Political ad meets Burn Notice

September 9, 2019 12:00 PM

Valerie Plame makes her political debut and what a debut it is. SLYT.
posted by bz (62 comments total)

Shots. Fired.
posted by djrock3k at 12:09 PM on September 9, 2019 [4 favorites]

Went to her website and under 'What We Can Achieve Together' I clicked 'Healthcare for All' (note: not 'Medicare for All'—already a red flag) and got this:

Nothing Found
Sorry, the post you are looking for is not available.

Not too promising.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:10 PM on September 9, 2019 [2 favorites]

Here she says she supports Medicare for All.
posted by schoolgirl report at 12:12 PM on September 9, 2019 [8 favorites]

I feel like that should have ended with an epic fight with Daryl Hannah in a cramped trailer.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:14 PM on September 9, 2019 [20 favorites]

Say what you will, the design and production values on this spot were way above the usual political adverts. Music, not so much - little to much honky-tonk. But maybe that's the target demographic.
Oh, and of course have to drop this in there:
"My name is Valerie Plame. I used to be a spy. And with your help, I can be a congresswoman."
posted by Old'n'Busted at 12:17 PM on September 9, 2019 [12 favorites]

WHAT
posted by bq at 12:17 PM on September 9, 2019 [10 favorites]

This is one of those things where I start cringing so hard because I think she looks like a good candidate and, uh, clearly her website needs more QA. But she'd hardly be the first person to have had this sort of problem of a few links going to the wrong places and I don't think it reflects on her as a candidate.
posted by Sequence at 12:18 PM on September 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

It's a safe Democratic seat, currently held by Ben Ray Luján, who's running for Senate (and routinely wins that district by 20-plus points), so Plame will likely raise millions from out of state, draw attention to the race, spend a lot of time re-explaining why she tweeted an article titled "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars", and lose the primary to someone who's been doing the work in NM-3 for decades. That's nothing against her, but there's a reason Ben Ray Luján is 124th on the list of Democrats who support impeachment.
posted by Etrigan at 12:24 PM on September 9, 2019 [38 favorites]

Wow. I applaud her for going all in on ‘angry woman,’ because that was the first thing her opponent(s) would reach for.

Vendetta indeed.
posted by bilabial at 12:24 PM on September 9, 2019 [7 favorites]

Man, I lived in New Mexico a long time and let me tell you, she'd be a vast improvement on many of the lunatics that get elected there.

And yes, I can tell this from very little information.
posted by lumpenprole at 12:24 PM on September 9, 2019 [7 favorites]

"Comments are disabled on this video."

Well...yeah.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:25 PM on September 9, 2019 [10 favorites]

Yeah, going just on the agenda page, Plame seems to be running where the median Democrat is these days, for better or worse.

But wow, the Plame affair feels like it was from a different century. It's a clear precursor to what we're seeing today, including subverting the organs of state in service of partisan political goals and the hand-in-glove relationship between Republican politicians and the Republican media (Bob Novak was the columnist through whom Scooter Libby leaked Plame's identity). At the same time, national security/foreign policy has mostly receded in salience for most people, so there's probably only so far you can go with "bad-ass ex-CIA agent" as your campaign theme. But then, I'm not the target audience for this kind of ad.
posted by Cash4Lead at 12:28 PM on September 9, 2019 [18 favorites]

Better than most political ads, but I'm not a fan of the going backwards metaphor. She turned the car around, so now we can keep going the same direction faster, I guess?
posted by MengerSponge at 12:41 PM on September 9, 2019 [8 favorites]

Better turning the car around than turning like aspens! ("It is fall now.... Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them.")
posted by brainwane at 12:49 PM on September 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

I mean, that was short on useful content, but as a name recognition gambit, it was nicely done. Plus it uses GIANT FONTS so you know it's on fleek.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:00 PM on September 9, 2019 [8 favorites]

Finally, someone with extremely middle of the road politics who used to be in the CIA.
posted by Reyturner at 1:15 PM on September 9, 2019 [65 favorites]

As a Canadian, this ad seemed very... American. Muscle cars, spies, soldiers, napalm, the works. At least there were no eagles...
posted by klanawa at 1:17 PM on September 9, 2019 [44 favorites]

That is one very slick ad.
posted by crush at 1:22 PM on September 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

(conversation overheard in the imaginary bar in my mind)
I dunno. She drives a Chevy.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:26 PM on September 9, 2019 [16 favorites]

Unfortunately, Plame has a history with retweeting open anti-Semitism, and then trying to justify it.
posted by kewb at 1:28 PM on September 9, 2019 [14 favorites]

This is former Gov. Bill Richardson's old district. Northern New Mexico. I used to live across from his local office on Agua Fria.
posted by buffalo at 1:30 PM on September 9, 2019

I'm ready to vote for Plame. Who needs discourse, thought, rational argument and discussion when you have reality-TV politics and sound-bite commercials that look like movie trailers. Fake news!
posted by diode at 1:31 PM on September 9, 2019 [6 favorites]

Why does everything have to be Milkshake Duck these days?
posted by acb at 1:43 PM on September 9, 2019 [9 favorites]

I want an I AM SPARTACUS avalanche of these. With Fury Road-level production values. From anyone and everyone. Like a spider scattering so terrifying that all Trump can do is be in a perpetual sputtering tweet storm until all the investigations finally catch up and swallow him whole. Let the show begin.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:50 PM on September 9, 2019 [22 favorites]

As a European, I kept waiting for the ironic twist because surely this level of theatrics can’t be sustained in all seriousness.

Still waiting. Have been in the US for almost 9 years and still waiting!
posted by The Toad at 2:03 PM on September 9, 2019 [36 favorites]

I dunno. She drives a Chevy.

I'm gonna have to fault them for not doing one with a Mustang and a Charger. They could have served 'em up on YouTube to the Calvin-pissing-on-X crowd based on their viewing history.
posted by klanawa at 2:07 PM on September 9, 2019 [13 favorites]

WOW
posted by repute at 2:36 PM on September 9, 2019

So, am I to understand that her family is former Ukrainian Jews, yet she retweets anti-Semitic conspiracies?

Can someone explain this for me?
posted by Big Al 8000 at 2:49 PM on September 9, 2019

Apparently (per wikipedia) she didnt know about her Jewish heritage until she was an adult and she was raised protestant.

[I guess its plausible that, not having identified with/grown up with her jewishness she actually doenst see the problem with the statement "jews are responsible for americas wars . . . bc many neo-con hawks are jewish". . . even if its factually half-accurate.]
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 2:53 PM on September 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

As a European, I kept waiting for the ironic twist because surely this level of theatrics can’t be sustained in all seriousness.

Unfortunately, that ad is toned down compared to some others.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 2:54 PM on September 9, 2019 [2 favorites]

Before I even clicked on the video, my brain gave it an alternate soundtrack courtesy of The Decemberists.
posted by D.Billy at 2:59 PM on September 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

> "She turned the car around, so now we can keep going the same direction faster, I guess?"

It's like you don't even want to twirl towards freedom.
posted by kyrademon at 3:04 PM on September 9, 2019 [42 favorites]

As a European, I kept waiting for the ironic twist because surely this level of theatrics can’t be sustained in all seriousness.

Still waiting. Have been in the US for almost 9 years and still waiting!

You're going to have a very long wait.
posted by octothorpe at 3:31 PM on September 9, 2019 [8 favorites]

WOW. That was amazing! I hope she gets a chance to settle those scores :)
posted by bluesky43 at 3:33 PM on September 9, 2019

Big Al 8000: "So, am I to understand that her family is former Ukrainian Jews, yet she retweets anti-Semitic conspiracies?

Can someone explain this for me?"

God bless America.
posted by chavenet at 3:46 PM on September 9, 2019 [6 favorites]

Seems a little more Burn After Reading than Burn Notice.
posted by benzenedream at 3:49 PM on September 9, 2019 [17 favorites]

> Unfortunately, that ad is toned down compared to some others .

Er, yeah.

(I still can't believe that dufus won even the Republican Primary . . . )
posted by flug at 3:52 PM on September 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

The field is crowded.
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:55 PM on September 9, 2019

ACAB and that goes double for deep state cops.
posted by smithsmith at 4:05 PM on September 9, 2019 [14 favorites]

I read her autobiography years and years ago. A whole lot of it was thick black lines because the CIA redacted an awful lot of entirely public information from her story, which they get to do with any former employee writing on their service. The publisher hired a journalist to write an appendix recounting most if not all of the same stuff. They didn't redact it out of concern for secrecy. The stuff was already known, and the redactions sure are more limited in autobios by other former officers. They redacted the hell out of Plame's book because they could.

Again, it's been a long time but given what I read the anti-Semitic retweet thing really came out of left field for me. It sure didn't fit the attitude and outlook I saw in her book. Still, it happened, and that shit matters. I don't think a thing like that is a "but her emails" issue. Like others have noted, I think she's going to wind up spending a lot of time and effort in her campaign trying to get around that and I don't know if it'll work.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:34 PM on September 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

An anti-Semitic CIA agent, just what the Democrats need in a candidate.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:48 PM on September 9, 2019 [10 favorites]

The ad's main target seems to be Bush with an incidental swipe at Trump for his Scooter Libby pardon. I guess that fits in with the ad 90s retro motif; CIA, 9/11, muscle car, Dick Cheney as villain etc. Plame is running for congress in 2019. Our president is a clown with impulse control problems. Perhaps political ads might be more useful if they addressed the present or maybe even the future rather than the past?
posted by rdr at 5:33 PM on September 9, 2019 [4 favorites]

Well, that’s certainly an ad. Based on my twitter feed and a general look at the news, I’m sure it’s doing its job and getting a ton of attention. I suspect Plame’s fundraising numbers will pop nicely today.

(And, cynicism aside, I won’t deny that it’s fun. I certainly enjoyed watching it.)

I will, however, be curious to see what Plame’s in-district campaigning looks like. I lived in Santa Fe for a few years, and apart from Los Alamos and a few of the wealthier citizens of north SF, NM-3 doesn’t strike me as a district where national security policy is going to sway many voters. I suppose she might make the case that her past experience might help her bring more federal money into the district.
posted by a device for making your enemy change his mind at 6:47 PM on September 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

Eh. There are a lot of things you can mean by "we need better national security," and most of them aren't good. And if you're a dude and you think spinning a muscle car around and spraying gravel is cool, I probably don't like you. This kinda Top Gun BS is really not what we need more of in politics IMO.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:23 PM on September 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

"She turned the car around, so now we can keep going the same direction faster, I guess?"

To be fair, she stopped the car when she turned it around. So now she can back up at high speed in the correct direction.
posted by ryoshu at 7:36 PM on September 9, 2019 [2 favorites]

She walked back the tweet a couple of years ago. My guess is that the mention of her Jewish ancestors is an attempt to get ahead of that criticism.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:55 PM on September 9, 2019 [2 favorites]

oh good, maybe in 12 years when the Republican Party has moved 3 standard deviations to the right, we can cheer on a political ad for Jeff Sessions running as a Democrat "with a vendetta" because he was fired by Donald Trump. Viva la #resistance!
posted by sugar and confetti at 7:59 PM on September 9, 2019 [3 favorites]

"Hi, I'm James Comey, a lifelong Republican cop. I was fired by Donald Trump and I guess you could say I have some scores to settle."
posted by sugar and confetti at 8:01 PM on September 9, 2019 [14 favorites]

The Plame affair does seem like so long ago and so very tame compared to everything going on today. I remember months and months of breathless newspaper columns like it was the worst thing the government could do. And here was have a presidnet lying and endangering national security daily and no one seems to care....
posted by CostcoCultist at 8:14 PM on September 9, 2019 [4 favorites]

All the other newspaper columns that handwaved it away and made excuses for it are part of the reason we find ourselves here.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:19 PM on September 9, 2019 [15 favorites]

I am totally in favor of that one good-guy Hollywood caricature fighting against that other bad-guy Hollywood caricature!


Tired: debates
Wired: car chases


Democracy!
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:29 PM on September 9, 2019 [2 favorites]

Most Democratic candidates seem so tepid and afraid to state their opinion or take a stand, so it's kind of refreshing to see a flashy ad with fighting words thrown in. I just wish that wasn't all it was.
posted by xammerboy at 12:28 AM on September 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

Well I guess you have to draw the punters in with a flashy ad and fighting words, and roll out the policy tedium later. Like doing your best song in the first audition on one of those talent shows. If you don't grab people's attention from the start you might not get another chance.

By the way I love how the CIA and the rest of the intelligence apparatus are dirty evil deep state cops until they are placed in opposition to Trump (or even Bush) at which point they become sainted career civil servants and subject matter experts.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 4:23 AM on September 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

Bob Novak was the columnist through whom Scooter Libby leaked Plame's identity

ZOMFG not sure how I missed this at the time. Holy shit that does feel like a long time ago.

I would be extremely unlikely to vote for anyone who was affiliated with Central Intelligence for any civilian position, regardless.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:58 AM on September 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

The Toad: As a European, I kept waiting for the ironic twist because surely this level of theatrics can’t be sustained in all seriousness. Still waiting. Have been in the US for almost 9 years and still waiting!


Been here 26 years (east coast), still patiently waiting. We just came back from the UK after a long-planned holiday. My eyes are dimming and my skin grows waxy.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 10:00 AM on September 10, 2019

Yup, that's a campaign ad.

To be honest, I'm not even complaining. It's time Democrats stopped pretending that what the American public is crying out for is more images of rippling grain while the candidate wears a flannel shirt and talks about their small town values. Let's go full bore Mad Max here!

Or hell, since the Republicans are going to paint any Democrat as a satanic hedonist, how about the candidate lounging in a throne smoking opium while surrounded by half naked men and women writhing erotically?

Tough guy talk about how the Republicans ruin national security out of peevishness to paint them as wimpy? Works for me.

Elizabeth Warren driving a war rig with a guy wearing a mask of human flesh playing the electric guitar on absurdly oversized speakers equipped with flame throwers? And the rest of the Squad piloting decked out assault motorcycles and brandishing bazookas? FUCK YES!

I'm only about half joking. Seriously, the staid stick up the ass Democratic campaign ads all look like they came out of the same 1980's reject pile. Try something different.

I've got my complaints about Valarie Plame as a candidate (no way do I want more ex-CIA spooks in the government), but her ad was at least a breath of fresh air in a political ad environment choked with the increasingly desperate pretense that we just need to act more like particularly uncharismatic and boring investment bankers and the voters will love us.

klanawa It did seem to be missing a soaring bald eagle accompanied by the sound of a red tailed hawk screaming.
posted by sotonohito at 10:52 AM on September 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

This shouldn't be a surprise. She worked for the CIA. Still would if Bush hadn't outed her. She was bound to be terrible on at least one axis.

At least two, you mean. "Worked for the CIA" is already a dealbreaker, but there's always something else.
posted by kafziel at 8:49 PM on September 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Apparently (per wikipedia) she didnt know about her Jewish heritage until she was an adult and she was raised protestant.

[I guess its plausible that, not having identified with/grown up with her jewishness she actually doenst see the problem with the statement "jews are responsible for americas wars . . . bc many neo-con hawks are jewish". . . even if its factually half-accurate.]

I mean, I'm not jewish in the least bit and even I know that's a monstrous idea to promote. Many goyim, in fact, would take issue with such blatant antisemitism!
posted by kafziel at 8:54 PM on September 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

By the way I love how the CIA and the rest of the intelligence apparatus are dirty evil deep state cops until they are placed in opposition to Trump (or even Bush) at which point they become sainted career civil servants and subject matter experts.

We do seem to forgive, overlook, or forget a lot if these monsters go after other monsters we hate more. Former CIA staffer Evan McMullin would set up a corporatist Gilead, given the chance, yet is strangely lauded from the left. James Comey and Robert Mueller caved on a lot of Bush-lead, post-9/11 civil rights abuses, but are now hailed as heroes, for the most part. Same with Justin Amash, who voted mostly in lockstep with Trump. Humans are odd.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:49 AM on September 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

I think with McMullin it was more that we were cheering on internal divisions in the Republican Party because it's always great to see your opponents fighting each other instead of you.

But yeah, the adoration of Comey by some liberals is baffling and frustrating to me. I mean, he handed Trump the Presidency and now that he's said Trump is bad he gets treated like a great guy?
posted by sotonohito at 4:21 AM on September 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

The adulation of Mueller was strange enough. Before it was obvious that Barr was all in for Herr Trump, it was considered a positive that he hung out with Mueller socially. I considered it a bad sign for the Mueller investigation since it meant Mueller would never go after the obvious collaborators in his own social circle.
posted by benzenedream at 9:41 PM on September 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

Former CIA staffer Evan McMullin would set up a corporatist Gilead, given the chance, yet is strangely lauded from the left. James Comey and Robert Mueller caved on a lot of Bush-lead, post-9/11 civil rights abuses, but are now hailed as heroes, for the most part. Same with Justin Amash, who voted mostly in lockstep with Trump. Humans are odd.

Strangely lauded from the center, thank you. The left knows what those people are.

When we tweet "George W. Bush, welcome to the #resistance", we're making fun of them.
posted by kafziel at 9:31 PM on September 12, 2019