrible, but this one is warm, artful, and competent.

Ok, Political Ads? Really?!

Yes, I know about political ads. They are uniformly and drearily low-brow. They’re always trying to make you angry or afraid. The Republican ones also want you to hate scary brown-skinned people who might wish to become your neighbors.

So against that background, I was actually delighted to see this one from Tim Walz. He makes a few remarks about the general incompetence billionaires in general and Trump in particular, sure.

But most of it is about him working on his car: a 1979 International Harvester Scout. No computers, everything analog. He explains how the cruise control is his latest problem, and that it works using air pressure against a weight to be accurate to within a mile/hr or two.

Also, it’s titled “The Manual”, i.e., the maintenance manuals that used to come with cars and would tell you everything you needed to know to fix it.

Now, over a number of years in software development and later as a scientist specializing in applied statistics, “Read the Manual” was sort of my mantra. People will go to enormous efforts to avoid doing this, in fact expending far more energy than simple manual-reading would take. Once, when somebody asked how I knew so much Lisp Machine lore, I pointed to the Encyclopaedia Symbolica (here’s someone’s attempt to preserve some of it; no idea how complete it is compared to the hardcopy now sitting on a shelf in my study) on my shelf and noted that “If you read the manual, you’ll end up knowing a lot of stuff.” (Also if you read the source, which was a thing we could do, back in those days.)

So, in addition to being warm, artful, and competent: Coach Walz is also a manual-reading sort of guy.

Now I like him even more.

The Weekend Conclusion

The heart of the matter, for US eligible voters:

• Register to vote.
  • Then check your voter registration, at least once a week until the election. (Republican trickery to do mass de-registrations is all over the place. Refuse to be a victim.)
• Vote for Harris/Walz. In fact, vote Democratic up and down the ticket:
  • We need a Democratic Senate to get any judges confirmed (or any confirmations at all, really).
  • We need a Democratic House to do anything else. Unless you like federal government shutdowns, in which case I remind you that a Republican House is the single best predictor of federal government shutdowns. Maybe don’t enable that?
• And, as always, ya gotta respect the classics: Ceterum censeo, Trump incarcerandam esse.

Addendum 2024-Sep-27: Ow! Ow! You’re making me wag my tail too hard!

Ok, look. Tim. Buddy. You gotta take it down a notch here. I already like you. You don’t have to push my buttons this hard!

That subtle dig about JD Vance being unable to order donuts? ^[1] When you said “Look at me – I have no problem picking out doughnuts”… that was tight, man. Well done.

But when you shouted “Sold!” to the guy describing an apple cider donut cut in half and filled with Whoopie Pie cream filling… Dude, it’s maddening that I can’t figure out where to get such a thing in Boston. Now I’m gonna have to look up recipes for cream fillings.

You do realize, don’t you, that Candidate for Vice President is not typically this full of joie de vivre? Good job there, breaking the stereotypes: I didn’t know a VP candidate could be smart, competent, and fun.

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Notes & References

1: M Hartmann, “J.D. Vance Blames Staff for Disastrous Doughnut-Shop Visit”, New York Magazine, 2024-Aug-28. ↩